Stories by Sharon Florentine

Even the savviest job seeker is bound to make a mistake here and there, but in a highly competitive talent market, a small mistake could cost you the job of your dreams.

One of the best places for your competitors to find great talent is within the walls of your company. If your best and brightest have been jumping ship to work for your biggest rival, it's important to know how they're being recruited, why they are being targeted and what you can do to stop it. Here's how your competitors may be poaching your talent.

When Doug Mitchell took over as CEO of direct-sales company Argenta Field Solutions in 2011, he noticed something surprising. He noticed that most Gen-Y candidates, though tech savvy and digitally plugged-in, didn't seem to have a clue about how to dress for, prepare for or conduct themselves in an interview, making his job and the job of his hiring managers difficult.

While the IT skills gap is an issue that largely impact employers, underemployment is a burden carried mostly by workers and candidates.

Old bullies never die, they just get ... promoted. And older doesn't always mean wiser. Those bullies you remember from your school days don't always grow out of that behavior. Many in fact, carry it with them into the workplace.

Change in the IT industry happens at a breakneck pace, and organizations that aren't fostering a "culture of learning" will be left behind. To survive and even flourish, CIO and other business leaders must create a culture of learning, which means embracing new information and innovations and leveraging those into a pipeline of talent, thus creating a competitive advantage.

Women are good for business. While there's no magic formula businesses can use to shrink the (still abysmal) gender gap in technology, there are some concrete steps you can take to recruit, hire and retain female tech talent.

like most technology executives, jon bischke worries about attracting and retaining top talent and the ever-widening skills gap that's plagued the it industry for years. but bischke, ceo of entelo, a talent search, recruitment, hiring and staffing solution, is also troubled by the lack of women in the industry, and the ever-widening skills gap as women and minorities increasingly choose other professions.

On any given day, employers post about 80,000 jobs on Dice.com. Here are the 10 fastest-growing categories based on number of mentions compared to a year ago.

Over the last five years, demand for Ruby on Rails skills has quadrupled and is proving to be a lucrative feather in the cap of developers, according to data from PayScale, an online salary, benefits and compensation information company.

Corporate restructuring and layoffs are an unfortunate, but inevitable, part of today's business climate. Keeping your remaining employees engaged, motivated and productive after a restructuring requires managers to be proactive, honest and consistent or risk alienating and losing even more key talent.

The milestones along the traditional path to IT leadership look a lot like this: Earn a computer science degree, serve an IT internship, take development courses, gain coding experience, obtain certifications and sign up for management training specific to technology. However, as IT increasingly becomes a business strategy enabler, IT leaders are being promoted from places like the sales or marketing department.

Conflict in the workplace is inevitable, but, if handled correctly, it can actually lead to a more engaged and productive workforce. The key is to maintain professionalism at all times and remember to be empathetic, says Piera Palazzolo, senior vice president, Dale Carnegie Training.

The pace of change in IT has always been brisk, but technology advances such as virtualization, the cloud, service management and a focus on information management and collaboration have forced businesses into a dead sprint to keep up. And as technology changes, so do the skills, knowledge and job roles needed to design, build, implement and manage these cutting-edge technologies. The majority of IT organizations aren't prepared for the battle, even as the war for talent rages on.

When executives and IT teams aren't speaking the same language, projects fail, time and money are wasted, and collaboration and productivity suffer. But Decoded is looking to help overcome the "language barrier" and enhance collaboration between IT teams and C-level executives through one-day digital literacy classes.