Who are CIOs Planning to Hire Next?

Ed Baker writes "Do you have the skills CIOs are looking for? Cioinsight.com just posted their latest research, in which they asked more than 400 top IT executives about the hiring outlook for 18 different IT positions, and finds that the demand for new systems and infrastructure is leading to more hiring for IT professionals who can build them. The result: Project managers and programmers/systems developers top the list of IT professionals CIOs are looking to hire."

Comments

Tecnhincal vs. business skills

[winkydink]

I've harped on this for almost two decades. Technical skills keep you employed. Business skills get you promoted.

[OK, nit pickers, I'm waiting for you to point out the corner cases where this isn't true]

Re:Tecnhincal vs. business skills

[Grishnakh]

Schmoozing, bullshitting, backstabbing your peers, politicking, empire building, etc.

It's weird; the American culture values business skills more than any other (except maybe acting skills and legal skills), but these skills aren't even mentioned in public school.

Re:Tecnhincal vs. business skills

[Shajenko42]

What, you think the elites, the richest people in the world want competition?

Compulsory education was designed to create factory workers, not leaders.

minor addition

[geekoid]

"Technical skills keep you employed. Business skills get you promoted."
I say:
Technical skills get you the job, social skills keep you employed. Business skills get you promoted."

Re:minor addition

[segfaultcoredump]

I've been involved with dozens of interviews. They all tend to go like this:

me: I see that you claimed to have skils in XYZ. How comfortable are you with implementing an XYZ system?

candidate: I'm an expert with XYZ

me: Oh, how did you solve the /Bogus XYZ/ issue?
    or
me: What were some of the design issues you faced in implementing XYZ? (make sure it is not something that is covered in chapter 1 of the XYZ cram guide)

candidate: Oh, simple.... /5 minutes of bs/

If the candidate gives us a look of 'wtf are you talking about', then we smile and move on, drilling into real issues with XYZ (to determine just how much they know about XYZ).

The general idea is this: give them some bait, see if they take it.

As an average, I'd say that half of the candidates that get to my stage of the process are overstating their abilities. They dont get any further. I have yet to regret hiring somebody. (If they are faking it, I have a tendancy to keep drilling on the topic so that it soon becomes painfully obvious that even they realize that they are faking it and we all know it. Its a great way to make sure that the guy does not expect to actually get the job)

In general, lying will only get you a job at a place run by idiots. If that is the type of job you want, go for it. It can pay well, but the turnover can be a real pain. When layoffs come (and they will. Remember, you are working for idiots), dont expect them to keep "the best" people, just the ones that they _think_ are the best. i.e., the ones with the best golf scores. :-)

Re:minor addition

[Anonymous Coward]

In general, lying will only get you a job at a place run by idiots.

Fortunately, this covers 98% of large employers.

Got to know the Business

[twitter]

Translation: Big dumb companies value propaganda more than function and don't value their employees. Notice that training is close to the bottom of the list. Technical competence and familiarity with fundamentals of the field should be the thing they look for in new hires. Business school is something a company should pay for it's own employees if it wants to promote them to upper management. For a new employee it's a place where they can forget what they need to know. Looking for detailed business knowledge outside of the company is an admission that you are not willing to train and have not trained your own people adequately in a long time. Prediction: Big dumb companies are going to get dumber and people working there will continue to be forced to waste their overworked lives on mind numbing nonsense instead of getting things done right. You will be worn out and discarded like a rubber gasket.

True familiarity with the way a company works can only come from working in the company and keeping up with your competitor's actions. Business school case studies, while interesting, generally don't apply outside the specific case except for obvious general principles. Sure, some business schools are very good at understanding industry but I'm not convinced that's going to be useful to some guy who's there to make a better network or information sharing tool for the company. Someone who's been at the company long enough is going to know who needs what information from who an how best to get it there. If they have had the time to keep up with the field, they are a company's best resource.

Yes, I've worked for a fortune 100 company. It got nothing but worse and this survey shows that the trend continues. Notice how the smaller companies valued skill more than propaganda?

