Couple those demands with overall market expansion, and you have a booming sector for IT professionals. Zimble says he looks for IT workers who can help build those internal efficiencies. We're not competing only against health care providers, but against the whole IT industry. Hedeman serves as a liaison between IT and human resources. IT needs solid professionals who can join various platforms and systems together into a seamless whole, Hedeman says.
Some positions demand industry experience.
Those include folks who have worked with vendor Shared Medical Systems' software. Others require proven technical experience, such as linking a mainframe billing system with a midrange Unix-based pharmacy system, Hedeman says. And though new projects continue in the face of year 2000, the millennium bug is provoking a careful evaluation of which systems to pursue now and which to put off until later. While the federal government has downsized overall, it's looking to IT to enable it to carry on business with fewer people. So most federal agencies have contracted out much of their analysis, development and maintenance work.