Internet and IT Job Descriptions

Internet and Information Technology
Position Descriptions HandiGuide®

Each Job Description a separate
WORD File

HandiGuide - The IT HR Resource - PDF

231 Job Descriptions and Organization Charts

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The Internet and IT Position Descriptions HandiGuide® was completed in 2010 and is over 650 pages; which includes sample organization charts, a job progression matrix, and 231 Internet and IT job descriptions.   The book also addresses Fair Labor Standards, the ADA, and is in a new easier to read format.  To see the what has changed go to our version history.

Also included with the HandiGuide are tools to help you expand, evaluate and define your enterprise's unique additional required. Those tools include:

  • Job Evaluation Questionnaire
  • Position Description Questionnaire
  • Job Progression Matrix (Job Family Classifications)
  • Sexual Harassment and other key employment issues
  • Best Practices for resume screening
  • Best Practices for phone screeing

The 231 positions include all of the functions within the IT group.  The Job Descriptions have been updated to be compliant with PCI-DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, CobiT, and the ITIL standards.  The job descriptions are all structured to focus on "Best Practices" as defined by the IT Productivity Center to meet the requirements of World Class Enterprises. They are ready to use and easily modified to meet your enterprise's unique requirements.

The 231 positions include all of the functions within the IT group.  Click on the each group below to see a pop up window with the list of jobs included.

You can purchase this book as a PDF Book, Word Book or as individual word files for each Job Description (in both WORD 2003 .doc and WORD 2007 .docx formats) which makes for easier modification.  We have also combined the both book formats with the individual word files for each job descriptions to give you the best of both worlds.

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Internet and IT Jobs Latest News



The making of an effective CIO

CIOs need to position themselves with their enterprises in order to be successful.  They need to not only know where their clients want them to go but also to communicate how they are achieving those objectives.  The objectives they need to meet and the metrics that can be used are:

·         Understand requirements and objectives – Frequency and number of requirements and objectives discussed with multiple people at customer organization.

·         Establish company credibility and interest - Company viewed as a leader with known corporate, technical and project management teams in addition to solid past performance and experience.

·         Preview preliminary solution with customer - Well-developed solution with features linked to objectives and approach vetted with customer to get buy-in and solution validation.

·         Achieve acceptance of win strategy (technical, management, past performance, teaming, price) accepted by customer - Win strategy well established, previewed and accepted by customer.

·         Influence the request for proposals - Procurement strategy, proposal instructions, and evaluation criteria favorable.

 

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Employ America Act would limit H-1B Visas

The proposed Employ America Act has H-1B hiring restrictions that would bar any firm that lays off 50 or more workers from hiring guest workers. This legislation could potentially affect a broad swath of tech firms that have laid-off large numbers of workers but continue hiring.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics high-tech industry overall has laid off more than 345,000 workers (see job descriptions) since August 2008, according to the two senators in the unveiling of what they called the Employ America Act.

The proposers of this legislation said that with the unemployment rate over 10%, companies that undertake mass layoffs shouldn't need to hire foreign guest workers when there are plenty of qualified Americans looking for jobs.

In February, these same legislators moved to prohibit any financial services firm that received money from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) from hiring H-1B holders. That blanket restriction on hiring wasn't adopted, but Congress did agree to automatically make any firm receiving TARP funds "H-1B dependent."

A company is considered H-1B dependent if more than 15% of their workers are on the H-1B visa, but the TARP restriction applies regardless of the percent of visa holders on the payroll. Companies that are H-1B dependent must, among the things, make good faith efforts to hire U.S. workers first.

With the Senate expected to receive an immigration overhaul bill early next year, the prospects for any H-1B-related legislation is uncertain and probably unlikely to pass.

Proposed earlier the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2009 would set a number of restrictions on H-1B use, including the so-called 50-50 provision that would prohibit any firm with more than 50 workers from having more than half workforce on H-1B or L-1 visas. That provision is aimed at Indian outsourcing firms. The legislation also sets higher salary standards for visa workers as well as anti-fraud provisions.

Other proposed legislation that would to increase the H-1B cap and that would exempt foreign graduates of U.S. Ph.D. programs from counting toward a cap on H-1B visas.

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IT Professionals are satisfied in their jobs but are looking

The vast majority of IT professionals are satisfied at work with 40 percent are satisfied with their jobs. Indeed, Janco finds that there is a direct correlation between job satisfaction and the salary. Since more money equals greater job satisfaction, one could infer that for some, money does buy happiness.

However, more than 60% of IT Professionals feel they should be making more money.
Though the majority of IT professionals seem to be satisfied with their current jobs, it is not preventing almost 40% of them to start looking for new opportunities. Nearly  1 in 5 are either actively looking or will be looking within the next three months.

