Despite the deterioration of the high-tech job market, networking professionals with training on cutting-edge software and hardware are in high demand, experts say.
“You continually need people to work on the hardware, and also people to maintain the software end of it and add new users, to configure the network for optimal performance,” said Ray Shepard, regional vice president in Dallas for Robert Half International, parent company of RHI Consulting.
“So there are all different types of networking professionals, and it is hot.”
An RHI survey released last month found that networking is the fastest-growing specialty in information technology departments, with 18 percent of chief information officers nationwide saying they’re adding networking experts faster than any other type of worker.
“What we see from a networking perspective is the push of e-commerce,” said David Mantica, worldwide director of networking products for corporate IT training company Global Knowledge Network Inc.
During the boom years, companies looking to expand their e-commerce offerings were often willing to splurge on more bandwidth to power their Web sites, the equivalent of building wider roads rather than improving traffic flow.
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Now companies want to make their existing networks more efficient, and that requires hiring and training networking pros, Mantica and others said.
Gordon Johnson, regional marketing manager for Global Knowledge, said that once companies learn how beneficial networking training and certification can be, they’re eager to enroll their employees.
“In this $2,500 class, if they learn how to keep the network up one minute more per week than they did before, that’s $50,000 that you’d have saved” over a year, Johnson said. “It’s very easy for them to understand the cost implications of not training.”
Job seekers are also recognizing the value of network training because the demand from companies often pushes their salaries significantly higher.
“We had a student in here about six months ago who went through one of the certification programs,” said Ted Prescott, manager of the Global Knowledge training center in Las Colinas, Texas. “He was very pleased once he passed all the tests and completed the course because he got a $10,000 raise when he got back to work.”
Lofty salary levels are not out of reach for network administrators willing to branch into more specialized areas such as network security, Mantica said.
“That could raise their salary to almost $60,000, $70,000 or $80,000 a year depending on skill sets,” he said.
Whether it’s a Microsoft SQL server platform, Oracle’s network software or any variety of network hardware components, networking professionals need to constantly update their skills, Robert Half’s Shepard said. “There is a good supply of networking professionals in the marketplace,” he said.
“So it’s important for networking people who are looking for a job to continue to keep their skills current.”