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I speak often with recruiters, headhunters, CIOs and corporate hiring managers about the types of IT/business skills that are in top demand across different regions and industries. For at least the past 18 months, ‘SAP’ has been the top response echoed by hiring managers. Demand for other skills has remained steady, including:
-Help desk (contrary to conventional wisdom, these jobs haven’t completely been offshored)
- .Net and J2ee developers
-Data management (as senior management demands dashboards and other tools to quickly assess business conditions and identify market opportunities)
-Network/security skills
There are also pockets of demand for people with quality management experience (i.e. ITIL, Six Sigma) and for certain types of Oracle and J.D. Edwards specialists, especially in certain geographies. But the big single category that keeps popping up is for SAP experts.
There was strong demand for SAP skills at the beginning of the decade, too, as many organizations were headlong into implementing SAP R/3 ERP suites. But there are some glaring differences between what headhunters were looking for then versus now.
Back then, demand was such that CIOs were largely satisfied to find anyone who had at least some background working in SAP or had been involved with R/3 implementation projects. Bonafide project experience was a big draw.
Since then, the search criteria has become considerably more discrete. Hiring managers now detail their requirements: i.e. Seeking experienced SAP BW (Business Warehouse) Data Extraction Consultant with at least three-to-five years experience in the pharmaceutical industry.
Yesterday, SAP and LinkedIn announced that they are connecting their respective communities (LinkedIn and SAP Community Network) in order to provide additional social and professional networking opportunities for both sets of members. The SAP Community Bio application, which allows members to link their LinkedIn and SAP Community Network profiles, is the first offering that’s materialized from a partnership that was announced between the two companies in Oct. 2008 after SAP Ventures, a division of SAP AG, invested in LinkedIn.
The idea is for SAP professionals to be able to highlight and market their skills and experience across their profiles while providing recruiting managers with another resource for locating tough-to-find SAP specialists. The use of social networking tools like LinkedIn and Facebook is hardly new as a recruiting technique. But with SAP professionals in such high demand, uniting two major channels like this makes a lot of sense.
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