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Could proposed fed policy help IT Hiring

Several Republican senators and procurement experts have voiced their disagreement with a policy Obama administration officials are considering that would give a leg up to contractors who pay their employees more, according to a letter and comments at a hearing.

"We are concerned that the imposition of these requirements, during a time of significant economic turmoil in the private sector and tight federal budgets, could have serious, negative consequences, especially for our nation's small businesses," five senators wrote in a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Today, an Obama administration official said the president hasn't issued any policy regarding a contracting preference. Nevertheless, experts inside and outside of government have offered suggestions to the administration on improving contracting, as the president pledged to do in his reform memo.

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Army to reduce outsourcing

(Washington Technology) Army Secretary John McHugh told a Senate committee today that the Army plans to give outsourced jobs that are associated with inherently governmental functions to its civilian employees.

The Army intends to insource 7,162 positions this fiscal year, McHugh said in testimony before the Armed Services Committee. From fiscal 2011 to 2015, the service aims to take back 11,084 positions and give them to civilian employees. Of those, nearly 3,988 are for acquisition-related work, he said.

"Civilians are assuming increased responsibilities within the Army," he said.

In fiscal 2009, the Army saved significant resources by bringing back in house more than 900 "core governmental functions," McHugh added.

Core governmental functions, sometimes called critical functions, are jobs that are very close to inherently governmental functions, or work that only a government employee can do. Outsourcing core jobs can force the government to rely on the private sector's knowledge, and contractors potentially can unduly influence the government, officials say.

"The Army is recouping intellectual capital by insourcing former contracted positions,"McHugh said.

The Army identified these positions to insource in its ongoing contractor inventory review process.

Like McHugh, other military officers and Defense Department officials have announced plans in their fiscal 2011 budget proposals to take away numerous jobs from contractors, in areas such as acquisition and procurement.

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Baby boomers face new challenges in the job market

According to the Congressional Budget OfficeOver the past 15 months, the stock market has wiped out $2 trillion in Americans' retirement savings .  With the downturn in the stock market and the laying off of so many IT professionals, there now is a situation where "baby boomer" are competing for the same jobs as the "millennials" are just getting out of college. 

IT Hiring Kit

CIOs now have to decide whom to hire by sorting through a maze of competing technical expertise, business acumen, cultural preferences, and career expectations.

That is not always easy. Millennials have a tendency to eat, sleep and breathe Web 2.0 technologies, and the value of that may not be immediately clear to a traditional CIO.

Boomers have expertise in more traditional technologies such as IT infrastructure and operating systems. That's good news for large enterprises, which are always on the lookout for IT professionals with the skills needed to support its largely mainframe-based package-tracking system.  That type of expertise can limit boomers' prospects elsewhere.

This eagerness to learn gives many millennials a leg up on the competition. There is a managerial flip side to consider. Young IT workers who are bold enough to take on new technologies are also more likely to be impatient with the constraints of traditional workplaces.

Businesses that expect all employees to march to the beat of the same drummer, however, may have a tough time reining in millennials' more spirited work ethic and thirst for experimentation.

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Recession impacts IT entry positions the hardest

Take a look at the numbers defining the scope of the recession. When you break down the unemployment rate by age group, here's how it pans out: 16.7 percent for everyone aged 15 to 24, 8.2 percent for everyone aged 25 to 44, and 6.3 percent for everyone aged 45 and older. So, the older you are, the less likely you are to be unemployed.

Federal records show that the older you are, the more money you're likely to be making: The median weekly salary for workers in the 16-to-24 age bracket is about 41 percent less than what someone aged 25 to 44 makes -- and they're making 6 percent less than the folks in the 55-and-up group.

When you look at the numbers in the Janco 2010 salary survey, staff-level salaries start at  a median of $40,671 and climb higher as the jobs proceed up the (very short) ladder.

And, unfair as this seems, the more you're making, the less likely you are to be unemployed. According to a new study at Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, the unemployment rate for people making between $39,000 and $50,000 is 9 percent, and it only drops more as your income climbs: If you're making $79,100 or more, only 3.2 percent to 5 percent of the people in your income bracket have lost their jobs.

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Raises too be meager for IT according to study

At less than 2 percent, raises in technology salaries will be small in 2010, according to a report by Computer Economics. Developers are at the top of both the raise list and the salary list, especially for highly complex application development work. Managers and senior executives will have to get to the back of the line.

IT workers are due to receive a median 1.8 percent bump in salary in 2010 - below the 2.7 percent rate of inflation and the lowest rate in the last five years - according to data from a 2010 salary report from Computer Economics. A similar report from technology job board Dice, in January, showed that in 2009 tech salaries rose a measly 1 percent.

