Certification - December 2008 - (Page 26) More than half of you have pursued higher education of some sort. About a third of you have a bachelor’s degree and nearly a quarter have a master’s degree. Almost 10 percent of you have received technical training, but no degree, and nearly 12 percent have a high school diploma. Survey respondents also are overwhelmingly global. Respondents logged on to fill out the survey from more than 150 countries — from Australia and Azerbaijan to Venezuela and Vietnam. About 94 percent of respondents work full time. Only 2 percent work part time, while 2 percent are unemployed and about 2 percent are students. The majority of you, 61 percent, work an average of 40-50 hours per week. Survey results also indicate that job hopping is fairly common in IT these days. Nearly 60 percent of respondents have been with their current employers for less than four years; 17.6 percent have been with their employer for less than a year; 12.4 percent for one year; 17.7 percent for two years; and 12.1 percent for three years. Less than 11 percent have been with their current employers for more than 10 years. According to the survey, 41.4 percent expect to change jobs in the coming year, while 58.6 plan to stay put. The size of the companies that respondents work for is evenly spread. While nearly 12 percent of respondents said they work for companies with fewer than 50 employees, the same percentage work for companies with more than 100,000 employees. More than 55 percent of you work for companies with fewer than 5,000 employees, and about 32 percent work for companies with between 5,000 and 100,000 employees. FIGURE 3: MEAN NUMBER OF CERTS PER PROFESSIONAL 10 9 8 7 7.2% 0.8% 1.9% 2.6% 4.4% 7.9% 10.7% 16.4% Number of Certs Held 6 5 4 3 2 1 23.9% 21.4% 2.8% 0 10 20 30 Percentage of Professionals None In following previous Salary Survey trends, the majority of respondents this year live outside the United States, but the largest single group remains the U.S., with just more than 39 percent of the responses — or 9,145 respondents out of the 23,188 total who indicated the country where they currently live. The Indian contingent grew this year, with 14.6 percent of responses, compared with last year’s 11.6 percent. The United Kingdom held steady with 4.8 percent of responses, up from 4.4 in 2007, and Canada came in at No. 4 with 4 percent, the same as last year. Among North American respondents the highest percentage (at 8.1 percent) are in California, followed by Texas with 7.4 percent. The number of respondents from Virginia grew this year, from 4.8 in 2007 to 6.2 in 2008, moving the state up to No. 3. Ontario, Canada, dropped one spot from last year with 5.1 percent of responses, followed by Florida with 4.6 percent and Illinois with 4.1 percent. The majority of respondents have been in the IT industry for less than 10 years, with 24.3 percent having less than five years’ experience and 27.2 percent having five to nine years’ experience. About 12 percent have been in IT for more than 20 years. According to the survey, almost 95 percent of you are certified in a technical field, with many of you receiving your first certification in the past three years. About 15 percent of you received your first cert in 2008, while 18 percent received your first cert in 2007, and 11 percent in 2006. The number of respondents who added one new certification in the past year ticked slightly upward this year, to 38 percent from 36.5 percent in 2007. There was a corresponding drop in the number of respondents who did not add a cert to their portfolio this year, from 36.4 percent in 2007 to 34 percent in 2008. There was also a noticeable drop in the number of people who added more than two certifications, from 27.1 percent last year to 11.4 percent this year. – Mike Prokopeak, mikep@certmag.com 26 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE December 2008
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