-------------------------------------------

The recession is over???

------------------------------------

Yesterday the UK newspapers were full of a story saying that by most economic measures the recession is over.

They were immediately contradicted by various industry leaders and personalities.

So what does it mean for IT industry jobs? We decided to rerun our infamous, not very scientific, Jack’s Guide Job Survey.

Here are some interesting statistics. We conducted a global survey last year of one day’s job adverts using the job site www.jobserve.com

We conducted the same survey on April 3, 2009 and again today – “Green Shoots” day. The results are:

Permanent Jobs

Country August 2008 April 2009 June 2009

USA/Canada 6367 1815 3571

UK 4440 1197 1150

Australia 461 108 89

Contract Jobs

USA / Canada 1932 861 932

UK 2209 827 869

Australia 309 131 69

--------------------------------------------------------------

So, even though our survey is not particularly scientific, you can see some interesting trends.

In North America the permanent IT jobs market is picking up strongly, whereas the contract market is little changed from April.

In the UK, both permanent and contract vacancies are much the same as in April, whereas in Australia both are still dropping. The latter is not that surprising since Australia tends to follow the trends of the rest of the English speaking world, but a few months later.

Let’s hope the strong performance of the permanent sector in the USA is an indicator of what is about to happen in the other sectors.

So we still have a long way to travel. We will now repeat the survey on a more regular basis to see if things are actually improving.

----------------------------------------------

Connecting the Dots

-----------------------------------------------
Steve Jobs of Apple was in the news again this week, if only from the point of view that he wasn’t present at the launch of the new iPhone. It appears his illness is ongoing.

I’ll leave it to the financial analysts and gurus to determine what effect this may have on Apple, but one thing is clear – over the years Steve Jobs has provided Apple with a focus and a vision.

In fact, Steve has often made comments which provide guidance and inspiration for many of us in our lives. For those of you who aspire to a career in IT or a better job in IT, he had some interesting words to say in a speech made at Stanford University on June 14, 2005.

In summary, Steve, in his college drop-out days, in fact used to “drop-in” and take odd classes in things he found interesting rather than useful. One of these was calligraphy – not something you might think would have a very practical use in today’s world. In fact, when Apple designed the first Macintosh computer many years later, it made extensive use of the principles of calligraphy.

Now I’m not suggesting for a minute that you all rush out and enrol in calligraphy classes! But the principle applies.

Many IT jobs require a broad knowledge of a wide range of topics, and it’s the people who have that broad knowledge who can seize the opportunities as they arise.

It’s not always clear just what knowledge you need to realise a better future for yourself. Some people become ever more expert in a particular narrow subject, thinking that this level of specialisation will help them.

We at Jack's Guides disagree. We believe we are in the era of the “Generalist”, where a broad knowledge about lots of things is more useful than expert status in a narrow field.

In future newsletters we will talk more about this concept of “The Generalist”.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Finally our Jack’s Guides Blog is now up and running.