Since around the beginning of Q2 ‘15 I have been a part of many conversations with recruiters in town, startup and Fortune 500, about some trends we have been seeing including:

- Generally companies are in another hiring spree

- Companies seem to be loosening up their job requirements

- There seems to be a small inflow of IT pros from the west coast

This week from Dice.com:

Pop quiz: What’s the fastest-growing state for technology jobs?

You might be tempted to say California or New York, or even North Carolina. But according to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s actually Minnesota, which saw the size of its tech workforce jump 8.36 percent over the past six months, to 37,600 workers.

Is Your State Losing Tech Jobs?

Let’s be clear… this is a percentage growth number NOT a total number of jobs created. Clearly other states would be doing better.

This is an important number as it shows the Minnesota tech community continues to grow. Some would have you believe that everyone is leaving for the West Coast.

It’s just not true.

Back in May (2015) I gave my 6^th presentation at Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis St Paul:

Get Recruited: Finding Your Next Job Through Social Media

When Mykl Roventine asked me to speak again this year I paused thinking… does anybody really want to hear from me again?

Mykl was right (Mykl warming up the group):

The answer was yes. We had 100+ at the event.

And we had a good time.

Here are a couple of blog posts recapping the event with some takeaways:

Short and simple… a number of Minnesota IT pros are looking for career information, job search advice, how to ask for a raise in salary or rates, etc.

Here are 2 videos (2013 and 2014 sessions at MinneBar. 2015 has not been posted yet) and the recent Minnesota IT Jobs Report.

NOTE: that these are very casual conversations. Some inappropriate language is used.

And there is A LOT of really useful content.

If you have any questions send me an email:

[email protected]

And check out what I am recruiting for:

Minnesota IT Jobs

MinneBar 2013:

MinneBar 2014:

The most frequently asked questions I receive are some variations of:

What’s going on with Minnesota IT Jobs?

What’s the going salary/rate for a…

“War for Talent” real or not?

How in demand are my skills?

Why can’t we find who we are looking for?

To give some clarity about “what’s going in Minnesota” around this time of year (after all the spring events and conferences) I put 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 put it online.

The 2015 version below is 32 minutes in length with 95 slides…. it moves pretty quick:

• Intro
• What’s going on in MN
• Recruiting & Retention
• Job and Skills in demand
• Salary info
• Conclusion

If you are a startup CEO, in HR or a corporate recruiter, tech manager or CIO, coordinate a tech group or are an IT professional (did I leave anyone out?) and have questions, thoughts or comments, or want a copy of the slide deck send me an email:

[email protected]

What did I miss?

I am going to do a series of blog posts expanding on some of the topics covered and can easily add in something you may be curious about.

 

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

 

Stay in touch with me by clicking:

Over the next couple of weeks I am going to be giving a few presentations at the University of Minnesota about job search, networking and how work… how we do it, when and where is changing.

Part of the presentation is what employers are looking for now and how that may change over the next few years. And in part how these jobs, the skills needed for them, may change.

In doing the research I’ll be posting some info here on the blog.

There are some obvious trends with “Top Jobs in the U.S.” surveys… I.T. and health care dominate most of the “top jobs” because of demand and salary. Next comes some marketing and sales. That’s a not surprise as companies are hyper focused on growing revenue. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) are also highly ranked.

Note that the surveys use different data for their rankings but generally come to the same results.

Leading up to and following my Personal Branding Balancing Act: A Look Behind The Curtain at Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis St Paul I had a number of inquiries about salaries in the Social Media space.

While well versed on Minnesota IT salaries I only had estimates on Social Media jobs.

Thankfully it turns out I was in the ballpark.

CIO.com has data from PayScale and posted it here with 10 Top Jobs by Salary for Social Media Pros.

Videos from MinneBar 9 are posted including my “Managing Your IT Career v6 - (Why do recruiters suck so bad?)”.

We had a fun conversation and I only had one slide with a few bullet points I wanted to talk about:

• I have an affliction
• Why do recruiters suck
• Hot IT skills
• Jobs scene
• Economy
• Negotiate $5 an hour ($10K a year)
• LinkedIn – Friend and Foe
• No Ninjas

Besides my points we covered other topics including:

Conputerworld has released it’s 100 Best Places To Work In IT and once again 3 Minnesota companies make the list.

