10 Top Career Stories of 2014

CIOs had an eye-opening year in 2014: Faced with an increasingly competitive talent market, many realized they’d need to improve their IT hiring strategies and focus on retention to stay competitive. The lack of diversity and the scarcity of women in IT drew well-deserved attention. And many IT leaders began to realize just how important social media and mobile technology are to their organization’s recruiting strategy. Here are the 10 most-read leadership, executive and c-suite-focused career stories of 2014.

1) Seven Leadership Tips for Female Executives

Female executives are unfairly held to a different standard than men in the workplace and are judged not only on their competence, skills and experience but on their appearance and even their speech patterns. Here, four female IT executives weigh in on how to address and overcome these challenges.

2) Six Hot New IT Roles for 2015

The pace of change in IT has always been brisk, but technology advances such as virtualization, the cloud, service management and a focus on information management and collaboration have forced businesses into a dead sprint to keep up. And as technology changes, so do the skills, knowledge and job roles needed to design, build, implement and manage these cutting-edge technologies. The majority of IT organizations aren’t prepared for the battle, even as the war for talent rages on. Here are six hot new IT roles organizations will need, and advice on how to fill them.

3) Six IT Workforce Predictions for 2015

2015 promises to be a banner year for IT workers as the unemployment rate continues to plummet, salaries increase and organizations double down on retention and engagement strategies. CIO.com asked experts to predict the biggest trends, technology and strategies that will make an impact on hiring and recruiting in 2015.

4) Three Ways to Use Social Media to Recruit Better Talent

A whopping 93 percent of the 1,855 recruiting pros surveyed in Jobvite’s 2014 Social Recruiting Survey use or plan to use social media in their recruiting efforts.

The reason why is simple and powerful. According to respondents, leveraging social media improves candidate quality by 44 percent over those using only “traditional” recruiting techniques like phone screenings and filtering resumes based solely on skills and experience. Here are three ways to leverage social media effectively in your recruiting efforts.

5) Four Ways Building a Better Brand Attracts Great Talent

Without a positive brand as an employer, you’ll be hard-pressed to attract and retain the quality talent your business needs to stay competitive. To build a positive employer brand, you must shift your thinking to focus on your single greatest asset — your employees — and improve employee engagement.

6) The Next Sea Change in Recruiting: Mobile

The way today’s tech talent looks for work is changing. Prospective employees are using their mobile devices to connect with employers more than ever and this trend is expected to continue. Does your organization have a mobile recruiting strategy?

7) Agile Meets Collaboration for Better, Faster Software

Software developers increasingly use specialized Agile tools, such as Rally and Atlassian JIRA for individual tasks, but with many teams working simultaneously on products at every stage in the definition and development lifecycle, it’s easy for information to get lost and for teams to lose sight of the bigger picture: what’s being built, why it’s being built and how to track progress.

A new alliance between agile workflow solutions company Jama Software and enterprise collaboration technology firm Tasktop aims to seamlessly connect data from all these tools into a centralized repository, the Jama Integration Hub, giving all stakeholders greater insight into tasks and workflow.

8) How to Build a Culture of Learning (And Why You Need to)

To thrive in an ever-changing IT climate, CIOs and other businesses leaders must create a culture of learning that embraces innovation and leverages it into a competitive advantage.

9) Workplace Bullying a Costly Epidemic in the Workplace

Workplace bullying opens your organization up to poor productivity, lower retention rates and possible legal action. And it’s not an isolated issue – the workplace statistics are shocking. Is your culture cultivating a bully mentality?

10) How to Keep Morale High After a Layoff

Keeping your remaining employees engaged, motivated and productive after a layoff or restructuring can be a monumental task. Here’s how to do it.