2006 has been a relatively buoyant year for marketing recruitment within the ICT sector although at VP and Director level the market is fairly static. Marketing is now seen as a key business driver for many companies in the ICT sector with more senior marketers now achieving CEO status.

Business oriented degrees and all marketing qualifications are now almost a requisite for a career in marketing and from a European perspective there is an ever-increasing demand for marketers with multi-lingual capability.

IT

Disciplines in demand are closely aligned to product and industry marketing with software and services being the primary focus. There is a definite shift away from traditional marketing communications roles with more emphasis being placed on individuals possessing strong campaign management experience where they can demonstrate significant return on investment.

The term “hands on” is seen more and more on job specifications even at the senior end implying that there is a move away from appointing pure strategic marketers. This is primarily due to the fact that matrix and virtual team working have now in many instances replaced large marketing teams. Start-ups also do not have room for heavyweight strategists, preferring instead to recruit proactive, entrepreneurial individuals who enjoy life at the coalface.

The top technology areas that have shown above average marketing recruitment activity encompass Security, Storage, Business Intelligence and Outsourcing.

Telecoms & Media

Disciplines in demand in telecoms and media have varied more widely. Whilst traditional fixed line operators are coming to terms with competition from new VOIP players, mobile service providers continue to consolidate and face the challenges of moving to a retention model rather than acquisition. From a mobile perspective B2C propositions experience, gained whilst managing large customer bases continue to be highly sought after. Product management and marketing skills are still in high demand from both a fixed and mobile perspective, both voice and data. There is a real shortage of middle level (i.e. £40 to £60k) individuals, likely due to the under investment in these types of staff following the dot com crash and post 9/11 economics.

There tends to be no real distinction in requirements between large corporates and start-ups, both are looking for similar abilities and personal characteristics. A marketer with a strong commercial focus in addition to core disciplines is their prime necessity.

Convergence is the most used word currently! We envisage increased demand for top-level marketers in a sector of rapid technological advancement and change, driven increasingly by sophisticated enterprise and consumer customers.