IT
Job Description HandiGuide®

Sample Job Description

The Internet and IT Job Description HandiGuide contains 260 Descriptions. The Job Descriptions have all been updated to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, ITIL, and PCI-DSS requirements. They can be obtained in three separate ways.

PDF Book (HandiGuide) with all of the job descriptions available for viewing and printing.
Individual WORD 2007 files using long file names. Each job description can be copied an edit to meet your enterprises unique requirements.
Combination of the HandiGuide plus the Individual WORD files.

Manager System Programming Job Description

Manager System Programming Job Description

CIO IT Job Descriptions and Career News

Real Wages Fall in May
June 18th, 2013
Real average hourly earnings for all employees fell 0.2 percent in May, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. 
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This decrease stems from an unchanged average hourly 
earnings combined with an increase of 0.1 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban 
Consumers (CPI-U).
Real average weekly earnings fell 0.1 percent over the month due to the decrease in real average hourly 
earnings and an unchanged average workweek.
Real average hourly earnings rose 0.5 percent, seasonally adjusted, from May 2012 to May 2013. The 
increase in real average hourly earnings, combined with a 0.3 percent increase in the average workweek, 
resulted in a 0.9 percent increase in real average weekly earnings over this period.
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U.S. Payroll to Population and Unemployment Worsen in May

June 10th, 2013
The U.S. Payroll to Population employment rate (P2P), as measured by Gallup, worsened in May, dropping to 43.9%. Gallup's unadjusted unemployment rate for the U.S. workforce rose to 7.9%.

Unlike Gallup's P2P rate, which is a percentage of the total population, traditional employment metrics, such as the unemployment rates Gallup and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, are based on the percentage of the workforce. Gallup defines the "workforce" as adults who are working or actively looking for work and available for employment. The U.S. workforce participation rate in May was 68.4%, unchanged from 68.5% in April, but a slight improvement from May 2012 (68.1%).

Gallup's unadjusted unemployment rate for the U.S. workforce was 7.9% for the month of May, a half-point increase over April, and statistically unchanged from May 2012 (8.0%).

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Payroll growth for May falls behind targets

June 6th, 2013
Payroll expanded by 135,000 in May which is short of the 171,000 expected target. However that is an improvement over the 113,000 in April. According to ADP, professional and business services hired the most, while construction and manufacturing remained cautious. The Feds survey noted modest top moderate economic growth in most areas of the country, though some are feeling the effects of defense budget cuts.

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Majority of hiring managers are pessimistic

June 5th, 2013
With the stock market falling, more gridlock in Washington, and Fed changing its policy things do not look good. The Hamilton Hiring Survey indicates that Iowa employers overall outlook for hiring has retracted considerably since last year.

Key Findings:

Optimism for 2013 hiring falls significantly; 52% of respondents now pessimistic

New layoffs are expected

Hiring Authorities are very cautious Healthcare, red tape and fiscal cliff the culprits
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Big data causes an increase in demand for some IT pros

June 3rd, 2013
Big data has opened the door to new job opportunities. An online search for Apache big data jobs will bring up a string of positions available for data scientists, Hadoop engineers, data analysts, big data engineers, big data testers, big data architects, business intelligence engineers and more.

The Apache big data open source applications, Hadoop, which allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models, is red-hot right now and has become the de facto standard for storing, processing and analyzing hundreds of terabytes, and even petabytes of data.

The open source code can handle all types of data from disparate systems: structured, unstructured, log files, pictures, audio files, communications records and email, among other things, regardless of its native format. It has major cost advantages as it allows the use of commodity hardware.

IT Job Descriptions
Salary Data

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Security IT Pros are in short supply

June 2nd, 2013
There is a cybersecurity skills shortage and recent studies magnify the fact.

25% of mid-market (i.e. 100 to 999 employees) and enterprise (i.e. more than 1,000 employees) report a "problematic shortage" of IT security skills.

36% of organizations increasing IT headcount this year plan to hire information security staff. Of all the IT headcount being added in 2013, hiring information security professionals is the highest of priority.

83% of enterprise organizations say that it is "extremely difficult" or "somewhat difficult" to recruit and hire information security specialists. Those organizations having the hardest time include companies in rural areas, mid-market firms, and vertical industries like academia, and the public sector.

IBM recognizes that a dearth of cybersecurity skills presents a threat to its customers, its security business, and its services organization. IBM is trying to do something about it. IBM just published a paper called, Cybersecurity Education for the Next Generation - http://www.e-janco.com/register_security_IBM_paper.asp.

The paper provides a high-level overview of the current state of cybersecurity skills and education and then suggests a few changes. IBM suggests that cybersecurity programs must become:

More comprehensive. Yes, firewall rules and AV signatures are important, but the next-generation of cybersecurity leaders need to be able to understand cybersecurity as it relates to the business, legal system, and society. This means that cybersecurity education has to branch out from the Computer Science department alone.

