Posts Tagged ‘employment’

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Dealing With High Worker Expectations Requires Real IT Leadership

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

IT Leaders Need To Take A New Look At How They Hire<div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/23912576@N05/2962194797/"><a rel="cc:attributionURL" href=Can we talk frankly for just a moment? Who’s really in charge in IT departments when it comes to hiring and retaining new talent? You’d think that with the global recession, companies would have the upper hand. However, with the critical importance of IT solutions to existing company operations and increasing global competition, it’s possible that firms need IT workers more than IT workers need the firm. What’s an IT leader to do?

My, How Things Have Changed!

How did we get to where we are today? It wasn’t all that long ago that you could land a job in a company’s IT department right out of college and then expect to spend either your entire career there or at least the next 10 years if you chose to do so. Those days are now long gone.

Instead, what we are dealing with today is workers who view their current jobs (or job opportunities) as relatively short lived events. The experts tell us that everyone needs to expect to have between 10-12 different jobs during our IT careers. This new mindset makes it much harder for IT Leaders to recruit and retain the top IT talent that they need to move their teams forward faster.

New Solutions For IT Leaders

I’ve been hearing a lot IT managers lamenting the current state of recruiting top tier talent lately. To them I say “get over it“. Look, the world is the way that it is and there’s nothing that either you or I can do about it.

If new hires to your IT department are going to view their job as a temporary stop on their career journey, then fine – work with it. This simply means that you need to change how you manage your team.

In the past, IT managers were content to allow workers to “niche” and become experts in one particular area. No more. Cross-training of every member of your team should be among your highest priorities. This will benefit your team members because they will pick up new skills and won’t get bored doing the same job over and over again. You’ll benefit because when a team member decides to leave, the loss won’t be quite as painful as it could be.

IT Leaders also need to looking for tomorrow’s IT leaders. A benefit of having a great deal of turnover in your teams is that you’ll have a chance to evaluate a greater number of IT workers for future leadership positions. Those who have the necessary skills, are the ones that you need to give additional responsibilities to. By doing this, you just might convince them to stick around a bit longer…

Final Thoughts

The world has changed and IT Leaders need to change along with it. Coming to the realization that we can’t hope to keep team members for extended periods of time means that we need to change how we hand out assignments and how we search for tomorrow’s IT management talent. If you can adjust how your manage your teams to deal with they way that the world really is,  then you will have found a way to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Jeff Vance over at Sandstorm Media talked with me to get some inputs for an article that he was writing. Jeff did a very good job of capturing a lot of what makes our job so hard to do…

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Posted in recruiting | 1 Comment »

Recruiting Is Something That IT Leaders Need To Start Thinking About Again

Thursday, August 13th, 2009
IT Leaders Need To Think Differently About How They Will Do Recruiting In The Future

IT Leaders Need To Think Differently About How They Will Do Recruiting In The Future

It’s starting to look like the economic winter just might be getting ready to thaw. Once this happens, IT Leaders realize that they’re going to have a massive task added to their already overloaded plate – recruitment.

During the economic downturn IT workers were staying put because they didn’t know what was going to happen next. Additionally, firms stopped hiring except for the most critical functions. When things start to pick up again, this will all change. Are you going to be ready IT Leader?

The Problem With The Way That IT Recruits

We all need to remember that recruitment is really a game that we are playing with our competition – we want to get all of the good talent in order to boost our firm and our competition wants to do the same. On top of all of this, who among us has ever been trained on how to properly do recruitment?

The good folks over at Forrester Research realize that we need some help and so they’ve done some research for us. Their conclusions just might surprise you a bit. They believe that there is something that we need to start doing if we want to be successful in attracting the right kind of talent: we need to diversify our talent pool.

The Way That IT Recruiting SHOULD Be Done

Right now all of us pretty much do the same thing when we want to fill a position in our IT department: we start looking at other firms who do what we do in hopes of finding an IT professional who is willing to leave and come work for us. This has worked for a long time because there have been so many people working in IT. However, with outsourcing and the Baby Boomers starting to retire, this isn’t going to keep working much longer.

Instead, Forrester tells us that what we need to do is to expand the pool of talent that we recruit from when we go looking to fill a position. This means that we need to start looking at college students and non-IT business professionals as potential sources of new recruits.

College students have always been an underused resource. The reasons are many, but more often than not it boils down to the simple fact that it takes time to guide them when you give them a task – you can’t just “fire and forget”. Sometimes poor management of college students results in poor performance and this can leave a lingering sense of frustration that causes IT Leaders to shy away from working with college students.

