The latest Advantage Job Index, formerly known as the Olivier Job Index, has reported an 8.11 per cent, seasonally adjusted, surge in online advertisements for technology professionals in February.

Advantage Professional director Robert Olivier said IT was the third best performing sector behind accounting and legal last month. Technology recruitment was relatively flat in January lifting just 0.28 per cent.

"The growth in IT vacancies in the last six months is 18.44 per cent compared with 13.44 per cent nationally - so it has moved into the higher performing group," Mr Olivier said.

The overall market climbed 1.59 per cent in February, compared with 3.59 per cent in January.

Mr Olivier said the market was in a stronger position than it was a year ago.

"Things that needed to be done in the last 12 months, not necessarily large projects, but new versions, updates or upgrades that could be put off were put off while people focused on survival strategies," he said.

"Now they think they are over the worst and are starting to make more money so they have got to address those issues."

There were 18,726 IT positions vacant last month compared with 21,054 in February 2009.

In NSW, IT was the top performing category with a rise in vacancies of 11.62 per cent, seasonally adjusted, last month. Western Australia reported a 12.91 per cent jump in technology roles and Queensland was up 11.53 per cent.

Database development roles rose 16.8 per cent in February, while management and sales climbed 13.1 per cent and system administration vacancies were up 12 per cent.

IT graduate positions leapt 46.8 per cent last month as companies looked to catch up on the hiring freezes of last year.

Peoplebank chief executive officer Peter Acheson said client requirements in February were at their highest level since October 2008.

"The banks, utilities and commercial sector were very strong with demand for project managers, business and system analysts and roles for the early stages of IT projects being in strongest demand," he said.

Mr Acheson said the demand in Victoria and NSW was underpinned by a high degree of client urgency for candidates who were available for rapid starts.

Recruitment activity was mainly for contract with some permanent, according to Taylor Coulter director Penny Coulter.

"There is still a level of caution on hiring from organisations, often triple checking before confirming an appointment, all of which takes time," Ms Coulter said.

"Companies have had the luxury of time on their side during the downturn, but as market conditions continue to improve, protracted hiring processes will see companies lose candidates to those organisations that can make fast hiring decisions."

Ambition managing director Andrew Cross said recruitment in February was strong with most activity in the infrastructure space.

"There were lots of requests for service desk people, helpdesk and some in the more senior end in the storage and security space."

"The applications space has been busy around Oracle still and probably an increased focus on SAP recently."

He said there would be a point where overseas candidates would be required to meet demand in the ERP space.

Hudson ICT national practice leader Martin Retschko said confidence was climbing as evident by small and medium enterprises investing in IT again.

"Our job is getting tougher in terms of identifying the right candidates and securing new opportunities as they have got more choice," he said.

Mr Retschko said the IT services market was also starting to ramp up significantly with volume requirements from consultancies and IT services providers.

"We are seeing large programs of work recommence so that is driving demand for project resources everything from testing to applications development to business analysts and project leads."

(From: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/demand-for-it-jobs-spike/story-e6frgakx-1225838743222?)