IT Labour Shortages, Jobs on the Rise: Need for Professionalism--professional certification

Canadian IT Manager — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 21:11:56 GMT

I&rsquo;m seeing a rise in job demand and an IT labour shortage. Increased productivity, efficiency,...

Eight Career Tips {Life lessons}

Canadian IT Manager — Thu, 18 May 2006 16:29:39 GMT

I received an e-mail yesterday if I could share some of the roles I have undertaken and then provide...

re: Multi-IT Specialist with Business Acumen= A Versatilist

Stephen Ibaraki — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 20:49:37 GMT

Barry, you make some interesting points and it’s good that you are taking ownership and control over your future. I believe there’s a lot to be gained by incremental improvements on a continual basis. I often advise IT pros to assess their situation at least monthly and look at opportunities to move forward. Ask yourself, “How can I add and gain value and what do I need to do to grow?” This is the hard part since growth means discomfort. In fact, if I’m feeling too comfortable (and I assess daily), I know I’m not growing. I recommend doing a self SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis is something companies should be doing regularly to ensure differentiation, and competitiveness. However, the same principles apply to career growth for an IT professional. It something I talked about at the last career day conference where I was the keynote.

So what is a self-SWOT analysis?
You assess your own personal Strengths, Weakness—this is the SW part of (SW)OT. These terms are self-explanatory. Then you also analyze external Opportunities and Threats—this is the OT portion of SW(OT). When I say external, I mean coming from the environment around you. External opportunities are events, trends, changes occurring that allow you to grow your career. Threats are disruptive forces that can stall your career. The key is to match your personal strengths against new external opportunities. If there are new opportunities that you can’t take advantage of since you don’t have the required skills then the skills you lack are weaknesses. I recommend working on overcoming these weaknesses so they become strengths. You also should work on reducing or countering external threats. The prior shift to outsourcing of more commoditized jobs was a threat. To reduce this, you would acquire skills in areas that are difficult to outsource such as those that are mission critical to the organization. Typically, this would require taking a more business focus outlook. I should note that the trend towards outsourcing is reversing (in some areas) and moving these functions inside the organization, especially if they are critical to business agility.

Let me work through an example of a self-SWOT analysis. Mary as an IT pro is great at acquiring new skills since she has to stay current with constantly evolving IT trends. This is a strength. The movement towards a more business focus in IT roles is an external opportunity. Mary takes courses in business and works towards her I.S.P. to take advantage of this new opportunity. Mary is reluctant to interface with business workers and has difficulty in making presentations. This is a weakness so she starts taking courses in communications, and joins a speaking club where she can improve her skills. In her job when there’s a request to make a presentation before business managers, she volunteers applying her conquered weakness to these opportunities where she can gain recognition outside of her domain for her valuable skills. 40% of IT specialist jobs are being eliminated. This is an eternal threat so Mary looks to broadening her skill set outside of the specialist area and starts studying business process management. Mary conducts this self-assessment every month and makes changes.

As one final note, I encourage executives to demonstrate leadership in the professionalism and career area.

Thank you,
Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P.

re: Multi-IT Specialist with Business Acumen= A Versatilist

Barry — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 02:43:51 GMT

Thank you for taking the time to explain this all. I spent years as a developer but I want more. I also spend more time thinking about the business side in my job so this trend is inevitable. We see it but we don't do anything about it? I don't see much coverage of this in the Canadian press. Why not? And as workers, we have to take responsibility and work hard as individuals to support this. Why don't we? It's about time, computer people stop complaining and take action. It's up to us! There's a path and it's outlined in the blogs appearing here. I can see the benefits of gaining the broader jobs and experience you outline. I will take an MBA next and it has it costs; so I know pursuing a professional certification will require this too. All the professions has associated costs--some have yearly costs exceeding several thousand and I'm prepared for this. It's time we take this and run with it! If we screw this up we only have ourselves to blame...