Help Wanted: CIOs

The number of companies looking for CIOs is up significantly. Do you need a change?

Good news if you're a CIO wannabe or if you're a CIO who's looking for a change. The number of CIO job postings is up 30% from this time last year, according to a report by ExecuNet, an executive job-search firm.

In addition to more companies looking to fill CIO posts, there's also a 37% year-to-year boost in executive hiring in the technology sector overall, according to ExecuNet, which conducts monthly surveys of approximately 185 executive recruiters.

A majority of the postings are at companies with revenue between $50 million and $200 million, ExecuNet president Mark Anderson says. The financial-services and tech sectors have the strongest demand, he adds.

Anderson suspects that because of the size of those companies, many of the CIO positions are newly created jobs. In the aftermath of the recent recession, many had put off hiring for those jobs or investing in IT deployment in general, he says. Now, with the improved economy, many small and midsize companies are ramping up IT investments to improve business processes and efficiencies and to grow. Many want CIOs to lead the charge, he says.

In other cases, companies may be looking to fill vacant positions or enhance the experience, responsibilities or skill sets of that job, Anderson says.

Within the high-tech sector itself, besides CIOs, companies are looking for sales and marketing VPs. Other industries with increased hiring for executive-level positions include financial services, pharmaceutical and health care, Anderson says.

C&D Technologies, Inc., which produces electrical power storage and conversion products, is among the companies that have recently hired a CIO. Earlier this month, Michael Crawley joined the company as VP and CIO. While the CIO post isn't new to C&D, the role has been elevated at the company, a spokeswoman says. The previous CIO reported to C&D's CFO; Crawley reports to the company's president and CEO, Jeffrey Graves.

"We have a new CEO who also has a strong technology-industry background," Crawley says, "and he saw the need and opportunity to use IT to contribute to the goals of the business."