IT hiring
For 2015, 48% of respondents ranked IT managers as most critical to organizational success, up from 21% in 2014. In the second and third spots were project managers, at 45%, and programmers and developers, at 43%.
For the third year running, positions for programmers and developers remain the most difficult to fill. IT leaders also expect difficulty hiring software engineers, architects, project managers and security professionals in 2015.
While business intelligence, big data analytics, cloud and mobile positions are seen as not as hard to fill by IT leaders, these should also be areas for increased spending in 2015.
Just 76% of IT leaders anticipate salary increases for staff in 2015, compared with 81% in 2014.
In 2015, 4% of IT leaders expect staff salaries to increase 10% or more, while another 4% expect pay increases to range from 6% to 9%. The majority, 68%, expect staff salaries to rise by up to 5%.
Most IT leaders, 54%, expect pay increases for programmers and developers in 2015. 54% also expect pay increases for security pros. Programmers and developers were ranked among the five hardest-to-fill spots for 2015.
51% anticipate pay increases for software engineers, 49% for project managers and 48% for architects—all also ranked among the five most difficult-to-fill positions in 2015.
49% of the IT leaders expect salary increases for business intelligence and big data staff, 44% see gains for mobile and cloud computing employees, and 42% see increases for cloud professionals.
Only 35% anticipate pay increases for help desk and technical support staff, while just 32% expect pay increases for social technology experts.
90% of IT leaders expect to increase hiring of full-time IT staff in 2015 or to keep it the same, up from 89% in 2014.
36% expect to hire more contingency staff in 2015, compared with 46% in 2014. Another 54% plan to keep hiring of contingency staff the same, while 10% plan to decrease contingency staff hiring.