The Great “Break Up” Of 2021: Employers And Employees



I Quit

As we ended 2020, I was getting a much higher than normal amount of inquiries from people asking about what the expected job/hiring market was going to be like in 2021. At that time, I didn’t know. No one really had a good answer. We had not yet had a transfer of power in Washington and the vaccine rollout was uncertain.

As January started and through the month the inquiries increased substantially. These were people in Tech, Marketing, HR, Sales and Manufacturing and all levels of experience.

It had me thinking that this was not a blip on the screen but a significant trend.

I started asking my Recruiter friends (corporate, search and consulting) who were tapped into their part of the community if they were hearing the same things.

They were.

Continue reading "The Great “Break Up” Of 2021: Employers And Employees" »


Top 15 In-Demand Jobs in 2021



We Are Hiring

The past two years one of the most frequently asked questions I have received is:

What’s the hot job?

In part I think a lot of people are starting to think what is next for them in their career and what do they need to start learning and gaining experience in.

LinkedIn came out with their Jobs on the Rise: 15 opportunities that are in demand and hiring now. They used their data from April to October of 2020.

My feeling is that some of these roles, while still in demand, may fall down the next time they do the survey and are whatever “post Covid” is.

Below are the general categories and then top job titles. You will want to click the link above as LinkedIn has more data including skills, top locations, education, salary range and remote job availability.

Continue reading "Top 15 In-Demand Jobs in 2021" »


Top 100 Jobs In The U.S. 2020



Best Job In 2020U.S. News and World Report has put out their 100 Best Jobs in 2020. I, being a list person, always find these things interesting mostly to see if it jives with what I am experiencing here in the Midwest and to compare to previous and other lists to find trends.

I like their list as their methodology takes into account a variety of things including: salary, unemployment rate, 10-year growth volume and percentage, future job prospects, stress and work life balance.

I’m posting 2 versions of the list… first the Top 10 Best Jobs (links go to more information about the role):

Continue reading "Top 100 Jobs In The U.S. 2020" »


Paul DeBettignies To Speak At Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis St Paul #120



Paul DeBettignies at Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis St Paul

That sounds like a formal headline… this is me taking my own advice and example of the kind I will be giving in a couple of weeks at SMBMSP focusing in part on our personal digital profiles.

I bumped into Mykl Roventine at Minnebar 2019 and we had a quick conversation about me coming back to the SMBMSP group and leading a career conversation. I love this group and was at one time the “most frequent speaker”… this will be my 6th presentation. I’m thrilled to be coming back.

I have a “concern” that a lot of people (most everyone) have fallen into a (false) sense of job security and/or are not ready for the next internal promotion or new client. Generally speaking the economy has been doing well. We hear about the “shortage of talent” a lot in the media and how companies can’t find who they are looking for.

That’s generally true.

However, there are some signs of a slight cooling:

  • GDP will not be as high in 2019 as 2018

  • The “we’re hiring” survey numbers are a touch lower than last year

  • Tariffs have some companies hiring not as many people as before

A couple of posts of mine you may find interesting:

(I made this in December of 2018 and I am sticking to it)

(fresh data posted 2 weeks ago)

To be clear… things are still good.

But it’s likely time for most everyone to take a pause and assess where our jobs, careers and/or consulting practices are at. When times are good we tend to spend less time on our personal digital profiles. So think of this conversation as tending to that garden… we’re going to pull some weeds, add some fertilizer, prune and add some landscaping. Can you tell this is how I spent some time over the holiday weekend?

I’m going to talk about researching companies/clients that we are thinking we want to work with now and in the future and starting those relationships.

And a bonus… I’m going to show how I do my sourcing and recruiting, and what attracts hiring managers/clients, based on your digital profile.

Are you ready for the next promotion, job search or landing that new/big client?

If not… you should hang out with us.

Plus, there’s bacon.

