The average raise for IT staff across the board is a paltry 3 to 4 percent, but that doesn't have to be your fate if you approach the process intelligently. "You have to really go above and beyond to merit a higher raise, or at least be in a hot technology area where there is a lot of demand," said Lily Mok, an analyst at Gartner.

Gartner's 2007 Market Compensation Study found that <A HREF="http://www.midmarket.eweek.com/c/a/News/Getting-the-Raise-You-Deserve/?kc=EWKNLNAV041808STR2">companies often pay 10 to 15 percent premiums</A> to attract or retain IT professionals with Oracle, Java, J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition), .Net, SAN (storage area network), SAP, Microsoft SQL Server, PeopleSoft, Unix or IT compliance skills. In addition, specific positions, which tend to be difficult in terms of hiring and retention, also can merit higher raises. These include database administrator, system architects, ERP (enterprise resource planning) programmers, Web application programmers, lead application developer, network manager, network engineer and network architect.