Malaysian ICT salaries trail SEA region ... again: Page 2 of 2

Average salary increase
 
Besides the regional salary benchmarking data, Pikom also highlighted the overall average increase in ICT salaries from RM6,240 in 2011 to RM6,782 in 2012, a rise of 8.7%.
 
The average entry-level salary for fresh graduates continued to grow from RM2,238 to RM2,343, or a marginal increase of 4.7%.
 
[RM1 = US$0.31]
 
Woon said looking at a five-year trend, it appears that sales, marketing and business development continue to be highly sought after jobs, while customer service jobs seem to be losing their shine as the hottest jobs in the country.
 
The survey results also indicate that ICT professionals in the technical domain who are equipped with Java, C#, C++, Microsoft’s dotNet, SharePoint, as well as web application development are in high demand, he added.
 
The Pikom report also noted that within the business applications domain, the demand for ICT professionals vary greatly.
 
“Though demand for certified professionals in SAP or ERP (enterprise resource planning) are at an all-time high, professionals specialising in IT audit and IT security are increasing, especially when professionals are needed to fend off malware makers and cyber thieves,” the report read.
 
In addition, organisations shifting towards cloud computing are spurring the need for infrastructure professionals, the report noted.
 
It said that big data analytics is also a fast growing job area, especially in big companies desiring to extract insights from their petabytes of stored data.
 
“The best candidates for big data analytics jobs are those equipped with inter-disciplinary knowledge and experience pertaining not only to technical know-how but also with a strong statistical/ mathematical background.
 
“Similarly, demand for mobile application developers and user interface designers who can develop user-friendly and versatile applications are also on the rise,” the report said.
 
Other findings
 
Meanwhile, the Pikom ICT Job Market Outlook also revealed:
 

• The salary increment (click to enlarge chart) in all ICT job categories except the senior manager category was not very encouraging. The worst hit were ICT junior executives, who received only a 1.5% pay rise on an average between 2011 and 2012. Senior managers in the ICT sector in 2012 experienced an average pay rise of 11.6%, which is an increase from RM12,588 in 2011 to RM14,044.

• Employment size matters in determining the average monthly salary of employees as large corporations or multinationals tend to pay higher than smaller ones.

• Comparing against the smallest sized companies in the one-to-nine employees category, which is taken as the baseline, the median salary paid by companies with more than 2,000 employees was 1.88 times more.

• ICT professionals working in Kuala Lumpur and Cyberjaya tend to earn 1.75 times higher than their counterparts working in smaller locations like Ipoh. Even within the Klang Valley, the disparity in the salary is quite distinct, where the average median salary of ICT professionals in Petaling Jaya or Shah Alam tends to be lower than their counterparts in the capital.

• Despite gender equality, the salary data interestingly revealed that male ICT professionals tend to earn a median salary of RM5,201, while females earned a median salary of only RM3,855, which works out to a 35% difference.

 
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