Web professionals: The job outlook is bright

It's a fuzzy kind of designation. What exactly does a "Web professional" do? If you're an MCSE, you run Microsoft networks. If you have an RHCE, you can run a Red Hat Linux network. And if you have the Sun Certified Developer for the Java Platform certification, well, you know how to program in Java. "Web professional," on the other hand, is a catch-all term that implies that you know something about the Web. Maybe you create Webpages, maybe you integrate them with back-end data, or maybe you create Active Server Pages. Or it may mean something else entirely: An expert at orchestrating spam email campaigns may also call himself a Web professional.

The definition of "Web professional" -- according to Morten Sohlberg, president and CEO of Sessions.edu, an online school of Web design -- is simply "a facilitator of Web services." That includes both the designers who create the front end, and the back-end programmers who make it work.

The Association of Web Professionals (AWP), a nonprofit organization based in Mississauga, Ontario, has tried to make a little order out of this chaos with three certifications, available at Prometric testing centers throughout North America. Exams cost $150. The designations are Certified Web Technician, Certified Web Designer, and Certified Web Manager. A vendor-neutral program, AWP offers certification only; several high-profile Internet companies -- including Microsoft Canada, IBM, Netscape, and Hewlett-Packard -- endorse the certification.

The market for Web professionals has changed, said Melissa Doble of TMP Worldwide, one of the world's largest human capital management companies. "A year and a half ago, companies were looking for good Web developers, and were putting serious money into their Websites. Companies don't have the budgets right now to have those types of people on board." The biggest opportunities, according to Doble, are on the back end. "A lot of companies are still working on that," she said, "especially with banks and trading firms trying to become more customer-focused and friendly."

Sohlberg has seen the same trend. "Demand for Web professionals has not increased as it did during the boom of the economy," he said. "But it has not slowed down as much as the economy has." Despite the flattening out of the dot-com boom, said Sohlberg, "demand for Web professionals both in the back end and at the front end continues to increase."

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