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Over half of U.S. companies to hire temporary or contract IT workers

Posted on March 26th, 2015 Read time: 2 minutes

The IT sector has experienced explosive growth in the past 10 years. The Labor Department expects technology-related jobs to continue to be one of the fastest-growing occupations for the next decade. The U.S. has 500,000 tech positions that the White House says currently remain unfilled, and the number of new IT jobs rose at twice the rate of total nonfarm employment in February from January, as TechServe reported.

As demand for IT talent accelerates, 59 percent of companies plan to hire temporary or contract workers in 2015 to help fill growing gaps in both IT labor and skills, according to CareerBuilder’s IT forecast. With the the number job vacancies outpacing the nation’s pool of qualified professionals, the competition for qualified IT candidates is building and could remain fierce for the foreseeable future.

“As I have been warning for some time, an inadequate supply of talent in high demand skill sets will continue to be a challenge,” TechServe Alliance CEO Mark Roberts said. “Without a significant increase in the availability of talent by growing the domestic IT and engineering workforce or increasing the availability of high-skilled foreign professionals, all industries dependent on technical talent will continue to be at risk of not having their needs fully met.”

Where to find the best IT talent
Specializations within the information technology field often call for very different skills sets. A staffing or recruiting professional can relieve companies of the burden of hiring and payrolling talented candidates who possess specific knowledge and capabilities to fill a variety of IT positions. With access to a pool of qualified professionals across the technology spectrum, with skills in mobile IT, coding, software and web development, information security and other areas, these experts can quickly identify the right individual for a company’s specific needs.

Managing your contract or temporary workers
HR outsourcing or payroll services agencies can help a company seamlessly integrate its temporary employees into its general workforce. For businesses that expect to augment their IT staff with multiple supplemental employees, working with these types of organizations can be particularly beneficial. An employer of record can free a company’s HR department from the extra workload associated with managing HR administration, payroll, and regulatory issues related to workers’ compensation, payroll and benefits. This allows human resource managers to focus on the orientation and training process and on getting new workers up and running as quickly as possible.

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