Here are just a few of the signs of better opportunities for ITO professionals: :

• Companies are starting to focus more on growth. According to a recent A. T. Kearny study, 67 percent of business executives that took part in the survey view IT innovation as important or critical to their companies' success.
• As projects that were shelved during the economic downturn are put on the table, together with new projects in response to the increase demand for innovation, ITOs are finding themselves resource constrained
• Many ITO professionals are beginning to show a preference for working at home and being contractors as opposed to full-time employees. In one Hudson Survey 60% of the participants said quality of life was more important to them than their careers. That’s a lot of people who’ve taken themselves out of the job market.
• The much spoken of retirement of the baby-boomer generation indicates that the ranks of the employed and the "seeking employment" pool will continue to shrink. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other reporting groups, what is known as the "prime–age work pool (people between the ages of 25 and 54, will continue to decrease, while the demand for applications software engineers and tech support specialists will double by 2010.
• According to recent studies, companies are already finding it increasingly difficult to find the talent they need

In a supply and demand world, an increase in demand for IT skills can bode very well for you if you are an IT professional with the right competencies in the right place. The existence of opportunity, however, does not by itself guarantee your success. It simply guarantees opportunities, which you can seize or fail to seize.

How ITO professionals have short-change themselves in past boom markets?

To convey the point of how ITO professional have short-change themselves even during boom markets, I will share a story I recently heard from a gentleman that we will refer to as "Bill." Bill worked for an IT team at an entry-to-mid-level role for what was a competitive salary relative to the work he performed during the boom 90’s. Bill had completed a number of senior level certifications, was smart and ready to take on a bigger, higher-paying challenge. Unfortunately, his employer did not have any senior spots open, so Bill stayed in his entry-mid-level role. Along came the 2000’s and the economic downturn and Bill, still in his entry-to-mid-level role, was now focused on just staying employed. According to his conservative estimate, Bill lost tens of thousand dollars in potential earnings from the time he became qualified to take a bigger responsibility to the time he shared his story with me.

I could easily contrast this story with the experience of ITO professionals whose value and earnings have continued to grow despite bull and bear markets. What you would see is that the key component behind how much you get out of the predicted upturn and how effectively you protect yourself during any downturns is mostly predicated on how well you leverage and manage your return on talent (ROT). The questions therefore to ask yourself if you seek to take maximum advantage of the ITO opportunity upturn are the following"

• Are you currently getting the most return on the investment of your talent? If not,
• What can you do about it?

The good news is that the strategies and tactics for answering these questions and taking steps to maximize the return on your talent already exist. The key is to borrow a few pages out of the practices found in the "play-book" that corporate business executive and managers have been using for the past few years in order to maximize their return on their corporate investments.

Practices you can borrow from the business "play-book" to maximize your ROT

There are two specific practices that I would recommend you take out of the business “play-book. ” They are:

• The practice of setting goals for performance relative to the market. Like any business manager, you need to focus on the equivalent of what business leaders do when they look at the compound annual growth rate (CGAR) within their industries. A business that is not growing as the CGAR is raising in their industry is actually shrinking. To at least keep up with their industry, a business must grow at the CGAR rate. To get ahead, they need to grow faster than the CGAR rate. To determine the CGAR for your market, look for public resources that post salary, turnover, demand and other key figures relative to your job or consulting practice. Think of a market demand increase for your skills as being your industry’s CGAR rate growing. For you to stay even with your market, at a minimum your value most grow at the same pace. To get ahead during a growth in your industry, you need to grow your value faster than the industry rate. During a downturn for your market, you need to consider strategies for maintaining your growth (such as possibly re-tooling, re-locating or making other changes) or at a minimum, protecting yourself from yield erosion.
• The practice of seeking the best places to invest time, effort and resources. You must always make sure that you are investing your talent in organizations where you can produce the highest value and therefore the highest personal return on your investments. Just like a world-class company seeks to hire the best employees, so as to maximize their return salary investment, you must seek the best companies as employers or customers where you can generate the best personal return on your talent, time and energy. Just as many world-class companies make a practice of force-ranking their employees in order to continuously upgrade their teams toward top player status, you need to continuously force-rank all your opportunities to make sure that you are investing yourself in a manner that results in the highest yield. To do this effectively, you need to first define what would be an A, B, or C opportunity for you relative to your skills and the current market. You might define an "A Opportunity" as one that pays you in the top 10% for the skills you offer within an environment that is supportive of your personal talents and development. A "B Opportunity" could be one where your earnings are in the middle band for the skills you offer within an environment that is slightly supportive of your personal talents and development. The "C Opportunity" could then represent positions where pay is in the lower 34% for the skills you offer within an environment that is not supportive of your personal talents and development. Once you establish these metrics, take a good look at your current situation as well as other potential opportunities and classify them accordingly. Your goal naturally will be to get into and stay in "A Opportunities." (Which may change as your career evolves and progresses).

Essentially, your knowledge of the market will make you aware of the universe of opportunities and your systemic ranking of opportunities will keep you focused on the areas where you can derive the greatest yield for your efforts.

Parting Advice

The bottom-line is that people who properly invest for the highest return in a boom market and effectively navigate through challenges during a bear market are the ones that maximize the total yield they draw from their investment of their personal time, energy and talent. So my advice to you therefore is to take a few pages out of the business "play-book" and position yourself toward maximizing and sustaining the highest personal return on your talent.

For more on how to maximize your return on talent with a specific seven-step strategy that you can execute in the space of seven days download the special report titled, "Improve Your Return on Talent in Seven Days." The total cost is $6.00