What job hunting might have looked like for an IT professional: 2001 vs 2022

When talking about hiring a new IT professional in a typical Estonian workplace, I would imagine that the list of things expected from the soon-to-be employee would look something like this:

• Previous IT work experience
• IT-related education; preferably an university degree
• language skills; especially English (but also Estonian)
• Some skills that are usually job-specific (knowing how to use certain programs, programming languages, Linux/Windows etc); Most of these skills seem to be things that are taught in university.

Some job offers in the IT section of CVkeskus (The most popular website in Estonia for job offers). Translations added. https://www.cvkeskus.ee/toopakkumised-infotehnoloogia-valdkonnas?sort=activation_date&dir=1

Although I do not have any experience working or looking for a job in IT, I have heard the following about the attitudes of regular Estonian IT-workers:

• It is rather normal to always try and haggle for a better pay or a better position.
• If the employer is not open to giving the employee a raise, it is normal to change jobs.
• Some workers recommend changing jobs every 2-3 years or so just to get a better pay.
• Oftentimes the work hours are not "set in stone", meaning, for example, that an IT support guy might have to help people during the weekend. Obviously, not everyone complies.

After looking around on CVkeskus, it seems that my assumptions were mostly correct. At the moment there are around 150 or so job offers that have been categorized under IT. Now, let us go back to the year 2001 using WayBackMachine.

CVKeskus´s job offers in the IT section in 2001. Translations for job titles added. https://web.archive.org/web/20020511044101/http://www.cvkeskus.ee/joboffers.php?submit=1&search_category1=Infotehnoloogia

Aside from the fact that the CVKeskus´s website looks like most of my Web Tech labs, the overall job selection is not too bad. However, there are only 14 IT job offers on the site (all of them located in Tallinn). At least there is a pretty good selection of different types of jobs, however, I have no idea what all these "Specialists" and "Lead Specialists" are about. Sadly, WayBackMachine can not tell me either since the job offers themselves have not been recorded.  

However, looking at simple work titles, it seems that the types of different jobs are quite similar. One difference that I found was that in 2001, quite a large chunk of the employers were government-owned companies. Also, most of the employers are thus not just tech companies, they are large companies that have an IT department.

I also decided to take a look at the private companies that are listed in the 2001 job offers.

• It seems that Navi Tarkvara OÜ does not exist anymore (according to this and this).
• Hireright Estonia AS seems to be alive and well (link).
• Eesti Telefon IT Teenused AS - I could not find any info about them - so most likely they do not exist anymore.
• Süsteemiarenduse Partnerid OÜ - they have changed their name, but they seem to still be working (link).
• Starman Internet AS - They do not exist anymore (link).

Looks like a lot of these companies were not very reliable as employers as many went out of business only a few years after these job listings were posted.

To conclude, I would say that the job opportunities in IT sector have greatly increased. There is a huge variety of jobs available compared to 2001. I would guess that the main requirements are mostly the same judging by the short job descriptions. With the amount of private company job offers increasing, it likely means that the wages are more competitive too nowadays. Thus, a perfect soil for a hard worker who does not mind switching companies once in a while.