Posts Tagged ‘information technology jobs’

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Dealing With High Worker Expectations Requires Real IT Leadership

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

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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.

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

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 »

Staffing Diversity Challenges IT Leaders

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

IT Leaders Need To Manage Diversity In Their Teams<br><div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/clevercupcakes/2980544017/"><a rel="cc:attributionURL" href=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?

The Problem

Most IT departments are no longer single site operations. In fact, with the growth of outsourcing a single IT department may now have offices in multiple countries: China, India, Russia, etc. This type of distributed operation is a great way to ensure that more work gets done at a lower price; however, it also poses a significant staffing challenge for IT Leaders.

It’s all too easy to think that we can take a few high-performing IT Leaders from the U.S., plunk them down in one of our remote offices and have them be a an effective leader. The reality is that all too often, this doesn’t work. If you haven’t groomed someone on your team to step in and run / interface with a remote office, then they aren’t going to be able to do it.

In the U.S., IT managers are encouraged to use frank talk and direct confrontation in order to deal with team issues. However, especially when dealing with teams in Asis, this can come across as being rude and offensive.

What’s An IT Leader To Do?

The trick to solving IT staffing challenges for remote offices or just to deal with remote offices is to create what the experts call a “talent plan“. Doing this will allow you to provide unique levels of value to your remote IT offices.

The first part of a talent plan is to identify what positions on your team you are going to have to fill and what types of cultural skills those  positions are going to require. It’s important to note that it’s not always necessary to hire a person of a given nationality in order to deal smoothly with a remote office that has other staff members of that nationality. Finding someone who is sensitive to that nationality and who has dealt with them before can fill this need.

Filling a position to manage a remote office should not be a sudden effort. IT Leaders realize that every position will eventually need to be filled because the person in that spot now will be promoted, let go, or will move on. A key part of any talent plan is to early on identify who the potential replacements are. This allows an IT Leader to take the time to make sure that the potentials get an opportunity to get trained in both the skills and the corporate values that they will need if they fill the position.

Final Thoughts

Staffing mistakes can be very expensive and picking the wrong person to lead a remote IT office or to interface with such an office can flat out be disastrous. IT Leaders realize that if they wait until the last minute when an position suddenly has to be filled, then it will be too late to do it correctly.

Instead, if they take the time to create a talent plan then their investment of upfront time and effort into grooming the right replacements will ensure that the correct staffing decisions are made. Learning to add diversity management to your IT team will mean that you will have found a way to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Even in tough economic times, IT Leaders are still concerned about losing talent. Studies are showing that we are losing our IT Leaders at a much faster rate than new ones are being produced. On top of this, up to 30 million managers and leaders are going to become eligible to retire in the next five years. How can an IT Leader help to replace these leaders?

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Posted in staffing | No Comments »

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.

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

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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Posted in recruiting | No 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 »

How Should IT Leaders Use Outplacement Services?

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Outplacement Services Can Help The Laid Off IT Leader

Outplacement Services Can Help The Laid Off IT Leader

Dang it, you’ve been let go. It really doesn’t matter the reason why – just the fact that your (former) employer decided that they could get along without your services can really sting. However, before the door swings close behind you for the last time, the ball is in still in your court and you need to know what to do with it.

As IT Leaders, we are a pretty arrogant bunch.  A recent survey by the global outsourcing firm Right Management found that seven out of 10 job seekers thought that they knew exactly what they needed to do in order to land their next job. However, once they went through the outplacement service, that number dropped down to two.

At most firms, when a layoff sweeps through and you get caught up in it, you will be offered the services of an outplacement firm. Many of us poo-poo this because for one reason or another we think that it won’t be of any help to us. That’s where you’d be wrong.

If you find yourself in this position, here’s what you need to do in order to make the most of the outplacement service that has been offered to you:

  • Don’t Drag Your Feet: You’ve been let go, get over it and don’t delay starting to use your outplacement service. The longer you wait, the more competition you will face.
  • Pick Your Consultant Carefully: You can always ask to meet with a different consultant so make sure that the one that you’ve got is the right one for you. Consider things like track record, background, experience in your industry, and of course their current workload.
  • Do Your Homework: You’ll probably be asked to complete personality tests and career assignments. Do them! This is the time for you to make sure that the next job that you get is really the right one for you.
  • Stuff Yourself: The outplacement firm probably offers many different types of classes, workshops, seminars, and networking events. This is your best chance to find out if things have changed and if your type of job is now located in different parts of other firms.
  • Don’t Work Remotely: Although in this day and age it is possible to work with your counselor online, try not to. Instead go into the office and meet with them face-to-face. This will help to build a stronger relationship with them and who knows what other professionals you’ll meet there.

Nothing can make the initial pain of being let go from your IT job hurt less. However, as with so many things in life, the pain fades over time. You need to make sure that you get moving right off the bat so that by the time your pain has faded, you are already in your next job.

Have you ever used outplacement services that were offered by your former employer? Did you have a good counselor? Did you choose to meet with them face-to-face or did you do most of it online? How did it all turn out for you? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in career | No Comments »

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