Re:Got to know the Business

[BVis]

Yes, I've worked for a fortune 100 company. It got nothing but worse and this survey shows that the trend continues. Notice how the smaller companies valued skill more than propaganda?

I've worked for more than one Fortune 500 company (I'm honestly not sure if they're 100 or not) where it was very clear that there was *no chance whatsoever* that you would ever advance beyond your current job description. It seems to be SOP these days for Big Biz to cultivate the environment in such a way that it's very clear to everyone involved that if you want a raise (past the pittance that you get each year that doesn't even keep up with the cost of living) or a promotion, you must leave the company.

The attitude seems to be that you must leave a company with no more skills than you walked in with, EVER. Frequently employees who get training on their own are seen as being "disloyal" by trying to improve their skill set. Why? Because if you're making yourself more marketable, clearly it means you're not interested in staying in the position you have that doesn't require those skills, and are dissatisfied with the opportunities that you've been granted at your current company. (The fact that those opportunities are frequently described as "no fucking way" never enters into the thought process.)

Why Big Biz seems to be so incredibly phobic of encouraging the professional growth of its employees is a mystery to me. It's so incredibly pervasive that many companies have stopped hiring IT staff *altogether*. Instead they hire "contractors" (read: "temps" or "slaves" or "disposable humans") to do the jobs that need to be done for the continued functioning of the company. The contractor gathers experience about the computing environment over the months (or, more likely, years) that they're there, which is rendered completely useless to both the contractor and the company when one of the following happens: 1) Some beancounter arbitrarily decides that payroll is too high and forces someone to lay off contractors regardless of the importance of their role, 2) the contractor is fired (oh, excuse me, "has their contract terminated") because of some incredibly minor infraction of the rules, their failure to take abuse from a permanent employee, or just because, or 3) the contractor realizes there is no place to go from where they are, and decides to leave. The company has to go hire and train another "contractor", during which time the (usually critical) work the contractor was doing goes undone, to the detriment of the entire organization.

This isn't restricted to IT by a long shot. A close friend of mine had been in the same job for 4 years. Her supervisor left to take another job, leaving the position open. This friend of mine had more seniority and experience than others in her group (not to mention being the only one in the group that actually did any work, the rest spent most of their time talking about Pro Wrestling and NASCAR.) Her supervisor wrote a letter recommending her for the position once she had left. A golden opportunity to reward a valued employee for hard work.

Rather than promote her (even in title, maybe not with a raise), they decided to eliminate the position. That's how much they didn't want to promote her (or anyone else). Big Biz has raised the concept of "penny wise, pound foolish" to an art form.

Re:Got to know the Business

[Dark_MadMax666]

I was getting pissed of at the fact that if you want raise/promotion you gotta find new job and be hired at desired level instead of being promoted. I was hinted by upper management that the mains reason companies do not do that is to not cause jealousy (you are promoted and your colleagues are not ,that will cause political troubles and cat fights)

  After reflecting on that I find that a very valid point . So getting new job every 2-3 years is a reality now if you want career growth. If you are lucky you will land eventually in this sweet CIO/CTO position yourself.

Re:Got to know the Business

[vinn01]

Yeah, I was spoiled by having good bosses for the first few years of my working life too.

Things change. Bosses come and go. Reorganizations are hell.

If you ever work for a bad boss, all of the positive things you just said will disappear in a flash. I now work for a good boss again. I appreciate that much more than when I didn't know any better.

Re:Ubermensch

[geekoid]

you are not balancing a character sheet here.

You can maitain your '8' in tech AND raise you business skills.

Re:The Age Factor?

[geekoid]

how many where over 40 when they were hired?

He is correct, there is a very strong trend of hiring younger programmers 30 or under over older ones 40> in the industry.
If you company bucks this trend, then good for you.

Like I said, "Ubermensch".

[khasim]

you are not balancing a character sheet here.

You can maitain your '8' in tech AND raise you business skills.

No, you cannot. There are only so many hours in the day, so many days in the week, etc.

Like I said, everyone would love to hire the guy who is great at everything.

