In a recent survey by research firm Gartner, 81 percent of respondents said they expect their IT teams to expand in the second half of the year.

The research and consulting firm Gartner has conducted a survey of the CIOs of several large companies and is now sharing the results. In it, 81 percent of those surveyed saw growth in their IT teams in the second half of this year.

Despite AI

This high figure is despite frequent fears that IT jobs are disappearing due to the rapid growth of AI. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently warned about it. According to Gartner analyst José Ramirez, the impact of AI will remain neutral for years to come. He attributes this view to the learning process and implementation that artificial intelligence companies have yet to go through.

Today, IT teams do more than half of the technical work in companies. The proportion of AI and AR in the companies surveyed is currently almost nine percent.

The IT crowd

According to Ramirez, it makes sense that many companies expect to expand their IT teams. He saw many initiatives in the field of digitization in the last two years that were not implemented quickly enough to meet the needs of the companies.

It is therefore not surprising that three quarters of the CIOs surveyed want to expand their teams by at least a tenth this year.

The right person for the job

In the current economic climate, hiring a lot of new people is not always easy, CIOs sometimes have to be creative. Some apply more relaxed conditions of geographic location or role interpretation when recruiting. Hiring new technicians and developing talent in the workplace has proven to be a recipe for success for other companies.

Ramirez emphasizes that it is important to think about the right role for new people. According to him, IT recruitment requires planning and insight into a company’s specific needs. Almost half of the CIOs surveyed want to solve this problem in part through training programs and the training of employees in other roles. Automating the workflow where possible to gain more time for IT is also a possible strategy.

The three most in-demand talents are: cybersecurity, working with cloud platforms, and understanding the customer and user experience of a given company.

Other factors that influence a candidate’s profile include things like communication and a good culture fit. The four IT trends that Gartner outlined at its own conference last month will no doubt play a role in companies’ search for tech talent as well.