Get a job: The top 10 hottest IT skills today

It’s time for a fall tune-up, not for your car, but for your career. If you’re thinking about a new job or even advancing within your current workplace, now is the time to see if you have the skills that employers are seeking — and paying the most for.

Scores of IT certifications now command a substantial premium in terms of pay, but you can’t do much better than an Open Master Architect or a Certified Secure Software Life Cycle Professional, according to the latest survey by Foote Partners. But plenty of noncertified skills are commanding a hefty pay premium as well, with TOGAF (Enterprise Architect) the most valuable of 374 skills surveyed by Foote between April and July.

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While you’re at it, broaden your job search to include types of companies you might not have considered working for. The insurance industry, for example, has woken up to the fact that it’s behind the IT curve and is now looking hard for the right people.

The latest look at certified and noncertified IT skills shows that both categories have increased in value for five consecutive quarters, a trend that reversed a long decline in the value of certifications. Not surprising, the gains come as the most important segments of the IT industry added a solid 11,100 jobs in July alone, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The headline on Foote’s report sums up the outlook rather well: “Skills rule!”

These 10 IT skills are most in demand

It only takes a glance at Dice.com, a large, IT-focused job board to see how solid the market has been. At the beginning of August, there were 80,651 jobs listed, a bit higher than the average over the last 12 months of 80,247. Well over half of those jobs (an average of 47,840) have been full-time, while nearly all of the remainder has been for contractors.

That’s a lot of contract work, and it’s in line with a growing trend across the entire labor market for companies to avoid making full-time commitments and avoid paying benefits to workers.

The demand for skills varies quite a bit, but according to Dice, here are the job categories that have grown the most in the last two years. The numbers refer to the number of postings on the Dice board, and the order is from most to least growth in the last year.

Looking backward at the job market is useful, but it’s even more important to get a sense of the future. Thus, Dice surveyed more than 700 hiring professionals at midyear and found the outlook for the rest of the year remains strong.

Among the findings:

• 70 percent said they expect to do more hiring in the second half of the year than they did in the first
• About 30 percent said turnover is increasing, and more tech candidates are turning down job offers than in the past
• 61 percent — a clear majority — said candidates are asking for more money than they did in the first half

Having old skills equals being unemployed

Compared to the latest app maker or a giant like Apple, the insurance industry may seem like an awfully dull place to work. Nonetheless, insurance carriers are hiring IT workers as they upgrade their technology.

Nearly three-quarters of the insurance carriers queried in the midyear 2014 U.S. Insurance Labor Outlook survey said they expect to increase staffing this year, as reported by Insurance Networking News. “The need to replace legacy systems is driving the demand,” says Jeff Rieder, head of the Ward Group, which conducted the survey along with Jacobson Group. Also important, of course, is the need to transact business on mobile devices and automate existing processes.

That’s standard stuff in any vertical these days, but here’s something to note when you think about your own skills are career path. Rieder says “the limited skill sets of those who have worked only or primarily in a legacy environment” are a factor driving new hiring. Translation: Those people with old skills are not the ones the insurers are hiring.

That’s certainly true in many other sectors, so don’t be left out of a great job market because you are tied down by an outdated arsenal of skills.

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This article, “Get a job: The top 10 hottest IT skills today,” was originally published by InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bill Snyder’s Tech’s Bottom Line blog and follow the latest technology business developments at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.