Robert Half Technology has published their 2012 IT Salary Guide (worth grabbing a copy of!). They identify the following hot IT skills based on a survey of more than 1,600 CIOs in the United States and Canada:

5 TECH PROFESSIONALS FIRMS WANT NOW

• Systems and networking engineers: Skills – Cloud computing, Software as a Service, Virtualization
• Developers: Skills – .NET, Java, PHP, Silverlight, Flex, MySQL and portal technologies such as SharePoint
• Quality assurance professionals and business analysts
• Data warehousing and business intelligence professionals
• Security professionals

TOP TECHNICAL SKILLS IN DEMAND (after the break…)
TOP TECHNICAL SKILLS IN DEMAND

• 64% Network administration
• 51% Database management
• 46% Desktop support
• 42% Windows administration
• 38% Wireless network management
• 35% Web development/website design
• 28% Telecommunications support
• 25% Virtualization
• 22% Business intelligence
• 15% ERP implementation