The reality is, those people don't exist. Which is why Dilbert cartoons are so popular.

Re:Like I said, "Ubermensch".

[Cyno]

Depends on the goal. If your company's goal is to create a solid, stable, efficient, maintainable, scalable infrastructure then you can forget about the business skills and focus on the job. If their goal is just to make money at all cost, then forget about the tech skills (you already got the job) and focus on the business skills, such as how to smile and lie to someone's face and turn around to stab them in the back in your next meeting with their superior, and how to cover your ass proactively to avoid taking the fall for disasters that will result from the obvious lack of competence, since nobody cared about competence, its not the goal, etc, etc, etc.. :)

I don't know about the rest of you,

[Almahtar]

but I think this is useful information. I wouldn't have thought that business skills/knowlege would be more attractive than technical prowess for an IT guy. It's especially useful to know that the higher the budget/larger the fish, the more so this is true.

Who cares what CIOs think about technical hiring?

[Money for Nothin']

CIOs (in Fortune 500 companies, at least) are so far removed from the proles at the bottom of the corporate pyramid -- the admins/engineers, developers, etc. -- that they frankly don't have a damn clue as to what they need. It is not their job to know *specifically* what they need that far down the corporate ladder; that is the job of one or more layers of middle-management they have separating the CIO from the people with actual technical skills (unlike the CIO), i.e. the rest of us unwashed masses (and in IT, this is sometimes a literal phrase...).

The CIO's job is to manage management en-masse (to "throw IQ points" at problems, as Bill Gates' approach tends to be), and to have "Big Ideas", or at least read the same business-tech magazines their lowly technical people do (eWeek, InformationWeek, etc.) which present big ideas -- and then tell the techies what to do, even if it's technically the wrong thing to do. Your typical CIO does not have a technical background...

Re:Ubermensch

[Grishnakh]

No one said you had to unlearn anything. But if your job doesn't involve working in X technology every day, you're simply not going to know it very well, regardless of how many books you read or courses you take. I've taken countless "training" courses throughout my job at my current megacorporation. They're really not all that helpful, not compared to actually having to work with it. Most people tend to forget things they don't use.

Re:Whoever they're playing golf with.

[Grishnakh]

Quit being jealous and realize that upper management is just like any other group in society: some are geniuses, some are fucktards, and the majority lie somewhere along the grey scale in the middle.

Upper management isn't supposed to be a microcosm of society: they're supposed to be the creme de la creme. If they were all geniuses, I don't think many people would be too jealous, because they would obviously be earning their money. But if some are fucktards, as you put it, and most of them are just mediocre, then what the hell are they doing in upper management making tons of money (and also having a large impact on the careers of all the employees under them)?

I'd be happy(er) if I lived in a society where only the smartest and best people got to positions at the top, whether it be in business or government. Things would work out a lot better that way, and I wouldn't have so much of a problem with them making millions of dollars per year. But don't tell me to not be jealous or angry when morons and incompetents are promoted to very high positions while much better people get passed over.

Re:Whoever they're playing golf with.

[BVis]

I was going to reply to that message with something very similar, but you beat me to the punch.

The only thing I would add to that is that it isn't really that someone's not as smart or someone isn't "better" than someone else, it's that the people who work hard get passed over while the people who take credit for other people's hard work get promoted. It encourages people to not work hard, because 1) nobody cares if you work hard, you certainly aren't going to be recognized or rewarded for it, 2) all hard work gets you is more hard work, and 3) someone else is just going to take the credit for your hard work anyway. It's the "Office Space" cliche: you only work hard enough not to get fired, because there's no reward in going above and beyond that.

Re:The study agrees with what employers tell us.

