Janco has captured IT compensation statistics since 1996 and publishes its IT Salary Survey semiannually. The IT Salary Survey is based on Janco Associates, Inc. IT Professionals compensation database.  Compensation benchmark hiring and salary ranges are established for each position surveyed. In analyzing the study data, the upper and lower quartiles are eliminated to determine benchmark ranges. The benchmark ranges are then used to assess the alignment of a company's actual compensation to the marketplace for each job function. A summary of the most recent salary survey can be downloaded by visiting Janco IT Salary Survey at http://www.e-janco.com/Salary.htm.

In preliminary results for the Janco 2009 Mid Year Salary Survey, Janco has found that fringe benefits like insurance, 401Ks, flexible hours, bonuses and stock options are being reduced by enterprises as they struggle to contain costs.  Janco has tracked this trend for several quarters.  The CEO of Janco, Victor Janulaitis said, "Over the first two quarters there has been a noticeable reduction in costs associated with employees.  Companies of all sizes freezing salaries, laying-off staff, making employees pay a larger portion of their insurance cost, decreasing bonuses, and cutting other benefits."

The 2009 Mid Year IT Salary Survey will be released at the end of June and more information can be gotten at JancoÂ’s websites.

(HP) A significant number of service disruptions are due to poor change processes including flawed impact assessment. The cost to the business of these self inflicted wounds is high. Poorly managed change results in many negative outcomes including:

• poor quality of service
• dissatisfied business customers
• unnecessary rework
• missed deadlines
• higher operating costs
• poor employee morale and infighting
• downtime of business critical services

It is no surprise to anyone associated with IT management that along with the increase in the rate and complexity of change has come a corresponding increase in the interest associated with using a best practice approach to change management. ITIL v3 says that changes should be managed to:

• Optimize risk exposure (supporting the risk profile required by the business)
• Minimize the severity of any impact and disruption
• Be successful at the first attempt
  While many

firms are investing in change management as a best practice, doing it well remains difficult. There are many hurdles that must be overcome to implement a change management process that not only follows a best practice approach but also yields outstanding results. The challenge becomes obvious when you consider that many changes within a large enterprise span multiple geographies, involve multiple teams and organizational units and include infrastructure elements that cross multiple domains—network, servers, storage, and applications.

The keys to sound security are often considered deployment of a sensible security risk analysis approach, compliance with a recognized standard such as ISO17799 or ISO27000 or BS7799, development of comprehensive information security policies and deployment of a detailed security audit program.

But where to start? The answer is easy -  Janco Security Policies and Procedures Template and the Janco Audit Security Program.  Risk analysis is often presented in a confusing and over-complicated manner, ISO 17799 or ISO27000 or BS7799 compliance can seem a daunting task, security policies can be totally ignored in practice, and security audit is sometimes less effective than it should be due to over-stretching of busy audit professionals.

http://www.e-janco.com/SecurityAudit.html is intended to provide a launch pad to help alleviate these difficulties. Janco has an approach that works.

Whether you need a security risk analysis method/product, guidance on how to achieve compliance with ISO 17799, ISO27000, BS7799 or your own IT security policies, or whether you simply wish to increase the productivity of your security audit team, the resources at Janco should help.

The IT Security Manual Template provides all the essential sections of a complete security manual and walks you through the creation of each step. Detailed language addressing more than a dozen security topics is included in a 220 plus page Microsoft Word document, which you can modify as much or as little as you need to fit your business requirements.

Participate in IT Salary Survey and get a free copy of the study when it is released in July. 

The Janco Associates, Inc. salary survey draws on data collected throughout the year by extensive interviews, internet-based survey data, and survey forms completed by businesses throughout the United States and Canada.  The database contains over 50,000 data points for each reporting period.

Are you paying too much or too little to your IT staff? Do you have IT job descriptions? Are you earning what you're worth? Whether employer or employee, it is important to know what other companies are paying in total compensation for a similar position in your area. Learn how your company compares in the area of compensation.

In order to manage IT costs' effectively CIOs need to review their existing IT operations with an eye towards doing more for less.  The first areas to review are:

• Utilization (Equipment and Personnel) - IT utilization typically measures the capacity of the physical hardware that an organization is using to support its business. Generally, the most common metric is server utilization.  Despite only using a portion of the server resources, organizations are still paying for and supporting the entire device. The same is true of personnel.  Charge back systems should be set to cover 100% of the cost of all resources.  If a CIO sees that only 10% of a resource is utilized then that can be a candidate for consolidation.
• End-user support - Enterprises typically have an internal help desk. Generally, this internal help desk is responsible for supporting end users' client devices. When IT budgets get cut, one area that usually comes under investigation is the internal help desk. However, the internal help desk can be essential to providing support for the end users and marinating employee productivity.
• Maintenance and support budget - By far the largest component of the IT operations budget is for external support services. In many cases, organizations are either under or over supporting their IT environments and adding additional costs.

H-1B program is under fire in Washington.  The economy has finally gotten to the point that Congress is listening to the concerns of laid-off technology workers.  U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a congressional committee that ensuring that U.S. workers have jobs is one of her "top obligations," and she said that her agency is stepping up its enforcement of the H-1B program.

Napolitano said that the department has added fraud prevention tactics that were not being used previously in the H-1B program. Those measures include visits to work sites. Napolitano was responding to a question from Senators who have introduced legislation called the H-1B Visa Fraud and Abuse Protections Act (S.887). The reform bill includes a number of restrictions and enforcement provisions, including audits of employers.