And once again it is the same 3 companies: General Mills, Medtronic and Securian Financial Group.

How they made the list:

Whether I am talking with a Recruiter or HR pro, IT developer or CIO the most frequently asked question is:

What are the hot skills?

My Recruiter and HR friends are usually asking so they can figure out if they suck at recruiting or if the demand/competition is as intense as they think.

Developers are asking to know if they should be raising their rates/salaries and/or where the market is going with technology.

With the annual spring 2014 tech, recruiter and HR conferences over and A LOT of “War for Talent” and “Skills Shortages” conversations over the past weeks and months I decided this is a good time to sit down and put together a “what’s going on”  and "ewhat's next" with Minnesota IT jobs, salaries and recruiting.

This is my perspective from working with and recruiting for startups and tech companies and conversations with large companies about their recruiting strategies.

This gives me a unique view of the tech community.

I put together a summary of all of that info, added in a bunch of reference points from national IT job and salary surveys and put it on YouTube.

If you want a copy of the slide deck send me an email:

[email protected]

Here is the agenda I used:

• Intro
• Upcoming events
• What’s going on in MN
• Recruiters in demand
• Job and Skills info
• Salary info
• Recruiting
• Conclusion

If you are a startup CEO, in HR or a corporate recruiter, tech manager or CIO, coordinate a tech group or are an IT professional (did I leave anyone out?) and have questions, thoughts or comments send me an email.

This is the fun stuff for me… my version of being a nerd:

 

Click Minnesota Headhunter for most recent blog posts.

Stay in touch with me by clicking:

A few weeks ago I posted Minnesota Recruiter Contract Rates Spring 2014 and received a number of email from search firm owners and recruiters wondering about salary and bonus plans.

I had some basic information and it turns out… my numbers were high. At least when compared to the Bullhorn Money Talks: The 2014 Compensation Report (free - registration required).

Maybe my Minnesota colleagues make more… or maybe they are fudging, I don’t know. A little bit of both is my guess.

There is a bunch of good information that search firm owners, search firm recruiters and sales pros will want to see including average salaries by:

• Size of firm

• Industry recruited

• Temp vs contract vs contingent vs retained

Here is the Average Compensation By Role for all respondents (other numbers are higher):

Business Insider used the Fortune 500 and info from Payscale to create 50 Best Employers In America.

Of those 50… 4 are Minnesota Companies (19 are on the Fortune 500):

#30 Xcel Energy

Headquartered in Minneapolis, this electricity and gas company has 12,000 employees.

Employees report high rates of work-schedule flexibility (85%) and job satisfaction (79%).

Median pay is $80,600 after five years and high compared to industry peers.

#31 St Jude Medical

Headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., this medical-device company has 16,000 employees. It jumped seven places since last year's ranking.

CareerCast has ranked 200 jobs from best to worst for 2014 based on Environment (emotional and physical), Income (growth potential), Outlook (employment growth and unemployment) and Stress.

Not surprising… STEM jobs rank high.

Note: Recruiter is #78

Here is what they came up with:

2014 Top 10 Jobs:

1 Mathematician

2 University Professor (Tenured)

3 Statistician

4 Actuary

5 Audiologist

6 Dental Hygienist

7 Software Engineer

As recruiting gets more and more competitive in Minneapolis the number of inquiries I am receiving that sound like:

Hey Paul, you know any available IT contract recruiters?

How much is a contract recruiter going to cost me?

Do I know any available IT contract recruiters?

No. They are all working.

How much?

That depends.

I asked a bunch of friends what they are seeing for rates and it mostly jived with what I have been seeing.

I also sent an email to Adam Sprecher, Managing Director at SALO. Adam is my “go to guy” when I am looking for trends, news, salaries and in general “what is going on” in Minneapolis kind of stuff.

What I sent him is in plain text and his reply in bold:

Careerbuilder has their Q4 2013 U.S. Job Forecast (link to their PDF) focusing on full-time, permanent jobs.

Industries hiring more than the national average:

• 36% Information Technology
• 32% Financial Services
• 30% Manufacturing

That IT leads on the survey should be no surprise to anyone.

More highlights from the survey:

Q3 2013 full time, permanent hiring:

• 28% added (32% 2012)
• 11% decreased (12% 2012)
• 60% made no change
• 1% were unsure (or what I like to call clueless)

Q4 2013