ACM CareerNews for Tuesday, May 6, 2025

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Volume 21, Issue 9, May 6, 2025

9 IT Skills Where Expertise Pays the Most
CIO.com, April 25

Despite layoffs in the tech industry, there are 9 tech skills that continue to demand a salary premium from employers. At the top of the list, of course, is artificial intelligence, which remains a skill very much in demand by employers. While the average annual salary for tech professionals inside the tech industry is $114,861, that salary can be much higher if you are a highly-trained tech professional with skills in areas such as AI or cloud computing.

Artificial Intelligence tops the list as the skill that can earn you the highest pay bump, earning tech professionals nearly an 18% premium over other tech skills. As one of the most sought-after skills on the market right now, organizations everywhere are eager to embrace AI as a business tool. AI skills broadly include programming languages, database modeling, data analysis and visualization, machine learning (ML), statistics, natural language processing (NLP), generative AI, and AI ethics. It is a wide-ranging skillset and the needs of each company will vary depending on their business goals.

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Two-Thirds of Jobs Will Be Impacted by AI
Computerworld, April 28

AI is either taking over routine tasks typically performed by younger employees or requiring them to learn how to use the technology to be more effective in their jobs. Nearly four in 10 Americans, for instance, believe generative AII could diminish the number of available jobs as it advances. And the World Economic Forum found that close to half (44%) of worker skills will be disrupted in the next five years, while 40% of tasks will be affected by the use of generative AI tools and the large language models (LLMs) that underpin them.

According to a report from Goldman Sachs, AI could impact up to 300 million full-time jobs worldwide with significant effects in advanced economies like the United States and Europe. The report projected that up to 18% of work worldwide could be automated. This helps to explain why the share of software development job postings has been in a downward trend. As the number of postings decrease, employers may heighten their requirements as they have a larger pool of applicants to choose from. In April of 2022, 3.2% of software development postings advertised entry-level jobs, compared to 2.1% in 2023, 1.5% in 2024 and 1.2% in 2025. At the same time, the share of U.S. job postings mentioning generative AI or related terms has skyrocketed over the past year, up 170% from January 2024 to January 2025. That said, those postings represent only 2.6% of overall job postings globally.

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Crafting Resumes and Cover Letters That Beat AI Screeners
Dice Insights, April 30

Increasingly, job applications are being screened by AI-powered software platforms that are trained to look for specific types of candidates. These tracking and screening systems are the initial eyes that scan your documents, filtering and ranking candidates before a human recruiter even takes a look. Thus, in order to improve your candidacy, you need to understand how these systems work and then tailor your application accordingly.

Any applicant tracking system (ATS) typically performs several key functions. They start by extracting information from your resume and cover letter and populating specific fields in a database. Then, they compare the keywords in your application to those in the job description. Candidates with a higher density of relevant keywords are often ranked more favorably. Once candidates are ranked, the tracking systems enable recruiters to filter candidates based on specific criteria, such as skills, experience level, education, and location. They also facilitate scoring candidates based on how well their qualifications align with the requirements of the job. Understanding these functions is the first step towards crafting applications that not only look good to human eyes but are also easily digestible and favorably ranked by AI.

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STEM careers at the intersection of science, technology and healthcare are becoming increasingly popular. If you are a student, early-career professional or established tech veteran, there are certain topics in the healthcare sector that you should be keeping an eye on, to ensure your career is moving with the times. These topics include robotics, remote medicine, and recent changes in healthcare regulation.

The days of robotics being crude or clunky are long behind us, as some have been built to have even greater dexterity than that of a qualified surgeon, making precision-based research and treatment a whole new ball game. Professionals who want to be on the cutting edge of innovation in the future health space should consider developing skills that would enable them to work in the area of robotics, whether that is in exoskeletons and prosthetics, AI technologies, surgery aids or cybersecurity. As with most STEM careers, the opportunities to branch out, collaborate and learn new skills are many.

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Companies Tend to Hire Based on Vibes Not Skills
HR Dive, April 29

Despite a recent emphasis on skills-based hiring, organizations are hiring candidates they deem to be the most likable, and not necessarily the candidates whose skills and experience best match the job requirements. In fact, according to a recent study, candidates who received an offer were 12 times more likely to be described as having a great personality than those who were rejected. Too many hiring teams rely on vibes, gut instincts or informal cues to capture what happened in an interview.

In general, candidates who received offers were far more likely to be described using feedback related to their personality. They were five times more likely to be described as friendly and four times more likely to be described as having great energy, according to the analysis of more than 10,000 interview assessments. Men and women were described with distinctly different personality language as well. Women were described as bubbly 25 times more and pleasant 11 times more than men. In contrast, men were described as level-headed 7.5 times more and confident 7 times more than women. Although candidates rarely receive feedback about their interview performance, those who do tend to perform better, the report found. Candidates with offers also were more likely to receive feedback.

