Time To Freshen Up That Resume?

In March we got a forecast from Gartner that BI-related employment will triple at large firms by 2008. Now in May we get more good news on the business intelligence job front, this time from several experts who spoke with Susana Schwartz of Intelligence Enterprise. Even as jobs become harder to find in some areas of IT, BI hiring is on an upswing, sources say.

"Despite price erosion in hourly consulting rates in many pockets of technology, BI and data warehousing are areas where the rates are maintained and are actually inching up," says Charlie Jones, VP of operations and process for Yoh Company, an IT contracting and technical services firm.

The reason, according to Jones and others, is that companies are trying to do more with fewer IT resources. Line managers and business users in finance, accounting, human resources and other business areas need access to ERP and CRM system data. They're getting it through BI.

So what departments and industries are hiring the most business intelligence pros? Finance, marketing, forecasting and sales are the business units most aggressively hiring, while financial and consumer services companies are the industries seeing the most expansion. Across the board, though, it is, as Schwartz says, "A good time to be in business intelligence."