One of the segments hardest hit during the last economic downturn, the IT market has recorded positive growth since third quarter last year, said Caleb Baker, divisional manager of IT and telecommunications, Hudson Singapore.

In the last two quarters, between 35 percent and 50 percent of the executive recruitment firm's clients in Singapore's IT and telecommunications sectors were actively hiring, he said, compared to 25 percent in the first quarter of 2004.

Fewer layoffs in S'pore Singapore's Ministry of Manpower recently released a study on retrenchment and re-employment, which indicated a fall in the number of layoffs. Only 9.7 percent of employees were retrenched in 2004, compared to 19 percent the year before. The study also found that workers aged 30 and below were the most re-employable, where 74 percent of this employee group securing jobs within six months of their retrenchment. Mature tertiary-educated workers, however, continue to face difficulties with re-employment. Degree holders aged 50 and above faced the lowest re-employment rate at 37 percent.

And compared to other sectors such as finance, consumer, legal and manufacturing, IT saw the strongest demand, he added.

Andrew Sansom, director of DP Search, echoed the positive assessment of the IT job market. He noted that his team has also been kept busy since 2001, but did not provide any growth figures.

Most job openings are in sales and marketing, pre-sales and business development, he said. Technology companies currently lead the charge in the hiring spree, he added.

For Hudson, IT job vacancies are in outsourcing and managed services, as well as the banking sector.

Baker explained: "The outsourcing and managed services market is very hot, particularly for sales and service and support personnel, including network architects, designers and administrators. The demand for sales people is high because there's a lack of experienced people with the knowledge to sell this service."

The backlash from offshore outsourcing activities that did not take off well in India, have also driven companies to redirect such functions to Singapore, he noted.

"The era of the generalist is over. Now, everyone wants specialists." Andrew Sansom, director of DP Search

"It's what we call mid-sourcing," he said. "Singapore offers a mid-point cost option. That means, the country may not have the cheapest labor resource but it is not as expensive as the United States and Europe."

One industry that has been most active in hiring IT personnel is banking, Sansom said. "We have a number of positions for project managers, data center people, security personnel, networking support staff, and so on."

Although the tech job market looks to have rebounded, IT professionals should not forget to upgrade their skills and ensure they remain employable.

Lee Kwok Cheong, president of the Singapore Computer Society, said industry discussions have largely centered around the positive job market but not enough has been said about what IT professionals must do to keep themselves relevant.

He told CNETAsia that he knows of several IT professionals in their 40s who had been laid off and had difficulty finding new employment. He also highlighted his concern for today's IT managers in middle-management.

"They work for their company's in-house IT department and have been in middle-management roles for some time," explained Lee, who is also the CEO of Singapore-owned systems integrator NCS. "Because their roles no longer require them to be hands-on, they're no longer technically strong. They're also not required and unable to generate value and new revenue streams for their company."

Unless they pick up new skills or return to a technical job scope, this group of people may have problems finding jobs, Lee warned. It is, therefore, up to them to recognize which skills are in demand and retrain themselves, he said.

Compared to the late 1990s, employers are now more selective about who they hire, Sansom said. They are not interested in job-hoppers and want people with very specific skills, which can be applied directly and quickly to the company's needs, he explained.

"The era of the generalist is over," he noted. "Now, everyone wants specialists."

Lee said: "So we don't want a security guy who knows only general things about security. Instead, we look for people who can go deeper and especially those who hold certification in hot areas."

According to Sansom, top networking engineers with Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) can earn as much as S$160,000 (US$97,100) a year, while developers with hands-on experience in Oracle and Java can command salaries of S$100,000 (US$60,700) per annum.

He also noted that project management skills are still lacking in the Asia-Pacific region, and good project managers can be paid between S$120,000 (US$72,800) and S$150,000 (US$91,000) per year.

But the highest-paid are those in IT sales or who directly impact company revenues. And those who meet their sales targets can earn anything in the range of S$100,000 (US$60,700) to S$300,000 (US$182,000) a year.

The right mix
Workers fluent in relating technology to business needs are also highly sought after, and rare to find.

The key defining profile of an ideal candidate is one who can "service the business side of IT", Hudson's Baker said. "That is the biggest challenge for us," he noted.

"Our clients want people who can articulate the value of technology to business," Baker added. "Companies want people who understand IT's purpose in business. It's not IT for IT's sake anymore, and the people who understand that have the biggest selling point."

Tan Lee Choo, director of human resources at IBM Singapore, could not agree more.

The IT vendor constantly seeks out candidates with effective communication skills, business acumen, leadership qualities and the ability to relate to customers, she said. Technical skills, she added, can be acquired through training. Qualities such as the ability to solve problems creatively and effectively manage projects, are intrinsic to a person's character and difficult to teach.

"At the end of the day, employees across our company have to interact with the customer," Tan said. "So it's important that they understand the client and the language he speaks. We want people who can communicate with the customer, understand what worries him and identify what his business needs so we can go in and fill in the gaps."