Continue reading "Paul DeBettignies To Speak At Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis St Paul #120" »


2019 Minnesota Jobs Prediction



Roller Coaster

I tend to stay away from making predictions… I don’t have a crystal ball that tells the future. If I did I likely would not be writing this post right now. When I was a kid I did have a Magic 8 Ball. Those were the best. Didn’t like your answer? Try again. Or do 2 of 3 or 4 of 7.

But I do trends.

I am always reading economic surveys, watching CNBC and Bloomberg, reading company quarterly reports, scanning Glassdoor company reviews, looking at Indeed and Google Jobs. Anything that when combined with other bits of data show trends. Sometimes new data jives with what I have been thinking and other times it shows some change.

Late 2017 while prepping for our end of the year MSP On Deck Podcast we each were going to make a prediction. I knew mine right away.

I went with this… that in 2018 the Minnesota jobs scene and particularly the Minnesota tech jobs scene was going to see greater churn. By churn I meant that we would see more companies hiring, more companies laying off and restructuring and for a variety of factors more people taking a look at what might be available to them in a new job, career or employer.

While I can’t point to a particular survey or chart… I am claiming a win on that prediction.

If you ask corporate and search firm recruiters… most experienced a busier year of recruiting. If you ask managers, directors and those who run teams if they had a harder time retaining people… most will say yes.

Remember the gopher from CaddyShack and how he would stick his head up from underground to see what was going on outside? That’s what a lot more people did in 2018. They all didn’t move but more were willing to take a look.

Now to my 2019 Minnesota Jobs prediction… I’m not taking a big leap with this one.

I am predicting even more churn in 2019.


Continue reading "2019 Minnesota Jobs Prediction" »


Minnesota Recruiters In Demand–Summer 2018



Minnesota Recruiters in Demand

Two to three months ago while prepping for MSP On Deck Podcast, I mentioned to Kathy Grayson and Casey Allen that I was seeing a crazy high demand for Minnesota Recruiters. Over the past few episodes I have been talking about this and here is some of the data I have.

Some background… I started this site, blog in 2005 and the Minnesota Recruiters group in 2007. Back then I was getting a number of email like, “Who is a really good Tech Recruiter?” or “Who do you know can manage a team of Recruiters?”.

Then the “Great Recession” hit and the requests stopped.

As we came out of the recession I was starting to get a few inquiries again and created the page.

To my conversation with Kathy and Casey… Casey asked if I had been tracking the number of jobs posted at any one time on the site. I said no. Later I figured well, I do have the number of jobs posted in a month so l could work with that.

Above is a graph of the number of jobs I posted per month beginning in 2010. It’s a bit messy so here is the raw data:

Minnesota RecruiterAnd the raw data by year:

Minnesota Recruiter

Some things to know and then a few conclusions:

  • This is not a scientific set of data… but it does show some trends.

  • I post jobs that are sent to me or that companies have said that if I see them post something then I can add it too. It is not a data set of all the Recruiter jobs that are, have been available.

  • 90%+ of the jobs posted are corporate recruiter roles. Infrequently I get a consulting or search firm role to post.

  • Labor markets are lagging economic indicators

  • I’ve been doing this a long time and the Minnesota Recruiter community generally knows about this site so I don’t think there is any other “influence” that inflates the numbers other than demand.

Conclusions:

  • Minnesota Recruiters are in demand for a few reasons:

    • The general positive state of the local and regional economy.

    • Minnesota Recruiters too, like many professions, are moving around looking for new opportunities.

    • Companies generally are feeling the stress of not being able to easily hire the staff they are looking for so need to add Recruiters to find them.

    • Companies generally are going to continue to expand and hire.

  • If I have been in a (non recruiter) role for a some time and been thinking about making a change… I would do it this year. I would start now so that by year end I am into something new.

  • The “Great Recession” ended around of June 2009 and it took a while for companies to really start to expand. They likely did it with whatever recruiting staff they had at the time. I didn’t expect to see the lag be that long.