Non-IT business professionals, sometimes called “super users“, are a fantastic under-tapped resource. This resource has both the technical and business knowledge that can prove invaluable to any IT department. Providing existing employees with an opportunity to rotate into the IT department can be a win-win situation: you get the talent that you need and the employee gets a brand new career track.

Final Thoughts

What are we really looking for when we go to fill an IT position? We’d really like to find candidates that have three things: technical skills, business knowledge, and interpersonal skills. The ponds that we’ve been fishing from for these types of workers has just about dried up. In order to meet the staffing challenges of the future, we’re going to have to start fishing in other ponds.

Rethinking about how we attract, develop, and then retain college recruits can pay huge dividends. Who wouldn’t want to hire someone that they already knew and who they had groomed for a specific role in the organization? Likewise inviting non-IT business professionals to join the IT department solves staffing problems and breaks down internal walls.

Learning to do a better job of fishing for new talent will mean that you will have found a way to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Questions For You

Where do your new hires come from – other IT companies? Have you used college students before? How did that work out? Could you list 5 “super users” who work in your company right now? How many of those would be interested in working in IT? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

They say that the world is becoming a smaller place – I think that they just might be right. IT Leaders are starting to realize that coming up with ways to staff their teams so that they are diverse is quickly moving from being a political nicety to now becoming a business necessity. Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to go about doing this?

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Grow Your Career – What IT Leaders Need To Do

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

IT Leaders Are Responsible For Growing Their Career - But Not Like This!

IT Leaders Are Responsible For Growing Their Career - But Not Like This!

As though the job of being a IT Leader was not hard enough, there’s also that added responsibility that you have to manage your career. With all of the turmoil of the past couple of years, it’s now more important than ever for IT Leaders to find the time to tend to this task.

Growing Your Career – It’s Like Another Job

The #1 thing that IT Leaders need to realize is that it is no longer good enough to sit passively by and hope that your career will take you to someplace that you want to be. Instead, you need to take charge of it. Yes, this means that there is more work for you to do. However, you will benefit from all of the time and effort that you put into this task.

It’s Networking Time

For some odd reason too many of us shun what is probably the most effective career management activity – networking. Study after study has shown that most high paying professional jobs are found through networking. What this means for you is that you need to always be growing your network.

This might cause you to rush out and try to build the largest LinkedIn network that you possibly can. Don’t do it. Deborah Bailey who is a career and employment coach, points out that the quality of the members of your professional network is far more important than quantity of people that you have in the network.

Get Uncomfortable

We all chose to have a career in IT for a bunch of reasons. One of these was because we knew that IT was a dynamic field – it’s always changing. What this means for you is that you can’t sit back and assume that the skills that you have today (both hard and soft skills) will be what anyone will be looking for tomorrow.

Instead, you need to get up off your butt and go out and learn something new. This ability to be constantly seeking out new things to learn will be what keeps your skills fresh and makes sure that you are always employable.

Big Picture Stuff

This might be the trickiest part of the program – learning to keep your eyes open. It’s all too easy to focus on what’s going on inside of your company or even within your industry. However, the key to long-term career success is to stay on top of what’s going on in the big world and understand how it may impact your company and your career.

Final Thoughts

You have no control over what others may do to your career in the future. However, you have complete control over what you do to prepare your career for the future. You are going to need to be proactive (start doing something TODAY) and you are going to have to be willing to adapt to the changes that we all know will happen in the IT field. If you can do both of these things, then you will have truly taken control of your career and you’ll be well on you way as you transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Questions For You

In the past have you actively managed your career or have you just sorta let things happen to you? How much have you increased your professional network by during this year? How did you do it? What new skills have you learned this year? What other industries do you track? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you could go to work for any company out there right now, which one would it be? A lot of us would say Google – everything that we’ve read and heard about the company makes it seem like a great place to work. However, it turns out that even Google is not immune to IT staff problems…

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Should An IT Leader Follow His/Her Dream Career?

Thursday, June 11th, 2009
IT Leaders Need To Determine If Another Career Would Make Them Happier

IT Leaders Need To Determine If Another Career Would Make Them Happier

I bumped into one of my longtime friends last week, Mark, and he told me how unhappy he was at his IT job. He was feeling a great deal of guilt over this because his firm had just had yet another round of layoffs and he had been spared. He still had his job, but he hated it. What’s an IT Leader to do in this situation?

The Grass Always Seems To Be Greener…

What caught my attention about Mark’s situation (hating your IT job is not really that novel) was that he knew exactly what he’d prefer to be doing. Mark plays jazz guitar on the side and he’s actually quite good at it. He’d love to do it full time, but he’s afraid to take the leap.

