Friday, May 12, 2006
Recruiting Enterprise Architects
The job market seems to be recovering. With many failed outsourcing efforts many large enterprises are starting to focus in on what went wrong. They are also starting to place more value on strong technical leadership and the pursuit of enterprise architecture.
It seems as if the salaries for EA's are starting to climb. I have over the last couple of weeks received calls from headhunters looking for enterprise architects with the base salary being around the $150K to $175K range and this wasn't New York or Boston but otherwise cheap cities.
In chatting with several recruiters who have attempted to pick my brain on ways to recruit I would suggest to them that all currently practicing EAs really have no interest in doing lateral moves as most of us want to rise the ladder. Likewise the description of working on "strategic" projects is not a selling point as that is what EA does at its core. Maybe recruiters would do a better job recruiting EAs if they understood non-salary aspects of compensation such as working from home, getting offices instead of large cubicles and other aspects.
I tend to always ask any recruiter that calls two questions which none seem to ever know the answer. One, does this potential employer either contribute to open source or is willing to explore this? Two, Does this company have a friendly media relations policy in which employees can present at conferences, write books, blog, etc. Hopefully, recruiters will focus on issues that are more important than compensation...
| | View blog reactionsIt seems as if the salaries for EA's are starting to climb. I have over the last couple of weeks received calls from headhunters looking for enterprise architects with the base salary being around the $150K to $175K range and this wasn't New York or Boston but otherwise cheap cities.
In chatting with several recruiters who have attempted to pick my brain on ways to recruit I would suggest to them that all currently practicing EAs really have no interest in doing lateral moves as most of us want to rise the ladder. Likewise the description of working on "strategic" projects is not a selling point as that is what EA does at its core. Maybe recruiters would do a better job recruiting EAs if they understood non-salary aspects of compensation such as working from home, getting offices instead of large cubicles and other aspects.
I tend to always ask any recruiter that calls two questions which none seem to ever know the answer. One, does this potential employer either contribute to open source or is willing to explore this? Two, Does this company have a friendly media relations policy in which employees can present at conferences, write books, blog, etc. Hopefully, recruiters will focus on issues that are more important than compensation...