"By historical standards, the 1.8 percent median pay raise is meager," CE wrote on its Website. "But in light of still-high unemployment rates, the finding indicates IT executives are responding to the need to retain their best workers and boost damaged morale."

By comparison, salary raises for tech workers in 2007 were 3.8 percent, CE data showed. The effects of the recession on technology salaries will continue to be felt for some time.

"With persistent unemployment, organizations will be able to hire new workers at rates lower than those who were laid off during the recession. This should place downward pressure on U.S. national median salary levels over the coming months," CE said.

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High tech jobs continue to suffer according to government report

Silicon Valley's decline has been charted over an eight-year period between 2000 and 2008 in which venture capital investment meant big gains for technology workers' wages in the beginning, but those IT wages have since diminished. The recovery will be slow and gradual, according to government economists. On the whole, high-tech industries in Silicon Valley declined sharply in employment and wages from 2000 to 2004 but increased gradually in both respects from 2004 to 2008.

From 2000, when high-tech employment and wages peaked, to 2008, Silicon Valley's hightech industries lost more than 108,400 jobs, or 19.9 percent of their employment.8 High-tech industries in the rest of the Nation lost 6.2 percent of employment. In addition, real wages fell by 13.5 percent among Silicon Valley's high-tech industries, while high-tech wages grew by 1.3 percent in the rest of the Nation.

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Cyber criminals are hiring

The people who brought the world malicious software that steals credit card numbers from your personal computer and empties bank ATMs of their cash are hiring, and they're advertising online.

What they are seeking is people who are willing to take malicious code they provide and link it to something that people will click on -- like a picture of Britney Spears getting out of her car. These people then collect a fee for each 1,000 times that the malware is downloaded.

One site pays $180 for each 1,000 times that malware is downloaded onto a U.S. computer but less for computers elsewhere. It refuses to pay for any downloads to Russian computers, causing Stevens and others to strongly suspect that it, like other similar sites, are based in Russia.

"We pay your wages via the following systems: Fethard, WebMoney, Wire, e-gold, Western Union (WU), MoneyGram, Anelik and ePassporte, and PayPal," according to the website.

It is impossible to know how many computers were infected via these companies but put the number in the millions.

It's hard to separate theft arising from these web sites from other sorts of Internet crime but the FBI tallied $264 million in losses from Internet crime reported by individuals in 2008. The report for 2009 has yet to be released.

The cybercrime problem has become worse over the past three years as consumers and companies alike increasingly expose valuable data such as business plans, credit card numbers, banking information and Social Security numbers on the Internet.

"There are hundreds of billions of dollars that traverse the Internet," the assistant director for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, told Reuters late last year. "It's (the problem) absolutely gotten bigger, yes, absolutely."

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Outsourcing impacts on certain IT jobs

A  survey by a buisess shcool shows that 40% of high-technology firms offshore work, and about 30% of all firms that offshore send IT work overseas. Among the IT workers surveyed, about 8% report ever having experienced offshoring-related job displacement, double the average offshoring-related displacement rate across all other worker types, but still implying an annual offshoring-related  displacement rate of only about 1-2% per year.

The study also showed that workers in jobs that require face-to-face contact or physical presence are at smaller risk of offshoring-related job displacement, implying that interpersonal skills are becoming relatively more valuable among  IT workers.  Other  findings imply that IT workers in functions that involve cross-divisional  communication or hands-on support are less likely to be affected by  offshoring.

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Leadership drives success and hiring

Leadership is an important element of organizational success. So, it is not surprising that many companies look for ways to extend the benefits of leadership development to more employees. Technology-based learning approaches such as online courses, books and video programs can be used effectively to develop employees at all levels.

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Internet  Position Descriptions HandiGuide®

231 Job Descriptions and Organization Charts

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The job descriptions contained within the Internet and Information Technology Position Descriptions HandiGuide® are all in a standard format and are available as in PDF, WORD 2003, and WORD 2007 formats.  All of the job descriptions were reviewed and updated to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and the ISO 27000 security standard.  The latest version of the HandiGuide was completed in 2010 and is over 650 pages in length.  The Internet and IT Position Descriptions HandiGuide includes sample organization charts, a job progression matrix, and the 231 job descriptions.  

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Many IT Professional Unhappy with Compensation

National averages for technology salaries are pretty stagnant, a recent Dice report shows, and there are high levels of job dissatisfaction. However, there is more growth in wages regionally, with high technology demand in Washington, New York, Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas.

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Salaries for U.S. technology professionals rose a measly 1 percent in 2009 to an average of $78,845, well below the annual inflation rate of 2.7 percent for the year, according to a recent survey by technology job board Dice. Furthermore, the lack of wage growth fills technology professionals with a high level of job dissatisfaction.