In the current hard economic times, many IT professionals are having the whole “afraid to leap” thing solved for them by getting laid off. If you happen to lose your job, it may cause a deep seated burst of career change desire to well up in you.

Been There, Done That, Now What?

If you find yourself in a situation where you start to long to take up that “other” career that you have always longed to pursue, there is some hard thinking that you are going to have to do. We’ve all heard stories of IT professionals who have walked away from it all to setup restaurants, bakeries, dry cleaning stores, etc. only to seem them fail in a spectacular fashion.

The big question is what separates the crazy second career ideas that we all have from the ones that just might work? Business coach Pamela Slim believes that it’s not the idea, not the career that you are interested in, or even the market that you want to enter. Rather she believes that your success or failure in a second career really depends on you.

Second Career Success Secrets

Slim believes that you can separate your deeply held career urges from those that you pick up from watching an episode of “Dirty Jobs” one night by one simple fact: real second career desires don’t go away over time, they just get stronger. In fact, we can’t ignore them – they are always there.

Hey IT leader should you make the jump? Here’s the question that you have to ask yourself: no matter what job you have, your future will be filled with uncertainty, doubts, and you are  going to find yourself working very hard to keep your head above water. When you reach the end of the race, how much is it going to matter to you if you gave the second career a go or if you let it just remain a passing thought? Answer this question and you’ll know what your next steps need to be as you work to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Oh, by the way, my friend Mark is still slaving away at his IT job. He continues to dream about a music career, but he loves his regular paycheck more.

Questions For You

If money wasn’t an issue, what job would you be doing today? What makes that job more attractive to you than your current job? Have you ever taken steps to experience what it would be like to work at that other job full-time? What would it take financially for you to switch over to that job? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Would you be showing up in shorts and flip-flops? How about jeans and a T-shirt? Well why don’t you? The answer to this question is something that we normally don’t spend a lot of time thinking about, but because it can have a big impact on our careers, perhaps we should…

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Posted in career | 2 Comments »

IT Leaders Want To Know About : Non-compete Clauses

Thursday, June 4th, 2009
Noncompete Clauses Can Be A Hassle For IT Leaders

Non-compete Clauses Can Be A Hassle For IT Leaders

(Hopefully it goes without saying that I’m not a lawyer and this blog posting is in no way to be considered legal advice. If you’ve got further questions, go get yourself the best lawyer your money can buy…)

Did you even know that something called an “Non-compete Clause” existed? It turns out that you may have signed one when you started your current job (it differs from company to company). This piece of paper basically spells out the legal agreement between you and the company – they want you to stay and they want to scare you into not leaving.

What Is In A Non-Compete Clause?

Willie Jones over at the IEEE’s Spectrum magazine has been doing some digging on just what non-compete clauses mean. Non-clauses were invented in order to protect a company’s intellectual property. Basically they don’t want employees leaving and divulging trade secrets to their competition.

Once again, this is going to differ from company to company. A non-compete clause generally has 3 basic types of limitations built into it: geographical, time, or line of business.

How Do Courts Feel About Non-compete Clauses?

You would think that once you have signed one of these things, that’s it, right? Well, not really. Courts take a hard look at such contracts. In each case when there is an issue, the courts try to balance the issue of trade secrets being divulged to a competitor against an employee’s basic right to work. Courts try to make sure that a non-compete clause does not place an unreasonable restriction on a worker’s ability to earn a living.

If a court does find that you signed a non-compete clause that was too restrictive, then they can void the clause – you are free! Note that where the case is being heard is important – in California, courts often refuse to enforce such agreements.

What This All Means To You

If you decide to leave your IT job and you’ve signed a non-compete clause you need to be aware of what the ramifications may be. If you go work for a firm that is competing with your current employer and you are going to be doing the same sort of job, then there is a good chance your old employer will go to court to stop you from working for the new company.

How successful they will be is unclear before the trial. A lot depends on what state this is taking place in and just how restrictive the non-complete clause that you signed was. Once final point to consider is that when push comes to shove, your old employer may not want to risk having its trade secrets come out during a lengthy trial. These are all things to consider carefully as you work to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Questions For You

Do you know if you signed a non-compete clause when you started your current job? How restrictive is it? What does your company do when someone leaves to go work for the competition? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I bumped into one of my longtime friends last week, Mark, and he told me how unhappy he was at his IT job. He was feeling a great deal of guilt over this because his firm had just had yet another round of layoffs and he had been spared. He still had his job, but he hated it. What’s an IT Leader to do in this situation?

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Posted in career | No Comments »

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