“Companies are using flexible talent more – creating opportunities,” says Dice.com, the IT specialty job board. More than 70,000 new tech consulting jobs were created in 2011, and the pace this year is just about the same, with 16,000 new consulting positions coming on-line in the first quarter. While demand for IT professionals in nearly all areas of specialty is strong, pushing up salaries, software developers are doing especially well. Dice says their paychecks are getting fatter at about twice the rate for other specialists. And consultants average about $20,000 more than their full-time, permanent counterparts. New York / New Jersey, and the Washington DC / Baltimore metro areas, and Silicon Valley have the most jobs posted online. Dice.com

Healthcare providers will have to give their patients access to electronic health records (EHRs), and get them to use the digital technology, under government rules announced last month. The so-called Stage 2 rules, if adopted after the comment period, which is currently underway, will require clinics and private practices to also prove at least 10% of their patients are actually accessing healthcare information on EHRs. The details were announced by the government’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as it pushes forward on the broader EHR implementation initiative. Computerworld

Last month, the number of IT jobs grew by 23,000 over January, confirming predictions by TechServe Alliance that demand for tech workers is strong. The Alliance, a collaboration of IT services firms, clients, consultants and suppliers, says “there is clearly ‘war for talent’ underway in the high-demand IT skill sets.”  Since February 2011, IT employment grew by more than 100,000 jobs or 2.5 percent. Talent Alliance

Everyone knows that Silicon Valley is the epicenter of the tech industry. Chances are a good many might know that North Carolina’s Research Triangle, and Rt. 128 outside of Boston are also leading high tech centers. But who would think of Kansas City, Portland, Ore., or America’s own oil capital, Houston, as high tech hotbeds? Dice.com did. The popular site for IT jobs put together a list of the 10 cities where the number of advertised tech job openings has been growing the fastest. A few cities — Boston and Raleigh, N.C. — are to be expected. Some of the others will surprise you. But know this: the areas may be growing in tech job listings, but America’s tech capital, home to more computer industry jobs than any other place in the country, is still the San Francisco Bay area.  Dice

A third of IT leaders expect to increase their permanent and temp staffing this quarter, with 30% of those looking at a 10% or larger jump.

Findings from the quarterly TEKsystems’ Executive Outlook Survey point to a continued strong demand for IT professionals as companies  spend more on infrastructure (44%) and application (40%) services.

Just over half the IT leaders surveyed for the report expect bigger budgets this year, with those in the services, healthcare, and insurance sectors most confidant they’ll be spending more. At the top of the project list for 2012 is mobility, with 54% planning to implement some mobile initiative during the year. More healthcare leaders(76%)  than those in any other sector, have mobile on their list.

Mobile is clearly the focus for IT. Ahead of all other trends, 76% of IT leaders identified mobile (as in smart devices and tablets) as having a “high impact” or an “extremely high impact” on their organization. Cloud computing was a distant second, with 58% of leaders expecting it to have similar impacts.

The biggest challenge to success, say 56% of the IT leaders, is having the necessary staff. An adequate budget, the second biggest challenge, was cited by only 38%, a fact that points to the difficulty in hiring. There, the survey shows, IT leaders report  enterprise and cloud architects are among the hardest people to hire. Not far behind are data/MDM architects and security specialists.

That would explain why 44% of the leaders say enterprise architects and security professionals are going to see salary increases during the year. That’s not to say other professionals won’t. In fact the survey reports that “IT leaders expect salaries to increase for much of their IT staff.” The percentages simply reflect the number certain that those job categories would be getting raises. At the bottom of that list: technical writers (31%).

America’s Best Companies To Work For have never been easy to work for. Everyone wants to work for them.

Google, which garnered the #1 spot on the just released Fortune list of 100 best companies, gets something like 3,000 applications — a day. But in the three months leading up to the release of the list, Google advertised 1,130 openings. Collectively, the top 10 companies on the list only had 2,133 jobs.