[BVis]

You've heard the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none?" Granted, there are people out there who are able to work across disciplines as you suggest, but they don't get hired. Why? A few reasons:

1) You're less likely to have Engineering Skills 1, 2, and 3 if you have skills in other disciplines. Granted, there are exceptions, but in general, that's the case. And since everyone does hiring by search engine these days, your resume will never see the light of day if it doesn't have all the right keywords.
2) In the case that you DO have all the skills, it's presumed (correctly or not) that you're going to want a salary commensurate with your skill set and your geographic location. Here you run into the "if we pay our people as little as we can possibly get away with, we'll be more competitive" mentality and you're out of the picture even before the second interview. The fact that you're exactly what they're looking for is irrelevant; if the choice is between someone good and someone cheap...
3) You've found a company where they actually DO value your skills and contributions and you're not in the market :)

But at least it's decent presentation...

[jsharkey]

Remember how annoying other n-page articles have been, with their loads of ads and the never-disappearing "Next Page" links? Kudos to this magazine for boiling their article down to one summary page, and for pushing all clutter to the edges. Hopefully other sites are watching and will take notice!

Re:The Age Factor?

[Shadow99_1]

I'm not even quite 30 yet and already I'm sen as inferior to someone just out of college by alot of companies... Even my girlfriend who is a bussiness major (though she just graduated this year) has seen that most big companies want someone they see as 'fresh' because they are seen as having no bad habits to unlearn.

What she's been told is hilarious stuff, like: "Honey, 25 is to old to just be starting in bussiness... If you had several years with another large company we'd overlook having to untrain any bad habits you have picked up from beign as old as you are, but it's not worth it for us to do that when we have fresh recruits straight out of college with no bad habits due to age who want this same entry level job." This was said by a 30 something HR woman at one of the companies she applied to... It's not sucha strange reaction either...

I'm a networking type, but one lacking experience outside of tech support/help desk work and a few odd jobs here and there in netwroking... And for awhiel now when I apply for entry-level real networking jobs I'm told that someone of my 'age' should have more experience and apply to a real netowrking job and leave the entry-level stuff to the kids... When did 30 become the new 60?

Re:Ubermensch

[protohiro1]

Small companies sound good on paper. They suck in practice. They have no cash at all, so they can't pay you, can't buy you the softs you need and they put the servers in the basement and cross their fingers. You can't get promoted, so you have to leave to advance. I would give up the "fun" atmosphere and "non-corporate" environment for a more paid vacation and quarterly salary reviews.

Doing a good job is the last way to get promoted

[walterbyrd]

The simple reason is: why rock the boat.

For example: let's say you are hired to work for slave wages at the helpdesk. After two months, you have proven your worth by doing a great job.

Hey, they have a great helpdesk tech who works for slave wages. Why should they ever promote the tech? If they promote the tech, then they'll have to get a new tech, and train him/her. Of course the tech will just quite, but companies are seldomly that far sighted. After the tech quits, the company will bitch about how techs are job hoppers.

Companies don't want to train because they are afraid of training people for the next job. Besides, it doesn't fit into the budget.

Re:no no no no no

[bobcote]

That's why there are so many headhunters calling with these "wonderful" contract - to- perm job offers.

Hiring managers are protected from their own incompetence by auditioning employees for two to six months before making a commitment. Also if the person is too good they can keep them around without the danger of them becoming your boss. You can also not renew the contract and take full credit for the work.

Project Mismanagers...

[chaeron]

Heaven help us from more Project Managers.

I have yet to meet one that I consider competent. Though I have heard fairy tales of such mythical beasties actually existing.

The push towards ever more (incompetent) PM's stems from a lack of leadership in the executive suite and the common misconception (or desire) that people are fungible resources, that can be plugged and played at will. Exec Management in many companies (especially the large ones) have no concept of leadership, and thus they promote a mechanistic approach to management, which manifests in their hiring ever more PMs and delegating responsibility down to them.

Ever seen a project manager that could be labelled a "project leader"? I haven't. Yet. And I'm not holding my breath.

PM's, at least the accredited ones, worship the PMBOK (Which would be better acronymized as the PMFOC, IMO). Seen any mention of a PMBOL (Book of Leadership)? That'll be the day.

Unfortunately, I see no end to this approach. It's only going to get worse, till everything crumbles. Offshoring is just another symptom of higher management's abdication of leadership and the treatment of people as commodity components.

My 2 cents worth.