Nearly half (47 percent) of the 16,908 online participants polled between August and December said their current employers are doing "nothing to keep them motivated," while only 19 percent were being offered challenging work. Responses about bonuses for 2009 were uninspiring too: Only 24 percent of technology professionals polled received bonuses last year.

With job and salary dissatisfaction at its highest levels in years, technology professionals should be willing to go fight for career advancement. HR and technology managers can win by identifying new motivators to keep staff on board, including compensation, training and career growth.

Of those tech workers who did not receive bonuses, 42 percent responded that they were displeased with their compensation. Of those who did receive bonuses in 2009, only 27 percent were displeased.

The new war for technology talent is coming and the battle is retention.

When you look at salary averages regionally in the Dice survey, you begin to see some ripples of growth. Washington had an average salary of $89,014, up 4 percent from the previous year, with technology jobs in defense and for the federal government. Silicon Valley, despite a tough year of layoffs, is still showing an average salary of $96,299 while New York showed a 1.5 percent increase with an average of $86,710. Texas was faring better too, with Dallas seeing a 2 percent gain and Austin having higher average paychecks.

So who is drawing the best salaries in IT right now? Think application developers and SOA (service-oriented architecture) specialists.

Continuing to lead the pack in top paid skills is ABAP - Advanced Business Application Programming ($115,916), followed by SOA - Service Oriented Architecture ($107,827), and ETL - Extract Transform and Load ($105,844)," the survey said. These frontrunners were followed by a few newcomers and some solid technology job stalwarts:

Applications server skills JBoss and WebLogic joined the $100,000 salary ranks with annual salaries topping $101,869 and $100,313, respectively. Individuals with Solaris ($96,672) and AIX ($95,464) skills were the highest-paid [of those with] operating system skills. The [areas with the] highest paid titles include IT Management ($114,874), Information Architecture ($105,247), Project Manager ($103,437), Software Engineer ($91,342) and Database Administrator ($91,283).

 


 
 

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Job cuts continue - Ericsson trims 1,500 jobs

IT Salary SurveyEricsson, a wireless equipment maker, is cutting 1,500 jobs from among its 80,000 global employees. The company reported on Friday a huge downturn in fourth quarter and full-year 2009 earnings. For the quarter ended December, Ericsson saw its net earnings plummet 92 percent to 314 million million kronor ($43.4 million dollars), compared with the year-ago quarter. Sales dropped 13 percent to 58.3 billion kronor from the year-ago quarter.

For all of 2009, Ericsson's earnings were down 67 percent to 3.7 billion kronor ($512 million). Annual sales survived, though, falling only 1 percent to 206.5 billion kronor over the previous year.

The 1,500 job cuts are in addition to 5,000 layoffs Ericsson announced about a year ago after a 31 percent drop in 2008 fourth-quarter earnings, bringing the total to 6,500. After layoffs and budget cuts are completed around the second quarter of this year, the company is looking to save around 15 billion to 16 billion kronor ($2.1 billion to $2.2 billion) annually.

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Work at home option improves productivity

Work at home is a boon to employee productivity. Some of the factors driving this are:

  • Reducing support costs - if an employee is not in the office then administrative costs and expenses are reduced.

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  • Increasing workforce productivity - if an employee does not have to commute to the office and can work at home or go directly to a customer location they are more productive.
  • Attracting and retaining talent - working at home is a benefit that does not cost much but has a very high perceived value
  • Increasing organizational agility - the organization is more flexible and adaptive to market needs
  • Reducing the business risk of disruption from terrorism and natural disasters - with diverse locations work at home provides an infrastructure that can survive most disasters
  • Reducing traffic congestion, air pollution and environmental impact more generally - it is environmentally friendly and more "green"
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Is Job Demand Increasing

IT Hiring KitThe second half of 2009 saw growth in online job vacancies. Health care and technology jobs led the pack in job opportunities, but the opportunity numbers for 2009 are still down significantly from 2008 and 2007.

Recent job vacancy data for the month of December pegs computer and math openings up 23,000 from November for a total of 467,000 nationally, according to a report from The Conference Board.

Overall, the annual average for job openings in 2009 is down compared with the previous two years with 3,357,000, which is 1.1 million below 4,481,000 for 2008 and 1.3 million below the 2007 average.

For all occupations, job vacancies were up 255,000 in December. The good news is the averages of job openings in the second half of 2009 were positive. Job demand was up on average by 58,000, compared with negative 91,000 in the first half of the year.

"Employers' modest increase in demand for labor in the second half of 2009 is a nice way to end what has been a very challenging year, said  a senior economist at The Conference Board, in a report. "The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is still very high, but the recent six months indicate that things are slowly moving in the right direction. The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is about 12 million, with 4.5 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy."

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