It should be easier to find an IT job nowadays, according to several recent reports on employment trends. But it may be getting harder to recruit people to fill job openings.

"The market is picking up," said Nate Viall, president of Nate Viall and Associates, a Des Moines, Iowa-based company that recruits IT workers for jobs involving IBM's System i server line. Viall said he can sense a change in hiring activity, but he added that some of IT staffers he has encountered are reluctant to switch jobs.

"People are cautious," said Viall. "They either got burned themselves at the beginning of the decade or know three friends that did."

On Monday, The Conference Board Inc. said that about 4.37 million online job advertisements were placed in April, a 24% increase from the same month a year ago (download PDF). Of that total, approximately 323,000 ads were in the "computer and mathematical" category, which is defined  as including such occupations as computer programmer and database administrator. The online ads placed in that category increased about 15% from the year-earlier month, the Conference Board reported.

Gad Levanon, an economist at the New York-based executive association and research organization, said companies typically do more advertising in the spring, particularly to attract the attention of students who are graduating from college. But the data showing year-over-year increases could be signaling an improvement in the job market, he added.

The increase in online advertising may also be an indication of a tight labor supply, such that companies "need to advertise more aggressively because the number of people looking for jobs is smaller," Levanon said.

Another indication of increased hiring came in the latest annual report on high-tech employment trends issued by the AeA, a Washington-based trade group that formerly was known as the American Electronics Association. The AeA's 148-page report, which was released April 24, said that high-tech jobs in the U.S. totaled 5.8 million last year -- up by 3%, or 146,600 jobs. In 2005, tech employment grew by only about 1%, according to the AeA.

Last December, more than 1,400 CIOs showed that 16% planned to hire additional IT staffers during this year's first quarter, while 2% planned to make cutbacks. The net of 14% was the highest that the Menlo Park, Calif.-based recruiting firm had seen since the fourth quarter of 2001.

The firm reported in March that 14% of the respondents to its latest survey said they planned to add IT workers during the current quarter, with 2% again planning reductions. "It's harder to fill jobs because the demand is so great," said Brian Gabrielson, a vice president at Robert Half Technology.

CEO and chief research officer at IT workforce market research firm FooteParnells in New Canaan, Conn., described the job market as "robust." But he also said that the computer and mathematical occupations category of the BLS is largely focused on infrastructure jobs and doesn't fully reflect current trends in IT hiring, such as the need for people who have SAP or .Net skills.

Business analysts and enterprise architects are also in demand, according to Foote. "Nobody can find enough architects," he said.

Many companies are getting very specific about the workers they want, said Foote. For instance, a company may want someone who has experience on a specific SAP module or with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library. Other examples he cited include information security administrators with forensics skills, or storage administrators with experiencing in storage-area networking.

One thing employers aren't paying for is IT certifications, Foote said. He added that companies in many cases "are looking at people with industry and customer experience" and who also have some technology skills.

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