More than half (57 percent) of Fortune 500 companies surveyed plan on hiring additional marketing staff this year, with Internet marketing being the hottest area of job growth.

Aquent Marketing Staffing's recently released, "2006 Spending & Staffing Trends for Corporate Marketing Departments,” surveyed more than 1,700 marketing professionals at Fortune 500 companies across the US and Canada in order to gain insight into 2006 marketing staff plans. Compared to Aquent’s 2005 findings, hiring has increased by 5 percent this year.

Fifty percent of companies plan to increase spending in online marketing, with branding and advertising follow closely behind. Brand mangers and project managers are the top two positions corporate marketing departments are looking to fill.

Aquent’s survey also found that with the economy and job market picking up, along with the talk of Baby Boomers and the impending labor shortage, 59 percent of companies are concerned about employee retention and 78 percent believe employee turnover will be a challenge over the next five years.

Aquent's president of marketing staffing, Sean Bisceglia, noted that his firm had seen a significant rise in temp-to-perm hiring, noting that around twenty percent of its interim marketers go on from tempt to term and that number is steadily increasing.