IT job skills that matter now

by Carolyn Duffy Marsan

December 20, 2007 —

All business. That's what network professionals need to be in 2008 if they want
to have the most profound impact at their companies.

The hottest skills for IT professionals to develop center on business acumen
rather than deeper technical expertise. Project management, financial analysis
and communications skills are in big demand, according to CIOs, recruiters and
IT staffing specialists.

Network professionals still need a solid technical foundation, of course. But
with limited time for professional development, they should hone their business
skills rather than pursue additional technical certifications, experts recommend.

"Companies love finding employees who can make sure that technology is
being used to deliver business value," says Matt Colarusso, branch manager
with Sapphire National Recruiting in Woburn, Mass. (See
an archived career chat with Colarusso.) "They are always looking for
people who can communicate, who can bring together the technical side with the
business side and the customer side."

"Technical skills are important, but companies need people who know how
to apply them," says David Foote, president of Foote Partners, which conducts
IT salary surveys nationwide. "Companies need people who understand how
to move the business forward, who have good instincts and a lot of business
knowledge...It's all about execution."

A recent survey of 130 CIOs and IT executives conducted by the Society for
Information Management (SIM) found that the top five skills for mid-level IT
hires are all business related. These include: ethics/tolerance, problem solving,
written/oral communication, collaboration and project leadership.

The SIM survey shows that business skills are needed further down the IT organizational
chart, says Steve Pickett, immediate past president of SIM and chairman of the
SIM Foundation. "More and more IT people are dealing directly with their
counterparts in the business. It's no longer just the top IT executives,'' says
Pickett, who also is CIO of Penske, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

One of the top CIO priorities was building business skills in the IT department,
the SIM survey found. In 17 years, this priority had never before been listed
among CIOs' top 10 concerns.

IT professionals "need to be able to dissect a business process and understand
what components of a business process will be impacted by technology,"
Pickett says. "Then they need to be able to sell the technology. They need
pretty good communications skills, pretty good organizational skills and pretty
good translation skills to do that."

What business skills to develop

Increasingly, CIOs say they need equally strong technical and business skills
on their IT staffs.

Jeff Ton, vice president of enterprise processes, information and technology
at Lauth Property Group in Indianapolis, says he's emphasizing communication
and teaching skills in his hiring for 2008.

IT technical skills that still matter

While business acumen may help you finesse your next great career move, technical
skills are still important, particularly in VoIP and security.

At Sapphire National Recruiting, the number of client requests for VoIP positions
increased more than threefold between 2006 and 2007, and the number of security
positions is up 153% during the same timeframe, says Matt Colarusso, a branch
manager for the Woburn, Mass., firm. (read our archived career chat with Colarusso).

"Cisco is the highest demand. We definitely see demand for VoIP, and
we see demand for network administrators who understand all parts of the network:
the LANs, WANs, voice, Internet and how they all work together," Colarusso
says. "Our clients are interested in people who have done VoIP implementations."

Plus, the demand for network professionals with security expertise has "hit
us in the face in the last 12 months," Colarusso says. "I don't remember
that being in the forefront in the last two quarters of last year."

"Network security management is huge," agrees David Foote, president
of Foote Partners, which conducts IT salary surveys nationwide. "In terms
of great networking skills that are going to help your career, I'm seeing VoIP,
unified communications, convergence and virtualization. I'm also seeing mobile
user support...and the ability to support hybrid networks, with Unix, Windows
and Linux."

Henry Eckstein, CIO of York Insurance Services Group in Parsippany, N.J., says
the technical skills he needs most on his IT staff are virtualization, storage-area
networking and network security.

"Our focus is on higher-level skill sets -- five to 10 years of experience
as opposed to two or three," Eckstein says. "The experience matters
as much as the skill sets. Certifications are important, but we've got a lot
of super people who didn't necessarily get their certifications or who let them
lapse."

Foote recommends that network professionals develop broad technical skills,
rather than becoming experts in one area.

"If you're going to be a technical specialist, you can't get away with
being deep in one area," Foote says. "You're going to need to be able
to work across the enterprise and across several platforms...God forbid if you
are too narrowly focused."

"We're finding good technicians, but the typical technician likes to sit
with their face to the computer and just code all day," Ton says. "We
really need folks who are willing and able to get out and interact with the
business leaders. We're trying to continue to break down the walls between the
business line folks and the technology employees."

Another key business skill that IT professionals should develop in 2008 is
project management, experts agree. Some CIOs recommend getting certified by
an organization such as the Project Management Institute.

"Project management skills are very, very helpful," says Henry Eckstein,
CIO of York Insurance Services Group, in Parsippany, N.J.. "You're more
likely to be able to trust somebody to handle complex projects if they have
project management skills, not just if they know how to use Microsoft Project."

Within the last two years, Sapphire's biggest clients have started requesting
IT professionals be trained in Six Sigma, a statistical technique developed
in the manufacturing industry that is being applied in IT departments for managing
projects, improving processes and cutting costs, Colarusso says.

Bob Veeneman, director of IT integrated planning at Blue Shield of California,
a health insurer in San Francisco, says he's looking for IT professionals who
understand business processes.

"It helps the IT organization to deal better with the business when the
business knows that the IT person they're looking at actually has knowledge
and maybe even experience in their business area," Veeneman says. "We
used to have IT people who were well versed in IT solutions, who would say to
build or buy this application. The business is saying that's not good enough."

That's why Blue Shield of California's CIO Elinor McKinnon is creating an internship
program that will let key IT professionals rotate into business units.

"It may make sense for us to recruit for our operations inside the organization
by going over to our business partners and asking them to profile people who
over the years have acquired systems knowledge and own a business process and
then bring them over to the IT world," Veeneman adds.

Blue Shield of California also is training 50 IT directors and managers in
Version 3.0 of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), an
IT management technique.

"If we invest in their education and applying the ITIL service catalog,
we're going to get managers who understand how to compute the cost of their
business or IT function," Veeneman says.

Finding the right balance

The key for network professionals is to strike the right balance between keeping
their technical skills current and polishing their general business skills,
experts say.

"If you have business skills but you don't have the technical skills,
you're going to come up with the wrong technical answer," Pickett says.
"Someone who has technical skills and can learn business is probably the
preferable choice."

IT folks don't need MBAs, Veeneman says, but they do need to understand how
business works.

"We're asking our IT people: How do you know there's a bona fide return
on investment? What would you do at the end of your effort to explain what benefits
were realized as a result of doing this effort?" Veeneman says. "Some
IT folks say: 'Why should I have to do this?' But that's the business."

So at the end of the day, what's more important for IT professionals: business
or technical skills?

"Business skills are becoming equally important because you have to be
selling your projects and justifying your expenditures and doing presentations,"
York's Eckstein says. "You have to understand how to read a balance sheet
and a profit and loss statement. You need effective technical writing skills
because there is a lot of interaction with the business....I'd rather have a
person with strong business skills than strong programming skills."

"If I had to pick one, I'd say business skills," Lauth's Ton agrees.
"I don't want to trivialize learning the technology, but I think the way
that technology is evolving is becoming more mainstream. The skills of understanding
the business and being able to apply technology to the business are paramount."

Network World