1/28/2004 -- According to recent survey data from information technology staffing firm Robert Half Technology, IT professionals with Cisco certifications are among the most in-demand workers in IT.

As each fiscal quarter draws to a close, Robert Half surveys approximately 1,400 chief information officers (CIOs) – drawn from a random sample of U.S. companies with 100 or more employees -- about their hiring plans for the upcoming quarter.

Among other questions, the IT staffing firm traditionally asks CIOs to identify the specific skill sets that are most in demand in their enterprise IT departments.

In the most recent survey, conducted late last year, 38 percent of CIOs cited Cisco network administration as a high-demand specialty, third overall behind Microsoft Windows administrators (82 percent) and Microsoft SQL Server administrators (56 percent). In the previous quarter, 29 percent of CIOs cited Cisco network administration as a high-demand specialty, once again third behind Windows and SQL Server administration.

There are also signs that IT organizations are aggressively hiring networking professionals of all types. While 18 percent of CIOs said that application development was the fastest growing job category in their organization, another 13 percent cited networking. Not bad for a job sector – network and LAN administration -- that suffered comparatively heavy losses in 2001 and 2002.

All in all, more CIOs than not anticipate increasing their level of IT spending in Q1 2004, such that Robert Half projects a net 3 percent increase in IT spending. The IT staffing firm projected a net 5 percent increase in Q4 2003.

CIOs in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors are most bullish about expanding their staff levels in Q1 2004. Overall, 19 percent of technology executives expect to add personnel, while 4 percent anticipate staff reductions.

Robert Half says that the West-South-Central region of the U.S. should outpace all other regions in hiring activity during the first quarter, with 13 percent of CIOs from this region planning to add jobs, with just three percent anticipating cutbacks. Another hiring hot spot is the East-South-Central U.S., where 10 percent of CIOs anticipate adding jobs and only three percent expect reductions. -Stephen Swoyer