  • This 2018 spike is noticeable and so is the streak since late 2016.

As I said above this is not a perfect set of data.

I am always looking for trends be they to predict the near future and/or to test what I think already is.

Any questions, thoughts or comments? Send me an email [email protected]


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Survey: Q2 2018 Hottest Skills And Highest Pay For Freelancers



Freelance

I have been posting a bunch of job, salary, economic, salary and hiring data lately. As a data and trend nerd it allows me to challenge if what I think I see and hear going on is true. It also allows me to figure out what is going on in the next quarter, rest of the year and next year. Yes, at times I am already thinking about 2019. Recent posts:

This next one is sort of a two for one set of data points.

UpWork released their Q2 2018 Skills Index, ranking the 20 fastest-growing skills for freelancers. Here they are:

  • Blockchain

  • Google Cloud Platform

  • Volusion

  • Risk management

  • Product photograpy

  • Rapid prototyping

  • Google App Engine API

  • SCORM

  • Gitlab

  • Go development

  • Apple UIKIT

  • Enterprise Architecture

  • Tensorflow

  • Atlassian confluence

  • Apple Xcode

  • eLearning

  • Customer retention

  • Articulate storyline

  • Node.js

  • Scala development

Continue reading "Survey: Q2 2018 Hottest Skills And Highest Pay For Freelancers" »


Millennials And Generation X Are Seeking Different Tech Jobs And Skills

Indeed Hiring Lab

This should not be a shock… Millennials and Gen X’ers are looking for different kinds of tech jobs and skills to do it. Surely being in different places of their career, interests, free time, families and finances play a part in it. What is interesting to me is seeing some data about it. Some apples to apples to comparison.

A couple of months ago Indeed had Older and Younger Workers Seek Different Tech Jobs and as usual I am attracted to some data, finding trends, testing if what I think is true or is not.


Job posts by age:

Job seekers ages 21 - 39                               Job seekers ages 40 - 64

Java Developer                                               Vice President of Information Technology

Machine Learning Engineer                         Director of Information Technology

Data Scientist                                                 Chief Engineer

Javascript Developer                                     Director of Security

Front End Developer                                     Director of Product Management

Android Developer                                        Director of Quality Assurance

Computer Vision Engineer                           IT Manager

Python Developer                                         IT Project Manager

Web Developer                                             Lead Architect

FPGA Engineer                                               IT Architect


Continue reading "Millennials And Generation X Are Seeking Different Tech Jobs And Skills" »


Recession 2020: Will You Be Ready?

The dreaded “R” word reared its ugly head last week when the NABE (National Association for Business Economics) released its Q2 2018 quarterly report that their 45 economists saw the economy going the following way:

+2.8 % GDP in 2018

+2.7% GDP in 2019

That OK news. More of the same of the past 10 years. Not great, not horrible. Moving along at decent pace.

Here is the bad news:

Around 50% see a recession by the end of 2019 and early 2020

60%+ see a recession by the end of 2020

These numbers are similar to other recent surveys from The Wall Street Journal and Zillow.

Things are going great for most people so why does it have to end?

Most likely… wages should start rising more and at some point companies will have to raise prices. If inflation goes to high and the Fed raises rates then costs of borrowing increase, home sales will slow and individuals and businesses may slow spending. There are other scenarios like government spending, the Trump tax cuts, overseas issues including tariffs, etc.

Let’s be clear, I am not an economist. I do watch CNBC and Bloomberg all the time and I am fascinated by how an economy works. I watch for trends, numbers, hiring and layoff announcements all the time including a bunch of Google Alerts. I have survived 2 recessions while being a recruiter. They’re not fun for recruiters (corporate, search and consulting). If a company does not plan on hiring then we are the first to get cut. Long before noticeable layoffs are seen and heard about.

I watch this stuff because it impacts my life in every way. And the “Great Recession” gives me night sweats.

Why am I bringing this survey up?

What if it happens… if the shit hits the fan am I prepared, am I ready?