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Emotional Intelligence: The Secret to Advancing in Your IT Career
Spiceworks, April 30

When it comes to advancing your tech career, emotional intelligence is a factor that is often overlooked. Emotional intelligence is crucial to understanding the real needs of your colleagues and ensuring you provide them with the support that helps them, and your company, achieve their goals. No matter how good your tech skills are, they can not replace the human factor, especially for roles that require some degree of management oversight.

Given the advances in AI, machines are likely to surpass humans in processing, remembering, and synthesizing information. To remain relevant, humans must excel at critical thinking, innovative thinking, creativity, and high emotional engagement. These are skills that complement technology or that technology cannot yet replicate. As a result, emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills are now essential for thriving in tech and business, not just technical know-how. This perspective is echoed by leadership experts, who argue that emotional intelligence is now absolutely indispensable for leadership.

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This One CV Mistake Made Me Invisible to Hiring Algorithms
Hackernoon, May 1

If you are sending out hundreds of job applications and getting no reply, you might need to rethink your process. Even if you are satisfied with the content of your CV, there are often ways to tweak it to make it truly great. Some of these changes involve subtle design elements. Other changes require you to re-do your CV from scratch, in order to highlight key achievements or showcase your overall impact to an organization.

You might not realize it, but the styling of your resume could be a disaster for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). If you try too hard to make your resume stand out, without using any template, ATS software may not be able to read it properly. To the machine, your CV will be practically invisible. Also, you might be wasting valuable space on your resume with a text block profile at the top. Instead of showcasing achievements and experience, a generic paragraph of text will simply take up space. It will do nothing to grab attention or get you interviews. A CV is not a portfolio or a biography, it is a tool. If it is not getting you interviews, it is not working.

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How to Preserve New-Hire Enthusiasm Beyond the First Few Weeks
Fast Company, April 29

New hires tend to be creative and motivated, and can often offer a fresh dose of optimism to their organizations. Yet, studies show that, in a matter of weeks, that initial enthusiasm plunges by an average of 22%. The innovation, creativity, and extra effort that comes with new-hire enthusiasm are a strategic advantage for any organization. So it is up to both employers and new employees to preserve that new-hire enthusiasm as long as possible.

Too often, new teammates find out how an organization works only after it is too late. As a result, the motivation to drive results is quickly outweighed by the fear of reputational risk or political consequence. As a result, effective onboarding must go beyond role-specific content. Organizational context is what gives new teammates the foundation to dive in effectively. During the onboarding process, organizations should provide clues about how different teams typically work together, or if there are any cultural norms around offering feedback. It is also important to know if the decision-making hierarchy is fluid or more rigid, as well as what metrics are most important to the organization.

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The Outlook for Programmers
Communications of the ACM, April 22

The competition for IT jobs is on the rise, and that includes entry-level jobs for new graduates. In some cases, a single job posting at a popular tech company can attract tens of thousands of candidates. One reason for this is that computer science majors are also competing for software jobs with people who minored in engineering disciplines, increasing the competition even further. There are also fewer overall tech jobs. As a result, even if you have a computer science degree at graduation, you may not necessarily have a job waiting for you.

Hiring professionals and technology consultants say the landscape for IT jobs is undergoing a major shift, due in large part to over-hiring during the pandemic. Another factor is the intense interest in deploying AI to automate processes. The IT job market over the past two years has been relatively flat. After the rush to fill IT positions during the pandemic, it is really hard for CIOs to justify salaries over $100,000. In an overall cooling job market, the tech sector cut a total of 65,863 jobs for the year. AI appears to be one of the culprits. Companies are increasingly exploring and implementing AI tools to see what is possible. These technologies are proving capable of handling tasks traditionally performed by computer programmers, from coding to more complex functions, often enhancing or even replacing human effort.

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As Government Outsources More IT, Highly Skilled In-House Technologists Are More Essential
Communications of the ACM, May 1

The U.S. federal government currently spends twice as much on contractors as on employees. Private contractors underlie nearly everything the government does, from renewing passports to monitoring outbreaks. In order to outsource this IT work, however, there needs to be a substantial reservoir of in-house talent, especially when it comes to project management. These in-house technologists are responsible for shaping and creating open source tools and standards for government, as well as advising partner agencies on building better, more flexible systems at lower cost.

In-house technologists shape expectations around private contracts, troubleshoot and propose alternatives when things break, and save time through myriad improvisations. They can also help when it comes to procurement and vendor management at the local, state, and federal levels. As a result, the culling of technical expertise today will further diminish the capacity of the federal government to effectively leverage private vendors. State governments that have previously slashed their in-house technical capacity offer us a warning. They serve as reminders that we need more, not fewer, technologists at all levels of government to ensure high-quality, cost-effective programs. Despite their best efforts, agencies that lack in-house technical expertise often conflict with basic aspects of managing outsourced digital services, especially given potentially misaligned long-term incentives between agencies and vendors. The big takeaway is that governments need more tech capacity to be smart buyers and managers of the services they purchase.

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