Hiring Trend │ IT

Hiring levels for IT professionals differed significantly from sector to sector during 2015. A similar pattern will continue in 2016, when we anticipate particularly high levels of demand among social media and gaming employers. Experts in cyber security, cloud computing, the Internet of Things and big data, will be highly sought after, as will skilled IT salespeople across all market areas. Salaries for such specialists will rise by up to 20% compared with 10-15% for experts in other areas.

IT COMMERCE

A major drive by Japanese companies to internationalise their businesses led to heightened levels of competition among hiring managers for bilingual IT professionals during 2015. New roles came to market as companies increased headcount and expanded their Japanese operations.

IT FINANCE

Ongoing transformation projects ensured that business analysts and project managers were popular banking hires in 2015, while regulatory change continued to underpin demand for specialists in the security, technology risk and audit areas. There was a rise in hiring activity at European banks, with demand growing for application support professionals. Despite a slight slowdown in recruitment, US banks have been seeking developers, project managers and technology risk & IT audit specialists. Overall, we saw strong hiring in the insurance industry covering roles right up to chief information officer. Following a more challenging end to 2015, which led to hiring freezes among many banks and insurance companies, we expect that activity levels will pick up in 2016, with demand for security and risk professionals once more at the fore.

IT ONLINE

During recent years, the focus at many companies has been on hiring junior engineering and development talent. This has now shifted more towards supervisory roles, and we have seen lead engineers and project management professionals become especially sought after. In 2016, web companies will be increasingly keen to employ server-side and Hadoop engineers. Experts in Unity and the Coco2D game engine will be highly sought after by gaming companies.

IT VENDOR & CONSULTING

An increasing focus on security has driven strong hiring of specialists in all areas of network and software security in 2015. We anticipate this will continue throughout 2016, with a shortage of skills keeping salaries high. A need to process and interpret increasingly large amounts of data will drive an urgent need for data scientists and analysts, business intelligence engineers and consultants. As companies seek to develop products that cross traditional sectoral boundaries, professionals with backgrounds combining manufacturing experience with cloud, software and data expertise will be increasingly in demand. Rising demand for their services will continue driving global consulting firms to seek new talent.

IT CONTRACT

Contractors with ERP-related skills, particularly in SAP, will be sought after in 2016 as companies implement or upgrade their systems. We also expect the strong recent requirement for bilingual business analysts and project managers to continue throughout the year. However, it’s likely that the shortage of skilled bilingual IT professionals in regions including Kansai will continue as jobseekers gravitate towards Tokyo.

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