Wanted Technologies, a business intelligence company, analyzed those openings and compared this year’s list to last year’s. It found that the top 10 companies on the list had fewer openings posted this year. Of the top 10 most frequently listed openings, all were down in double-digits.

Two of the top 10 categories, however, accounted for 25.3% of the total openings.  Office managers and admin support staff supervisors were the most frequently listed jobs, with 300 openings posted online since late October. Wanted said the number was down 36.4% from last year.

Second in volume were job listings for software engineers. The 240 jobs the companies posted was off by 55.2% from last year. Wanted doesn’t say which of the companies had the most openings in each category, but just on the total numbers Google likely had the most openings for computer professionals and probably for office managers and supervisors as well.

The first thing IT professionals do when considering a job change is to take stock of their skills and goals. Then they hit the job boards. Whether or not that’s a wise decision, it gives them a sense of doing “something.” What attracts them to a job? A clear and realistic view of the opportunity is key for 91% of the respondents to TEKsystems’ quarterly IT Professional Perspectives Survey. 88% say regular feedback during the hiring process is also important, but 68% say getting that feedback is their biggest challenge. BusinessWire

Developers of all stripes are in demand by tech hiring managers, and experienced Java developers are at the top of the list.So says Dice.com, the job board for IT professionals.

The Dice folks surveyed something like 1,200 tech managers and recruiters to compile a list of the job skills most in demand. Developers dominate, claiming five of the top 10 spots.

But for the first time, admins are on the list of must-fill jobs. That sys ops and network admins made the list suggests that companies have finally recognized they’ve stretched their current staff far enough.

Dice says it’s hearing that mobile and .NET developers are getting increasingly hard to find. Everyone, it seems, is looking for mobile developers, while .NET developers are few and far between. Dice.com

Just because you’re a reader of this blog, we have a special gift for you: An extra day next month to catch up on things.

OK, OK. Caught us. It’s leap year, so everyone will get that extra day. But hey, if you’d rather use it for fun, then stop doing stuff that only offers the illusion of working.

You know what we’re talking about. Things like checking your email every time that message icon pops up, or dropping what you’re doing to respond. Or actually reading every article on a Reply All list.

Author, business strategist, and consultant Dorie Clark has five suggestions for becoming more productive this year. These aren’t the usual time management yadda, yadda. None of those “finish one task before going on to another” kind of tips. Though, and here is a brief digression, it’s worthwhile to keep those routine efficiency tips in mind. And to actually practice what the experts preach. For instance:

• Make a daily list of key tasks and check each off when completed.
• Don’t just sort paperwork; handle it, then file it.
• Prioritize tasks. Important things first.

No less an authority on work and gens X & Y than Penelope Trunk says most multitasking reduces productivity. So, to be most productive, don’t multitask.

Now, back to Dorie Clark, whose time suck avoidance list reads like a list of secret sins. There’s the “Reading Annoying Things” ban, she proposes after confessing  to having “a dozen newspaper and magazine subscriptions, the result of alluring specials ($10 for an entire year!) and the compulsion not to miss out on crucial information.”

For your amusement, here’s a time wasting video addressing the very point Clark makes.

Her list (blogged on the Harvard Business Review, no less) provides ammunition to ignore “Mindless Traditions” and to eschew doing “Work That’s Not Worth It.”

Sure, it’s hard to break old habits, which is what makes taking Clark’s suggestion a good workplace resolution.

1,500 consultants ranked Deloitte’s IT consulting group as a best place to work, moving it from third last year to first for 2012. Vault compiled the rankings based on weighting a number of qualities including prestige, firm culture, pay, and work/life balance. Deloitte Consulting LLP earned a weighted average of 7.964. Just behind it was last year’s first place winner, Booz Allen Hamilton with a 7.866 score.

Besides the rankings and scores, Vault also compiles  an abstract of what the survey respondents had to say — good and otherwise — about each of the top 25 companies on the list. See it all here.