Recession a Boon to IT Professionals Working as Temps
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Voice over IP rollouts, PC refreshes in certain vertical industries, and
point-of-sale installations remain IT project bright spots even as the world
continues to be mired in a recession. That’s according to SmartSource, an
IT staffing firm that specializes in serving IT solution providers.
While pointing to IT projects that continue to show growth, SmartSource’s CEO
Joe Iovinelli says that the recession has been a boon for his company. As IT
solution providers lay off full-time employees, they have made use of temporary
workers to fill the holes as they sign on for IT projects, such as big PC
rollouts, he says.
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After all, Gartner has forecast close to a 12 percent decline in PC unit
sales in 2009, and many firms are delaying their PC refreshes for yet another
year. It’s no surprise that IT solution providers during the current recession would
look to downsize their work forces that performed that type of work. However,
some PC refresh projects are still a go, and those IT solution providers who
have won these projects are now finding themselves without the right IT
professionals on staff to do the job.
So SmartSource has seen an increase in the number of resumes it receives
from laid-off IT professionals at the same time it has seen an increase in
demand for temporary IT professionals. However, the demand increases are not
quite even.
Where SmartSource used to get 100 resumes a week, the firm is getting 300.
Meanwhile, SmartSource has increased its revenues by 80 percent over the
last four years and doubled the number of client accounts it serves. To
accommodate that workload, it has doubled the number of IT professionals it
hires.
Iovinelli says he’s noticed a particular increase in demand for IT temporary
services over the last six months.
“I think a lot of firms have been doing layoffs and cutbacks,” he says.
“They’ve cut so deep, and still they are afraid of bringing full-timers on.
They are needing to use subcontractors to get the work done because customers
are starting to call again.”
Iovinelli says his firm gets many calls from the human resources people at
IT solution provider companies who are trying to help their recently laid-off
employees find other jobs. But with 300 applicants a week now, “it’s almost
hard for our team to keep up with the candidates.”
Iovinelli says that a year ago his firm would start about 50 new people a
week. Six months ago that number jumped to 75 to 80 people.
“In the last six weeks we’ve been up to about 100 people,” he says. “It’s
almost double really.”