More cooperative. Cybersecurity protection doesn't work when the CISO and team are not part of business, IT, and application planning. That said, many groups view the security team in an adversarial way. The next-generation of cybersecurity leaders must be able to break down legacy walls and become business facilitators rather than business impediments.

Book smart and street smart. We need cybersecurity people who understand what works in theory and practice. A degree or certification alone isn't enough.
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Unemployment rate for foreign-born workers falls Senate moves ahead with new H-1B bill

May 23rd, 2013
The unemployment rate for foreign-born persons in the United States was 8.1 percent in 2012, down from 9.1 percent in 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The jobless rate of native-born persons also fell to 8.1 percent in 2012, down from 8.9 percent in the prior year.

In 2012, there were 25.0 million foreign-born persons in the U.S. labor force, comprising 16.1 percent of the total.

Hispanics accounted for 48.3 percent of the foreign-born labor force in 2012, and Asians accounted for 23.7 percent.

Foreign-born workers were more likely than native-born workers to be employed in service occupations; production, transportation, and material moving occupations; and natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations.

The median usual weekly earnings of foreign-born full-time wage and salary workers were $625 in 2012, compared with $797 for their native-born counterparts.

At the same time the Senate proceeds with a new Immigration bill going to the floor, where attempts to amend it are expected before a final vote is taken some time in the next several months.

The Senate debate will begin next month. The House, meanwhile, has been preparing its own comprehensive immigration bill for vote.

There are a lot of areas in the Senate bill that are certain to draw criticism, particularly some last-minute changes.

The original bill, drafted by a bipartisan Senate group dubbed the Gang of Eight, would raise the base cap on H-1B visas from 65,000 to 110,000, with an escalator that can increase the cap to 180,000 in increments of 10,000 in response to demand. The tech industry wanted a cap of at least 300,000.

The revised bill raises the initial cap to 115,000, a small, seemingly spiteful incremental increase.

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Some say the IT job market is improving

May 22nd, 2013
An on-line job portal, Dice says IT degree graduates are finding jobs. They also say that some companies still report technology-skill shortages.

According to them there hass been a solid job market for entry level tech professionals in the past few years with more than 40,000 joining the job market in a given year. That, combined with growing enrollments in computer science departments, implies even bigger numbers of newly minted professionals will be available for the companies that seek to employ them in the years to come. However experience is often valued over education in technology departments. It is recommended that students get some experience.

Best City for IT jobs - New York 8,600 jobs available

Second Best City for IT Jobs - Washington DC/Baltimore - 7,000 jobs available

Third Best Market - Silicon Valley - 5,200 jobs available

Next Best City - Chicago - 3,800 jobs available

Unfilled IT jobs in the US over 83,000 -- 48,000 are full time positions

Over 37,000 contractor positions open

Over 50,300 IT degrees issued in 2012 versus 59,500 in 2003 (source Dept of Education)

Low point in number of degrees 2009 - 38,000

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Software Developer Wages Fall Two Percent as Workforce Expands

May 18th, 2013
The Janco Associates, Inc. and eJobDescription.com salary survey draws on data collected throughout the year by extensive internet-based and completed survey forms sent to businesses throughout the United States and Canada. Over 300 companies participate in the survey.

The U.S. tech industry added nearly 64,000 software related jobs last year, but as the workforce expanded, the average size of workers' pay checks declined by nearly 2%.

There are multiple theories for the decline in pay, but a common one cited by analysts is simply that the new people being hired are paid less than those already on the job.

The average annual wage of all workers in the software services sector was $99,000 in 2012, about $2,000 less than the prior year.

IT Median Salaries

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Unemployment picture looking better but…

May 17th, 2013
Unemployment picture is looking better in many parts of the country, however some states continue to see levels are 8% and above. Included are some of the most populated states like Illinois, California, and New Jersey.

States with High Unemployment

Top 10 States with the Highest Unemployment Rates 10 States Have Unemployment Rates over 9% In the latest release of state unemployment rates there are 10 states which stand out because of their...

Unemployment Data Is The BLS Playing With It? Feds say they may delay the unemployment report It is ever so amazing that the feds are now saying that they may delay the unemployment...

Unemployment is over 9% in 8 states not a good sign for IT Pros As people continue to forecast an improvement in the economy, the latest BLS data shows there still are 8 states with unemployment number that are...

IT Employment Up In a Soft Job Market Between the first to second quarter of this year, the unemployment rate of computer hardware engineers went from 4.4% to 0.5%. For software developers, the...

IT Job Market is Poor at Best IT Job Market Is Poor At Best The information technology job market in the U.S. shrank by 6,600 jobs in September, and the number of...
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