Who is Australia's best IT employer?

Whether you're a recent graduate, a seasoned professional or looking to change lanes mid career, the good news in the IT recruitment scene is that employment is on the rise.

-It is exactly a year since we saw the first signs of a recovery in IT employment, the trend is up and I think it is going to be sustained," explained Robert Olivier, managing director and founder of employment research company Olivier.

It would seem the IT industry has reinvented itself as a stable, steadily growing sector, offering healthy but not outrageous incomes and permanent positions rather than contract work. According to Jill Noble, human resources and services consultant for Icon Recruitment IT, offices are increasingly reflecting the overall look and feel of the workplace.

-If you are in a snazzy software development house you'll still get the informality and the colours, but the IT team within a bank will be more stiff and formal," Noble said.

Hamish Sinclair, general manager of Link Recruitment, believes things are back to the way it was before the tech boom ... when IT was just another aspect of business.

-The days of the perks are gone," said Sinclair. -The IT market no longer dictates the terms of employment to the employers, now it is the other way around."

While he said the renewed confidence in the IT sector will see employers looking for ways to keep good staff on the payroll, the heady days of IT workplaces clamouring for attention and differentiation are no more.

However, with the inevitable casualties of boom-and-crash still in living memory, perhaps this new-found stability is exactly what IT employees are looking for, and if so, ZDNet Australia  wants to know who does it best.