The Help Wanted sign for information technology professionals will be out through the end of the year and the skills expected to be most in demand include Windows and network administration and database management.

Fourteen percent of the CIOs who responded to a just-released poll by executive search firm Robert Half Technology said they plan to add jobs in the fourth quarter, while only 2% said they plan to trim their staffs. In a similar Robert Half Technology survey last September, 13% of CIOs said they planned to hire going into the fourth quarter of 2006, while 3% said they were looking to cut back.

The information technology job market, said Robert Half Technology vice president John Estes, "is as healthy as it's been in a while."

Corporate growth was the top reason CIOs said they were adding I.T. workers, followed by a need to boost end user support and the deployment of new enterprise software applications. CIOs said they were looking specifically for professionals with experience working with Windows 2000/2003 servers, Cisco and Nortel networks and Oracle, SQL Server and DB2 databases.

CIOs in finance, insurance and real estate are the most confident about adding staff, the survey revealed. While it's been a difficult time for the real estate industry in particular, Estes noted that the industry's problems are mostly confined to the residential market. Commercial real estate companies, he said, are hungry for I.T. professionals.

The western half of the U.S. will see the most hiring. Twenty-three percent of CIOs in the Mountain region said they were looking for people, especially help desk, networking and development staff. Twenty percent of CIOs on the Pacific Coast expect to hire, especially those with Web and application development skills.

Estes said he expects the strong job market to continue for the foreseeable future. "All signs point north for this year into next," he said.