The two principal areas of employment that are contained within the IT industry are support and development. Development generally refers to producing new applications for computers, however it might also really be regarded to be making anything new. Support - meanwhile - is typically perceived to be technical support, although it might be seen as including the support of existing programs.

An IT recruiter will get a pretty good indication of where a jobseeker fits in the IT industry, based on their CV. Job titles such as "Helpdesk Supervisor," "PC Support Technician," "Java Developer" or "Cobol Programmer" should give them an indication of what the IT jobseeker can do. However, job role titles such as "Systems Engineer" or "ICT Officer" might be too vague or aren't clear enough in describing what the candidate really does - this is where things may become a bit tricky. Fortunately, the majority of people who send CVs of this nature to a recruitment agency will back up the job role title with details on his/her actual skills (although this is not necessarily always true, with some leaving said recruiter confused as to what it is that they do).

This can be all ok once an IT recruiter peruses a CV and can establish this info, but it is getting that CV in front of the recruiter to begin with that can occasionally cause the writer of the CV a problem. A lot of job boards or CV databases let IT recruitment agencies to peruse through the CVs and download those of relevance. They might search for people who are "C++ Software Engineers" or "Java Developers," but may not be looking for "ICT Officers" or for other similar broad titles - or at least they might not think of entering those kinds of jobs into the search bar while searching - so candidates who use these job role titles might be losing out on possible IT career opportunities.

Job advertisements might also be influenced in pretty much exactly the same way. Advertising for something like an "Applications Support Analyst" may not pinpoint too clearly on what a candidate is looking for, whereas a title like ".Net Developer" is a lot clearer. It is the aforementioned factor turned around - rather than a recruiter not discovering a jobseeker based on his or her CV, a jobseeker can't find an ad based on its title and wording.

Therefore, it is imperative that both jobseekers and recruiters appreciate the significance of what to "call themselves" and what they should "ask for," respectively. Role titles have to indicate what the job encompasses and includes. Appreciating the different kinds of IT jobs in the industry should help both parties in titling their job roles properly and efficiently.