Skills in demand

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12 December 2016

Muldoon believes that the industry and our institutions are simply not doing a good job of encouraging young students. “A career in IT? The first thing the kids think of is coding and maths  and software development — and that’s what they will indeed study in college. Yet everybody already in IT understands what a broad field it really is, with multiple possible career paths to suit individual personalities, talents and skills. We are simply not selling that diversity of opportunity.”

ida-renaud-cpl_web

The days of the lonely developer or technician huddled away with a headset are simply gone. It’s not that brainpower and skills have gone away — maths and data analysis and all sorts of complexity are part of the modern enterprise. But that combination of specialist skills and teamwork is essential, Ida Renaud, CPL

Career under-investment
His views are generally endorsed by Jim Friars of the ICS, someone with an industry-wide view. “Organisations generally are under-investing in career paths. The technology itself is a given in all organisational processes today and we all know how rapidly it changes. But the tech skills are also evolving. An IT professional career means constant learning, new skills and an awareness of where the needs are for organisations. That is why ICS is putting a huge emphasis on CPD [Continuous Professional Development] and encouraging its corporate members to participate in developing resources by creating career paths for their IT staff.”

“New titles and ‘jobs’ pop up all the time, like CDO and all that. Frankly, they will come and go and be superseded, because really they are just the signs of organisations trying to define the roles that are currently valuable to them. We are all still trying to establish IT as a profession, and that is why the EU e-Competence Framework came into being as a reference for 40 specific competencies. That enables organisations to measure their current resources and match skills with their strategic intent. In ICS we are also trying to get organisations to understand and invest in their IT professionals’ career paths.”

The industry has recognised the need to focus at least as much on the human side as on the IT. In fact, the range of skills that can be valuable is very wide and can certainly include quite old-fashioned elements like physical security, good access control procedures and so on. That often is precisely the kind of thing that can be easily overlooked by those that are more naturally focussed on the tech side, Dr Jessica Barker, Cyber UK

ICS has identified a range of skills that are essential to career progress for tech professionals, from data protection to accounts and financial management to leadership. “Few of those are directly IT-related but they are what any progressive manager should be comfortable with. This is also where IT has fallen down so far. We have tended to concentrate on being functionaries, specialists. But those functions have changed and evolved.”

Coding buzz
Friars points to the current buzz around coding. “Everybody growing up should know about coding, apparently. But no, they don’t. Coding is no panacea. It may be part of the answer and certainly we need and should encourage talented coders. But that is not what the IT profession is made up of in real life. How many IT professionals are actively involved in coding or coding management today? We might be talking about 30% or so, probably at most.”

“The main point is that IT is maturing as a profession and developing a breadth and depth that goes way beyond the direct tech skills. The important role of business analysts is a good example. They have to understand the sector and the business processes. If they are purely techies, they will not succeed. Look at the MBA as a fourth level degree. It was developed in MIT for engineers, to fit them for business leadership. We should be looking at IT at third level as a technical degree that is the foundation training for a wide range of career paths, because that is the way the real world of work is evolving.”

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