What Are The Hottest Tech Skills Today? Think FastWhat Are The Hottest Tech Skills Today? Think Fast

Employers are seeking and paying premiums for skills that help their companies adapt quickly to fast-changing business needs, according to a study from Foote Partners.

And with many of the in-demand skill sets centering on combinations of specific tech expertise, business knowledge, and industry experience, employers need to rethink their job descriptions and pay policies, says Foote Partners president and chief research officer David Foote.

Rather than boxing-in IT professionals' pay based on narrow job titles, employers are increasingly rewarding IT pros on the specificity of their skills and how those skills fit into the company's business needs. "Job titles don't always match up with what people do on the job," says Foote.

For instance, while customer-facing skills are in heavy demand overall by many companies, premiums are being stuffed into the pay of those professionals with some very specific skills. Applications developers with customer-facing skills are hot in general right now, but especially hot are rapid application developers and extreme programmers who are among those getting the highest premiums—about an extra 16% added to base pay.

The demand for rapid development skills also reflects many companies' intense focus on speed and agility. "You won't lose your job because you're over budget, but you will if you go over time," he says.

Other hot skills include SAP application development, wireless expertise, storage area networking, and RFID. There's also increased demand for "hybrid talent" such as people who have operations experience as well as technology skills.

Companies surveyed by Foote are spending about 8.2% more this year on training and leadership development of their IT staff than they did last year. Developing and training existing staff is often easier and less costly than finding and hiring new talent.

Foote's findings were based on analysis of pay, skills, and spending data from 1,800 U.S. and Canadian employers.

Skills that will be in declining demand over the next two to five years include programming and routine coding, systems testing, application maintenance, technical support, data continuity, and recovery. Those skills are among jobs that are increasingly being offshored.

"Outsourcing and offshoring for many companies has been more of a blessing than a curse," says Foote. That's because as companies have reduced their IT workforces in some areas such as routine coding, new jobs are being created. "They're bringing in workers who have more impact," he says, such as improving customer service or helping to grow the business.

In addition to Foote's findings, astudy released this week by the Society for Information Management also found that speed and agility are among the top 10 worries of CIOs.