There are certain areas of IT recruiting where demand far exceeds supply, such as cloud computing and related areas like Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and big data. Moving to cloud-based platforms saves companies money and offers very real benefits in the workplace by increasing access time and facilitating the process of turning raw information into consumable analytics. As a result, candidates with experience transitioning company data onto the cloud and working within the cloud are in high demand. SaaS alone is responsible, IBM says, for 21% of the software used by companies as of 2014. 

The rise of big data has increased the demand for candidates with expertise in specialized tools such as Python or Hadoop which take a long time to develop competency in, causing recruiters to find themselves in the middle of an “arms race” for big data-savvy IT employees. Universities aren’t turning out enough big data experts to meet industry demand, and skilled candidates are highly sought after by both their current employers and potential rivals.

For recruiters, this means paying attention to both emerging trends in the marketplace (such as the increased use of user-friendly analytics platforms such as Qlikview and Tableau) and closely tracking influential industry events such as Strata and IEEE Cloud so they can stay abreast of pressing IT recruitment needs.