Want Atlanta's hottest jobs? Boost your tech skills
Most sought-after tech skills:
Systems engineers
Software architects
Software developers
Source: Technology Association of Georgia
Georgia’s best-paid sectors, on average:
Technology: $82,894
Utilities: $79,664
Professional Services: $76,076
Finance: $75,296
Wholesale trade: $70,356
Manufacturing: $53,820
Transportation: $52,468
Construction: $50,232
Source: Technology Association of Georgia , Bureau of Labor Statistics
Reuben Hilliard didn’t have any trouble landing a good-paying job as a data analyst at a health care provider – even though he is still in school.
After a decade in the workforce, Hilliard, 33, re-enrolled at Kennesaw State University a couple years ago because he had promised his late father he would get a degree. His growing expertise in statistics got him hired even though he is still not quite done with a program that will earn him both bachelors and masters.
“I kind of re-tooled myself and I learned the skills to hit the ground running,” he said.
Hilliard’s experience is emblematic: Many employers are hiring, and the hottest skills are data analysis, health care and tech – or some melding of the three.
Metro Atlanta has added more than 80,000 jobs in the past 12 months. That expansion has reached most parts of the economy, though not in equal measure.
Proportionally, the strongest hiring has been in construction, which grew by about 8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But construction accounts for about 4.3 percent of all jobs. A lot more jobs were added by leisure and hospitality, a sector that didn’t grow quite as fast, but is more than twice the size of construction.
And only a smaller slice of skills get a premium of higher pay in the market.
Many of those are in the tech world – and Atlanta is in the top 10 for growth in information technology, said David Sheehan, Atlanta-based branch manager for Robert Half Technology, a global staffing company.
“In IT, it is very much a candidate’s market right now,” Sheehan said. “It’s been pretty steady. Obviously big data has really come on the last two years or so. Cyber-security also has been up strongly lately.”
Overall, IT salaries have climbed about 5 percent a year the past few years, he said.
First-time jobs are apparently following the same pattern, according to Laura Garcia, the associate director of recruiting at the Emory Career Center.
Emory grads who landed a job reported a median salary of $50,000, but finance and banking jobs paid more: an average of $72,607. And students in IT did even better than that: an average of $88,286, she said.
Tech skills are now in demand across pretty much every sector, said Connie Chiasson, executive vice president of the MDI Group, a staffing company specializing technology. “Any kind of organization is going to need tech people.”
Nearly everyone carries a Net-linked phone. And every high-profile story about hacking and data breaches adds to the urgency for specialists, she said. “Security is becoming a big issue. Especially for mobile devices.”
Another hot tech sector – especially around Atlanta – has been health care.
Anthem, parent company of Blue Cross Blue Shield, recently opened an “innovation center” near Georgia Tech. Most of the 20 or so employees are techies of one kind or another, according to Tom Miller, Anthem senior vice president and chief information officer.
Health IT employs an estimated 16,000 people in Georgia, most in metro Atlanta. “I expect it will grow continually over the next couple years,” Miller said.
Average salaries for IT professionals in health care is about $116,000 a year in the Southeast, according to the Health Information and Management Systems Society.
New employees at Anthem’s center may be paid less than that, but the typical techie in the center makes more than that because their skills are increasingly important, Miller said: “We are a company that is going to grow a lot. Not just because the business is growing, but the IT in this business is changing. The face of technology in health care is being transformed.”
Yet for all the talk of Atlanta’s growth and importance as a tech hub, some techies say they can do better elsewhere.
Ovadia Harary, 22, a recent Emory graduate who trained to be a software engineer, is heading for a job in the New York City area with – yes – a health care startup.
He will write code for the new company’s portal, to be used by doctors and patients.
“I didn’t want to be in a large company, so I limited my search to interesting, small- to medium-sized companies,” he said. “I do have family in the northeast, but I didn’t see anything around Atlanta for me. And New York is up and coming for tech.”
Even if some leave, many techies are doing quite well in Atlanta. But in a regional economy of more than 2.6 million jobs, tech is just a small part. Most job-seekers aren’t techies, which is good because most of the job openings aren’t in technology.
For example, call center company Alorica expects to add 250 employees to the 1,100 it currently employs in Kennesaw, according to Ken Muche, the company’s director of global public relations.
The California-based company runs 70 centers – whose operations now include social media and texting, as well as phones – and it looks for people with competence and enthusiasm, more than the ability to write code. Alorica also hires specialists to do “analytics,” Muche said.
“It’s a real mix,” he said.
