Demand for IT execs falls: survey

E.L Consult's latest executive demand index shows a decrease in demand by seven percent for IT executives in July, compared to the previous month.

This drop follows a decrease in demand of 26 percent in the previous month.

Grant Montgomery, managing director at E.L Consult, said he thought that overall IT executive recruitment was still “way below the baseline”.

Montgomery argued that a lot of big companies were still reducing staff at a massive level, despite reaping the benefits of IT development work carried out over the past two years.

“We're seeing a continual focus on IT costs,” Montgomery said. “Having said that, I think that generally IT has reached [the] bottom and is trending upwards.”

However, despite a drop in new positions advertised, analysis of the most recent results had shown that Internet advertising for IT jobs has grown, according to a statement from the search firm.

“IT is still at a very low ebb, but it is likely that when recovery occurs it will be through the Internet advertising,” said Montgomery. “The days of massive technology position ads covering the newspapers is probably over. IT recruitment is migrating to the Web to a much greater extent than in other executive groups.”