Are you prepared? Ready?

Are your skills current?

Is your employer stable?

Continue reading "Recession 2020: Will You Be Ready?" »


U.S. Tech Jobs Roundup v1


U.S. Tech Jobs Distribution

I was in a meeting today with a group of senior HR leaders from about 15 companies and I was asked if I could give them some examples of what is going on in other cities around the country when it comes to tech and IT job trends. Were some cities and regions seeing growth, astronomical growth… were smaller cities and rural areas seeing people leaving for big cities?

What they were getting to (and I do this a lot) is “how are we doing” compared to other cities and can we speculate on some conclusions.

Let me speculate first and a reminder that while I am highly interested in economic development I am not an economist. I am a tech recruiter, regional advocate and highly opinionated blogger and podcaster.

Are we doing OK? Yeah

Are we doing better than we used to? Yes

Do I think we are about to could get passed by some other cities that “rank” below us? Absolutely

We need to get off our Midwest, we don’t like to promote ourselves ass and started being vocal about the career and life opportunities here. If you know me at all you have heard me say something like that 127 times by now. Yet… I am still saying it because we have barely moved the needle on it. As individuals, employees, companies, elected officials and community engaged people we need to get loud. Louder.

We have to get this idea into our head… we are NOT competing for “talent” (still hate the word) with Best Buy, Target, 3M, Total Expert, Code42, Accenture, Medtronic and whoever is going through a growth phase. We are competing with regions like Boulder, Austin, Chicago, startups in the Bay Area who allow workers to be remote and the tech companies in Atlanta who lives and breathe diversity and inclusion.

We MUST more frequently and more loudly tell our Minneapolis/St Paul story. It’s a good one. And if we don’t tell it then we can’t be shocked when other regions look more attractive.

You can find some more on this topic by clicking A Bunch Of Thoughts… Minneapolis And Amazon HQ2

The quick research I came up with for the group:

Continue reading "U.S. Tech Jobs Roundup v1" »


Commercial Project Manager Best 2018 Job On Indeed


Top U.S. Jobs, Commerical Project Manager #1 Job, Minnesota Jobs  

Indeed has their The Best Jobs in the United States: 2018 and I am happy to see construction related jobs are coming back:

  • #1 Commercial Project Manager

  • #5 Preconstruction Manager

  • #6 Construction Superintendent

  • #12 Construction Estimator

  • #19 Construction Manager

While I am a tech guy and not surprised that 8 of the 25 jobs are tech related it is good that other jobs are in(coming back in) demand. And not as a political statement… we need to focus on infrastructure in our country. Not everyone needs to or wants to code and the construction industry is one place people can get training, earn a good living and have a career.

I was asked by some high school students if everyone needed to go into tech and my answer was,:

“No. Is it a good idea to learn some basics? Yes. Is it a good idea to understand tech in a macro sense? Yes. There are plenty of careers outside of tech that will not be going away anytime soon. I am not a believer that AI and robots are taking all our jobs. Will they have an impact? Yes. Things change. We must too. And let me be clear that tech companies also have marketing, sales, customer success, help desk, HR and other jobs. No, you don’t need to be a coder but you do need to be a life long learner in every career, whatever you do.”

Continue reading "Commercial Project Manager Best 2018 Job On Indeed" »


Survey | 56% Of Candidates Do Not Negotiate Salary In A Job Offer


Negotiate Job Offer A recent CareerBuilder Job Offer Survey with some interesting statistics on how candidates and employers deal with an offer.

