As the IT sector approaches two years of rising recruitment levels, specialist IT recruitment website CWJobs.co.uk and JobAdsWatch.co.uk reveal trends over the previous quarter and opportunities for jobseekers moving forward.

April 2011 marks the 7th consecutive quarter that the IT industry has seen a marked increase in demand for IT personnel. Opportunities arose for contract IT workers during the previous quarter with an 11% increase in the number of job postings, compared to a 6% increase in permanent job postings.

As predicted from the Q4 2010 results, project development process Agile is fast becoming one of the most sought after skills with vacancies up by 48%. Software developers are dominating the market making up almost 40% of all IT jobs advertised, followed by design and project managers who make up 20%. Developers’ pay rates have also increased by 3% in the last year, however general salary rates have increased by just 0.9% when compared with the rates seen a year ago.