Good news for technology professionals in Canada – the Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Forecast and Local Trend Report for Canada shows that 12 percent of Canadian Chief Information Officers (CIOs) surveyed recently plan to expand their IT teams in the first half of 2014. This is up 4 points as compared to projections from the previous six-month period (June-December 2013).

Another 74 percent plan to hire only for open IT roles, 9 percent plan to put hiring plans on hold, and 2 percent expect to reduce their IT staff in the first six months of the year.

“The new year is bringing with it a sense of optimism when it comes to IT hiring with more CIOs planning to add more staff to their IT departments than the last six-month period,” says Megan Slabinski, Canadian president of Robert Half Technology. “In addition, more respondents are confident in their companies’ prospects for growth in the first six months of 2014.”

But, there are some recruiting challenges. In terms of recruiting, 42 percent of Canadian CIOs said it’s somewhat or very challenging to find skilled IT professionals today, up 7 points from the last six-month period. It is most challenging to find skilled talent in the functional areas of networking (15 percent), applications development (9 percent) and database management (7 percent).

And the most in-demand skillset? Sixty-four percent of Canadian technology executives surveyed said that Windows administration is among the skill sets in greatest demand within their IT departments. Network administration and desktop support followed, with 59 percent and 55 percent of the response, respectively.

Infinium Systems is an award-winning web and mobile app development company based in Vancouver, BC. We create high performance web and mobile technologies for organizations that are making life better.