Stories about: RHI Consulting

The market for CIOs isn't what it used to be. "Times are poor, and the market is kind of soft," notes Rick Schoenhals, senior director for IT for the National Football League's Denver Broncos. The temptation is great to jump at any decent-sounding offer. Stop. Not every job offer thrown your way should be caught. How can a CIO know which offers are worth serious consideration and which should be given a pass? Here are 10 points to consider when analyzing an offer:

In today's job market, everyone wants to stand out from the crowd, and obtaining a technical certification might seem like a great way to show off your skills. But is it worth the investment of at least several months and hundreds, possibly thousands, of dollars?

After Bruce Lobree, an information security engineer and a 20-year IT veteran, lost his job in October, he decided to work for contracting firms such as RHI Consulting in Menlo Park, Calif., while waiting out the recession. Since then, Lobree has met client after client who wants a jack-of-all-trades-someone who can administer any brand and version of firewall and intrusion detection, is network-savvy, can code and is versed in new technologies like XML, .Net and wireless.

"Diversify." That's James McKnight's premier piece of advice to the IT unemployed. Laid off from his year-old job as an IT contractor in late 2000 as a direct result of the AOL Time Warner Inc. merger, it took McKnight, 31, nine months to land his current position. He is now manager of systems integration and development at the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, an Alexandria, Va.-based designer and distributor of educational training materials. He got the job after answering an ad in The Washington Post.

Those who took advantage of the hot economy of the 1990s to job-hop may now find themselves first on the layoff list and with fewer prospects for future employment as long as the current economic downturn lasts. At least that's what some observers of the IT job market are saying.

The days of ever-fatter paychecks for IT experts are over, according to a new study. U.S. starting salaries in the industry are expected to increase on average by just 0.1 percent in 2002, compared to the 8.4 percent rise forecast this time last year, said RHI Consulting in a statement Thursday.

US CIOs expect a slowdown in IT hiring in the first quarter, according to a national poll of more than 1,400 CIOs by Menlo Park, Calif.-based RHI Consulting Inc. Despite the 11 percent net increase in hiring that's expected for the quarter, the figures are still four percentage points below the prior quarter's forecast and the lowest increase in the survey's seven-year history.

Senior technology officers are under pressure to improve their communication and business skills as their role in guiding corporate strategy increases.

A survey by RHI Consulting has found that employee turnover at US companies rose two per cent last year from the levels of 1999. At the same time, salaries for IT professionals rose by 6.6 per cent, with the greatest increase in networking and Internet related areas.

Pure-play Internet companies are finding it tougher in a number of areas since April's market crash, especially when it comes to hiring and keeping good staff. Claire Tristram reports on why

Few traditional brick-and-mortar companies still deny that the Internet will change the way they do business, and the smart ones have figured out that they need people with both business and technical skills to survive the change. So why do so many companies still exhibit the behavior of pre-e-business when it comes to IT management?