CIO Research Library

As unbelievable as it sounds, the Second Coming of an IT talent shortage is upon us. This next talent gap won't show up at the entry level, however. It's emerging much further up the food chain, where more sophisticated projects require something midmarket companies are increasingly hard pressed to find. "I'm having a heck of a time filling business analyst positions," says Joe Tait, vice president of information services at R & B Inc., a $250 million aftermarket automotive parts distributor in Colmar, Pa. The shortage will be unlike any that technology executives have seen before, even during the talent wars of the late 1990s. Those were the days when CIOs would give BMW sports cars as signing bonuses and hire anyone who could design a Web page.