As recession forces many tech companies to cut jobs, pockets of the industry are adding workers en masse. Consider Platinum Solutions, a provider of software and IT services to the government. In the past 12 months, Platinum has boosted its workforce by more than half, to about 130 employees, after receiving large multiyear contracts from government agencies, including the Food & Drug Administration. As of mid-August, the company had more than 50 job openings. “We’re recruiting heavily, we have four in-house recruiters working around the clock,” says Platinum Solutions Chief Executive Officer Laila Rossi. And this is to meet demand for ongoing projects, she hastens to add — not jobs borne out of one-time federal stimulus.
Amid the worst recession for tech jobs since the dot-com bubble burst, companies are eagerly adding workers in such fields as cloud computing, computer security, business analytics, and IT services for government and health-care providers. Even some companies hit hard by recession are slowly reopening their doors to new employees amid signs that the tech sector may rebound before other areas of the economy. “We’re hiring people while we can before the economy swings back and the best tech employees will be hard to find,” says Don Vaccaro, CEO of Ticket Software. Vaccarro says the 220-person company is bulking up now in anticipation of demand six months from now.
In fact, two-thirds of senior technology executives recently surveyed by audit, tax, and advisory firm KPMG said they thought their industry would fully recover from the current economic crisis ahead of the overall U.S. economy. That survey, released Aug. 19, found that while 68 percent of those executives said the downturn forced them to reduce staff during the past year, only 14 percent of respondents said they are planning further reductions in 2010. Nearly half expect industry…