Hi. I'm Devon Zopfi, a partner in Vaco Los Angeles. I head our IT and technology consultancy and there is a lot going on in this sector hiring-wise. As the economy wavers with reversal and recovery, we asked leading IT professionals among our client base for their perspective on the current state of the market. What are the prospects and requirements for IT professionals and the companies that hire them? Here's what our IT experts had to say.

Q. What's your view of the market from an IT perspective?
Within the current market, businesses must do more with less and employees must increase productivity. This is where good businesses turn to their IT departments and partners for productivity solutions. What's changed significantly is that businesses are looking for less upfront investment and much shorter-term ROI.

Q. What are the principal skills IT professionals need today?
While everyone surveyed described a number of specific technical skills that IT professionals need, most first talked about more general capabilities, such as the ability to visualize a complete solution, true project management skills, and the ability to communicate with both technical and non-technical people and learn new technologies quickly. Companies have business problems they need to solve and technology is only valuable if it solves the business problem.

From a pure technology aspect, respondents suggested that IT people need to be well-versed in prevailing frameworks. It's not enough to have "macro" skills like Java, Java Enterprise, C# or PHP. They need deep knowledge of frameworks such as Spring, Zend Framework, .NET, Hadoop and GWT, and specialized, open-source applications based on Linux, Apache and MySQL. Having skills in developing applications for tablets and smart phones is also valuable.

Q. What are some of the challenges facing IT today?
The economy has created pent-up demand for many deferred projects. Companies are starting to address these demands, but finding good people is very hard and it takes time to get them up to speed. Budget restrictions have created a "just in time" hiring environment and employers are trying to find people ready to hit the ground running, which makes hiring even harder.

Popular consumer technologies such as smart phones, tablets and social media are being driven into organizations before IT professionals can fully address their impact on security, productivity and costs. Each new technology plus a host of government regulations presents a security and privacy challenge.

Additionally, one respondent who works extensively with software as a service (SaaS), cited the fact that services no longer work in isolation and are often themselves dependent on third-party services or APIs, adding a layer of complexity that may impact delivery times.

Conclusion
The bottom line is that the future for technology professionals is extremely bright IF they prepare themselves with the newest tech skills and big picture business understanding. When hiring, companies must look not only for those with specific technology experience, but more importantly, seek candidates with the ability to learn quickly, understand business issues and fit into the company culture.