Park City, UT - Janco and the IT Productivity Center have just released its May 2009 Browser and Operating System Market Share White Paper. The major findings are that Microsoft's IE browser market share has has fallen to 66.81% versus 73.23% in May 2008 and 76.40% in March 2008; Firefox has maintained its number 2 browser position and is used by almost 19.55% of all users; Google, with its Desktop and Chrome offerings, has just over 5.4% of the market; and acceptance of Vista continues to be below Microsoft's expectation.

Victor Janulaitis, the CEO of Janco said, "The major browser findings of the study are: Microsoft's Internet Explorer's market share has stabilized and GoogleÂ’s Chrome is a non-event." He added, "... IE 8 has been released but its acceptance is slow at best." The White Paper has a detailed historical analysis of browser market share since 1997. The findings are supported by data which is provided both graphically and in spreadsheet format.

On the Operating System front, Microsoft's Vista is installed on just under 1 in 5 desktops (17.34%) after over 30 months since Vista's first release (RC1). Janulaitis added, " Vista proves that large companies like Microsoft can and do make huge blunders in technology. Microsoft can no longer count on moving users to new products like Vista as quickly as they want."

A summary of Janco's white paper can be found on the JancoÂ’s web site (http://www.e-janco.com/browser.php) and the IT Productivity CenterÂ’s web site (http://www.itproductivity.org/browser.php).

CIOs need to hire programmers who know more than one programming language.  Americans have a reputation for only speaking one language. Small surprise, then, that the same is often true for American programmers. Today's computer science graduate often leaves school with a strong knowledge of only one programming language -- typically a major systems language, such as Java or C++ -- and goes on to a career based almost exclusively on that language.

On the surface, this makes sense. C++ and Java are both highly versatile, complex tools. Just learning the syntax of either one is nothing compared to the amount of study it takes to become familiar with the whole ecosystem of associated libraries and frameworks. Not to mention that both languages are widely used; if the CIO does not staff with programmers who know both they cut their enterprisesÂ’ capabilities dramatically.

Best Practices for Screening Resume

• Define job requirements clearly for recruiters and electronic posting - You do not want to waste your time looking at resumes of individuals who are clearly not qualified.  In current job market, some active job applicants apply for anything even when they are not remotely qualified for the position that you are trying to fill.  If a recruiter sends you candidate resumes that fall into this category - warn them and then stop using them if they continue.  A full job description with specific accountabilities, authority, and position requirements should be part of the materials that are used in communicating the needs of your enterprise. "Must have led an ecommerce Internet development team that implement a customer WEB 2.0 application" is much different than "5+ years experience as lead developer."
• Use consistent rules to select and reject resumes - Communicate so that the screeners/recruiters and hiring manager have the same understanding of the job requirements before the screening process starts. For example, screeners/recruiters should review a sample of several real resumes - real time - with the Hiring Manager, who should  defined the "must-haves" and "nice to haves." Why a resume goes in the yes pile, while this similar one goes in the no pile?
• On the first pass spend no more than 20 seconds on any resume - In the current job market, it is typical to get 100 to 200 resumes for a single position.  Given that volume, it will take one to two hours to get through the first pass.  You want to get through all of the resumes that you have and with luck you should be able to find between 10 to 15 individuals that can be phone screened.
• Create a scorecard with the must have requirements - Create simple, 10-question-or-less checklist to help you stack rank your applicants. Define items for the checklist that highlight your requirements for the key experience, skills, and technology. Use this tool in the resume and in the phone screening. For example, "How many years of commercial web ecommerce experience do you have writing HTML and XML?"  or "What specific application development and version control  tools have you used"
• Eliminate resumes that are too long and filled with acronyms and  buzzwords - Many candidates have figured out that if they load up their resumes with more acronyms and buzzwords (i.e. technologies) hoping to win an interview. Rather accept resumes that communicate the hands-on experience using the technologies listed in your job requirements. Focus on resumes that show where and when the technology was used on the job. Keywords that show up in the bullets under job history summaries are better than keywords that show up at the top or bottom of tech resumes in the skills summary section.

Best Practices for Phone Screening

• Before starting see if anyone knows the potential candidate - There are many candidates in the market who have either a great reputation or a poor one. Time is precious and if someone is not "hirable" by your enterprise then do not waste your time.
• Rank the candidates before they are phone screened - Use the scorecard to rank the resumes and any know history about the candidates and then budget your time to spend enough time on a phone screen to find the candidates that are hirable.
• Know what the deal breakers are for the hiring manager - The focus of a phone screen is to weed out the unqualified applicants while selling the enterprise to the top candidates so that you invest time with onsite interviewees who are most likely to get offers. Validate that each candidate you pass on to the interview has the required capabilities, meets the salary and eligibility requirements, and wants to do this type and level of work.
• Experience counts - Focus on the on-the-job skills and job-specific accomplishments. What have they done, in what industry, with which technologies, on what kind of resources and team, over what kind of timeline?
• Motivation and mind set are important - In this economy, there is a greater risk of having candidates who just want or need a job and will say or do anything to get a position. Gain an understanding into what they loved about their current and past jobs and what they hope to find if they join your enterprise.  Ask this before you tell them all about your culture and resources.
• Protect your enterprise reputation - Just because there may be hundreds of applicants for every opening you have, build your reputation as an employer - one candidate at a time. Maybe several years from now you will be interviewing with the canidate or working with them in another compay. Even though you may be in the driver's seat, treat every candidate with respect. Follow the basics: start your phone interviews on time, ask fair, relevant questions, let them ask you a few questions, and always follow up.