5 Great Jobs in IT - 2012

Industry reports show that the economic recession has negatively affected the average IT worker in the United States. Management has cut costs by making external hiring decisions resulting in a combination of employees, consultants, and offshore IT companies managing important infrastructure for a company. These trends have negatively impacted employers in many ways and on shore hiring practices have increased in certain areas. The following list highlights some of these areas and may potentially be a new area to enter especially for recent college graduates.

White Hat Hacker

Companies are constantly falling prey to hacking attacks and security intrusions by the swarms of hackers looking to make a quick buck without leaving home. A DIce.com spokesman claimed, "If you're a security and vulnerability expert, you'll have a job today, you'll have had a job yesterday, and you'll always have a job in the future." These jobs tend to be in sourced as they are tightly coupled with legal and risk management. Disaster scenarious can climb all the way up the ladder to C-level executives when the media reports on a crisis. The risk aversion nature of the job makes it a great certification to pick up to stay relevant in the recession.

Virtual and Cloud Computing Administrator

Fortune 500 companies are increasingly moving to a cloud computing model to avoid infrastructure costs and outsource management of non-critical applications. Couple that with the ever so popular Go Green initiative and what you'll notice is an increasing push to leverage software and infrastructure as a service.

IT Resource Planning

Ok. So this one is a bit less technical in nature but does wonders for companies that don't have a centralized resource to manage IT investments. An IT resource planner is responsible for understanding what systems and services exist in a shop, how they are interrelated to other resources, and how they can be re-used or leveraged for new ventures. The nature of the job also can take on significant financial responsibilities for those interested in using an opportunity like this as a step to a more financial role.

Network Engineer

Network engineering is increasing substantially in its need as more and more services are digitized and leveraged over the world wide web rather than traditional services such as in the telecom industry. Mobile services, video streaming, multicast television shows, and countless other applications for new and emerging technologies make network engineering a hot field to get into.

Open Source Tools

Okay. There are several arguments with this one and here is why. While open source tools are free, however, certain organizations argue that they lack regulation and introduce security threats to their infrastructure. The problem I have with those statements is that large enterprise software is just as hard to get patches and fixes for when there is an issue and most engineers can grab the software development kit for an open source product and fix a bug much faster than any company can issue a patch thats been tested to cover their entire enterprise base for. This is especially true now that open source development has become increasingly social in nature i.e. forums such as stackoverflow, an uncountable amount of blogs, and industry experts constantly submitting new product updates. The point here is that as companies look to cut their IT costs they will most certainly turn to open source more and more. If you're a developer familiar with open source technologies and development frameworks you are sure to be at the top of many recruiters lists.

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About the Author: vince letap