Wanted: Internet Skills

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Wanted: Internet Skills

IS shops have an insatiable demand for networking, Java, and HTML expertise

By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Issue date: Jan. 27, 1997

Corporate America thinks there's gold to be found on the Web. It had better be the mother lode, because qualified employees demand their weight in gold.

"Someone who has a year or two of Web experience with some of the more complex applications is as valuable and as in demand as SAP consultants," says Dave Williams, sales manager of RD Rabb & Co., a national I T job recruiter in West Chester, Pa. While Web experts aren't commanding the $3,000-per- day fees that senior consultants charge large companies implementing SAP's enterprise applications suite, they certainly can name a high price. For example, consultants who have experience linking databases to Web apps command about $100 per hour, according to Susan Hovdesven, branch manager for the New York office of IT placement firm the Registry.

"Web candidates are in the driver's seat when it comes to picking and choosing jobs and salaries," agrees Stephen McMahan, managing director at the Boston office of Source Services Corp., a national IT job placement firm in Dallas.

Web veterans, especially those familiar with communications technology or security, fetch salaries in the low six figures, he says. For rank beginners--those who have just a year or two of work experience--the pay is far lower. According to McMahan, annual salaries start at $50,000 to $75,000 for people who have set up a Web site or are flue nt in HTML. Still, $50,000 isn't bad for someone who's just a year out of college.

Virtual Reality
Virtually every company is looking for people with Web skills, since nearly every large and medium-sized company is working on home pages, says McMahan. Approximately 10% to 15% of the openings his office received in 1996 were related to the Web. That's a relatively small number, but it's well above the 1995 figure of less than 5%. McMahan expects requests in 1997 to continue growing.

The figures are much larger in major job markets. More than 50% of the Registry's New York placements are Web related. Initially, says Hovdesven, those people went to independent Web-development shops that were working for large media and financial services companies. Now, those companies are developing intranet applications on their own, and they're looking for staff.

Nationally, Web recruiting is just as intense. A survey of 100 readers of InformationWeek in December found a dearth of people with ap propriate skills. Two-thirds of those surveyed said there's a shortage of people with Web skills. Thirty-five percent said that the shortage was severe. Forty-four percent were able to fill less than half of their Web positions last year.

Infrastructure specialists have the Web-related skills most in demand, if a scan of the want ads is any indication. A Web search of the help-wanted advertisements in 11 major metropolitan newspapers one Sunday in mid-December found 195 listings for TCP/IP network administrators. The second most popular Web-related skill was Java programmer, with 169 positions in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Seattle, and Washington. But hot IS skills like C++ programming, along with traditional Cobol experience, are in even greater demand due to the rush to fix the year 2000 problem ( see chart below).

To find the talent needed to create and run Web applications, companies mus t look in several places. That includes tapping staff resources from within their own IS departments and adding whatever training may be needed to get those people competent for projects; recruiting talent from the outside; or hiring Web consultants to help get things going. In most cases, IS organizations will likely need to combine two or more of these resources.

Many companies are content with a Web site full of static pages. Anyone can develop such a site, but as the marketing and customer services departments want to upgrade their Web applications into complex, interactive activities, such as electronic commerce, the combination of skills required to create and manage the Web sites also becomes more demanding. Amateurs hired just to get something up on the Web can't cut it when it comes to sophisticated, multimedia sites that can handle transactions.

It's difficult for people with non-technical backgrounds to evolve their repertoires to include the complete set of skills, veteran Web builders say . Better to look for your Webmaster and other members of the Web corps among those with a deep background in applications development or other data-center skills. "It's much easier for someone with a database background to be trained in HTML and Web-browser technology than it is for someone who knows mainly HTML to learn about databases," says Mellanie King, president of Knowledgies, an intranet, Internet, and groupware consulting firm in Plano, Texas. Systems administrators make good internal candidates for Webmaster positions, particularly if they have spent time working with Unix or Windows NT systems, she adds.

Masters Of The Web
When Web sites become complex--and they will--Webmasters will need two sets of skills: Web smarts and another talent like database expertise. "Unless you are creating a simple, flat, Web site, you need to have someone who understands client-server architectures," says Chris Pizey, Webmaster at Universal Press Syndicate, a Kansas City, Mo., provider of editorial co ntent, including syndicated columns and comics, to newspapers. Such experience is necessary when integrating Web applications with, say, the corporate database.

"For electronic-commerce types of activities, you need people who understand larger-scale systems and how they can interface with all sorts of data repositories, as well as an understanding of transaction processing," agrees Matthew Cutler, president of the Webmasters' Guild in Cambridge, Mass., a 1,500-member organization that promotes Internet technology.

Database administrators are also vital candidates for Web development efforts "because they understand how to make relevant data accessible to Web users," says King. "You have to know how to take database information that, in the past, might have been provided to users through the generation of a report and now bring that up into a Web screen," she says. That includes a thorough understanding of legacy applications.

But beware of such disdain: "Many database administrators think of Webm asters' jobs as simple," warns Jim Merasca, director of marketing for Context, a San Francisco provider of technical training. A better alternative: Ask your database administrator to play a supporting instead of leading role in developing the Web site.

Similarly, Internet support teams require staffers with a range of skills. If a Web site will give users inside or outside the company access to database information, the need for security skills on the team grows. An understanding of firewalls and data encryption are also needed on an Internet team, points out RD Rabb's Williams.

Companies developing electronic-commerce applications need someone with a security mentality--"a Webmaster who is concerned with more than what a credit card looks like on a screen," says Williams. "There is a need for firewall managers who have an understanding of enterprise-computing environments."

That means more than a passing acquaintance with networking standards, protocols, products, and jargon. "There needs to be an understanding of TCP/ IP, Novell, Banyan Vines, and a variety of networking protocols," says Cutler. IT shops can tap into the skills of their network administrators to supplement Web efforts, he says.

One of the rarest technical skills is knowledge and experience with Java, the Internet programming language launched by Sun Microsystems about a year ago. Almost 40% of large organizations polled last year by Sentry Research Services of Westboro, Mass., were in-terested in the language. Providing Java training to in-house C++ programmers can be less expensive than participating in a salary-bidding war to find outside talent. "If you know C++, you can pretty easily learn Java. But if all you know is HTML, it's harder to learn Java," says Context's Merasca.

One drawback to developing IT staff internally is that once they're trained they become targets for outside recruiters. The loss of one recently trained Java programmer may mean several thousands of dollars of classes and travel expenses down the d rain.

But if you think that by hiring from the outside you will avoid the need for training, think again. "New people still need to be educated about the business and the company," says Knowledgies' King. "That can be very time-consuming."

Snob Factor
In addition, some recruits can create more challenges to the organization. "There can be resentment among some existing workers, and often these new people enter the job with a very arrogant attitude," says one consultant. "They know they're hot on the market, and it often shows."

Outside consulting firms can provide needed skills, but can also be costly, since independents demand higher fees than salaries paid to staffers. And once the Web applications are running, you'll still need a Webmaster to help maintain and evolve the site internally.

While the demand for Web skills is not expected to diminish in the near future, the good news is that these skills will eventually be easier to find. "A lot of these skills, particularly HTML, a re more mainstream than people had originally thought," says Pizey. "I'm sure that will continue to be the case."

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