The candidate numbers:

  • 51% they don't attempt it because they don't feel comfortable asking for more money
  • 47% they are afraid the employer will decide not to hire them
  • 36% they don't want to appear greedy

Digging deeper:

  • 45% 35 or older typically negotiate the first offer
  • 42% 18-34 negotiate the first offer
  • 47% of men say they negotiate first offers
  • 42% of women say they negotiate first offers
  • 59% of Information technology workers are likely to negotiate
  • 55% of sales candidates workers are likely to negotiate
  • 53% of financial services workers are likely to negotiate
  • 48% of health care workers workers are likely to negotiate

Continue reading "Survey | 56% Of Candidates Do Not Negotiate Salary In A Job Offer" »


Recap: Managing Your Tech And Startup Career

 

Minnesota Headhunter, Minnesota IT Jobs


Last week I hosted my first online chat in all long time, maybe 3+ years, on Managing Your Tech And Startup Career. This is something I do every year at MinneBar and tech user groups throughout the year.

This one was a lot of fun for me as it was not only tech professionals in Minneapolis/St Paul but marketing, sales and CxO’s in our area along with a number of tech and data pros from the Bay Area.

The original agenda I proposed was:

  • What is the local job market like right now?
  • Is this a good time to look for a new job?
  • What's a reasonable salary increase year over year?
  • Should I stay a developer or move into management?
  • I'm thinking about moving to "FILL IN THE BLANK CITY", should I go?
  • Why is there so much recruiter spam?
  • How much personal info should I share with corporate/search firm recruiter?
  • I’m not a tech person but want to work with a tech company, how do I get in one?

And then attendees asked a number of questions including one I always seem to ramble on waffling back and forth on and paraphrasing… specialist or generalist?

In all it went for about 45 minutes and below is the session uploaded to YouTube.

This was my first time using Zoom and while it went OK it’s clear I need some more practice with which screen is showing.

To those who asked questions… thank you. It’s always way more enjoyable to have interaction particularly when I can’t see you.

If you have questions or comments after listening to this please send me an email [email protected]

Here we go…


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Online Chat: Managing Your Tech And Startup Career


Minnesota Headhunter. Minnesota IT Jobs

Every year at MinneBar I do a presentation called, “Managing Your IT Career - (Why do recruiters suck so bad?). This past spring, 8th year doing this, I had an end of the day speaking time and still had a full room with people sitting on the floor and along the wall. I do wonder how many more people would attend a morning session… part of my group:

Minnesota IT Career Advice 

The past weeks I have been getting a higher than usual number of inquiries from tech, data and product professionals, along with those interested in the Minnesota and Midwest startup scene, asking questions about salaries, Minneapolis and Midwest tech jobs, what code schools to choose, etc.

So I am going to do an online chat… a webinar to answer the current most asked questions and ask attendees to send theirs.

Continue reading "Online Chat: Managing Your Tech And Startup Career" »


Webinar: Minnesota IT Jobs, Salary and Recruiting Report - Spring 2017


Minnesota Headhunter, Minneosta IT Jobs 


A frequent question I get locally and nationally is “what’s going on in Minnesota?”.

After all the fall and winter events and conferences and leading into spring it’s time for me to give some clarity… I am putting together a summary of all of the info I have gathered over the past months, add in a bunch of reference points from national IT job and salary surveys and do a webinar.

This is my perspective from attending user groups, working with and recruiting for startups and tech companies, conversations with large companies about their recruiting strategies and speaking at local and national conferences.

When:

  • March 1st, 2017
  • 1 pm CT

Cost:

  • Free

To register click:

Topics:

  • Intro
  • What’s going on in MN
  • Recruiters in demand
  • Job and Skills info
  • IT salary info
  • Recruiting trends
  • Conclusion

Who should attend:

  • Corporate Recruiter or HR
  • Hiring Managers
  • Startup CEO
  • IT Manager, Director or CIO
  • IT professionals
  • (Who am I missing?)

Q&A will be part of the webinar. Please interact with me.

If you have any questions ahead of time send me an email [email protected]


FYI… a few events this spring you may want to attend:

Save the Date:


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Minnesota Headhunter for current blog posts and Minneapolis IT Jobs for searches I am working on.

 

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Minneapolis Recruiter Minneapolis Recruiter Minneapolis Recruiter Minnesota Recruiter

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