By Peggy Albright

It's a tough time to be looking for a job. The global economy remains weak and any potential recovery hasn't translated into meaningful employment opportunities. Available positions are harder to get. More people are vying for open slots, and efficiency minded employers are often seeking more diverse skillsets in new hires. The resume that got you a job a few years ago might not even yield an interview these days.

So where do you look for a job in this environment, and how do you go about it? Recent research from a leading employment firm and observations from some of the country's top headhunters provide some context and tips for how computing professionals can best pursue one of the most challenging job markets in years.

By Peggy Albright

Information technology professionals who want to get in on the ground floor of a new and meaningful industry might be surprised to find some of the most exciting opportunities today in a previously humdrum sector: energy.

The US energy industry, which in large part still operates with technologies built in the 1950s and 60s, is finally entering the digital era. While the need to modernize this aging system to improve efficiencies and reliability has been clear for some time, a convergence of "green" circumstances is forcing change right now in the industry.
 

By Margo McCall

Job prospects are on a lot of minds these days, especially those of college seniors about to enter the workforce.
North American universities last year turned out twice as many computer scientists with doctorates as they did five years ago, but despite the bumper crop, industry and academia had no trouble absorbing them. According to the Computing Research Association's annual Taulbee Survey, US computer science and computer engineering programs awarded 1,775 PhDs between June 2006 and July 2007, up 26 percent from the previous year and double the number awarded in 2002. "It was hard for people with bachelor's degrees to get jobs. They all went to graduate school. Now six years later, they're emerging with PhDs. There's no other explanation for this phenomenon," said Lazowska, the University of Washington's Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering.  

 

Name: Sorel Reisman

Title: Professor, Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences, California State University Fullerton; managing director for the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT); IEEE Computer Society vice president-publications

Academic degree: PhD in computer applications, University of Toronto

Career highlights: Working for IBM, being on the founding board of IT Professional magazine.

New National Science Foundation figures corroborate what other organizations are finding: After several years of lackluster growth, interest in studying science and engineering is experiencing a surge. Enrollment in US science and engineering graduate programs in 2007 recorded its highest year-over-year increase since 2002, double the 1.7 percent increase seen in 2006, according to the NSF’s Division of Science Resources Statistics. Science programs added the most students in absolute numbers, but engineering's 5.9 percent growth was substantially higher than that of science, which grew by 2.4 percent. Enrollment in computer sciences programs, meanwhile, was up 2.7 percent, the first increase since 2002. The proportion of foreign students enrolled in science and engineering graduate programs in 2007 remained below its 2002 high, despite a total year-over-year increase of 4.6 percent. New full-time enrollments of foreign students were up 8.3 percent over 2006. “The numbers indicate the potential strength of the future S&E workforce,” said project officer Julia Oliver, who managed the survey.