Tech Pros Fret over Their Business Skills

A surprising number of tech professionals are insecure about their business skills, concerned that they don't have the necessary career skills to make the leap from the cubicle to a corner office, finds a monthly outlook on the IT job market released April 10 by technology careers site Dice.

Thirty-five percent of IT professionals responded that they feel budget management is their weakest career skill, finds the report, and another 28 percent feel it is their lack of business savvy. Twenty-one percent said their weakest skill is developing a future strategy.

Only 15 percent of IT professionals expressed concern with their customer skills.

New York and New Jersey were two great places to be an IT professional in March, as this region posted the most job openings - more than 10,000 - on Dice's tech employment board.

Washington, D.C., followed close behind in job availabilities, with more than 8,000. The Silicon Valley region came in third in technology employment opportunities with more than 6,000 listings.

Demand for full-time tech professionals outpaced the demand for contract or part-time workers. Job postings requesting full-time technology professionals increased 12.7 percent since the beginning of the year, while demand for contact workers only gained 8.5 percent during the same period.

The database skills most requested of IT hires were Oracle and SQL in March, and the most in-demand programming languages were J2EE/Java and C/C++.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International