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Golf balls run amok and ping around a warehouse in an amusing new DHL commercial. A distraught warehouse manager phones the shipping giant to reroute correspondence and packages, while a booming voice pledges that DHL has adopted a renewed focus on customer service -- a promise that will extend clear down to IT personnel manning help desks and scrambling to provide technical support.
IT hiring figures are expected to dip slightly in the coming year, so you'll be getting a flood of résumés for every job opening you have. From those, hiring executives will pluck people with the strongest combination of technical and business skills. For instance, knowing how to help a call center agent navigate malfunctioning pop-up screens will no longer be enough. Instead, DHL and other big companies want tech support staffs to prioritize and understand why jumping on a problem quickly is a mission-critical must.
Essentially, CIOs are looking for the "Renaissance" IT professional -- for instance, the individual with sharp skills in the Cobit (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology) framework for governing IT and evaluating internal system controls, and a good feel for internal business processes. Proof that a potential hire is well-rounded might include five in-demand skills recently identified in Computerworld's latest quarterly Vital Signs survey of IT trends: programming acumen, project management experience, IT-business analysis know-how, security savvy and technical support skills.
"For us, 2007 will be a year of focusing on what is really important to our company as a whole and what will bring us the most value," says Jim Niemann, vice president of DHL Express IT in San Francisco. "In past years, we've tried to solve every problem in the book. Now we are working those projects that show true bottom-line value."
To address the most pressing and critical challenges in 2007, DHL and other major corporations are looking for employees who can help establish priorities, roll up their sleeves and take action, Niemann says.
1. Well-rounded tech chops
While today's IT job seekers need to develop strong communication skills and shrewd business sense, they must still have stellar technical backgrounds.
"Large organizations have traditionally focused on specialists," says Tom Carpenter, president of Sysedco, an IT training, staffing and consulting company in Dayton, Ohio. "However, this seems to be trending toward what I call 'deep generalists.' These are individuals who have in-depth knowledge in two or three areas but complement this with broad knowledge in both technical and business areas."
Corporate leaders will also begin looking for programming, application development and other technical skills in the portfolios of those farther up the chain of command, adds Dan Twing, vice president of research and consulting at EMA Inc., a St. Paul, Minn.-based consulting firm that focuses on the technology and business management needs of utility, public works and manufacturing organizations.
Twing suggests that midlevel managers seek certification in the hottest technical areas, such as Cobit, ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) best practices, CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) processes and the Six Sigma quality assurance framework. "These certifications might only yield pay premiums of 10 percent to 15 percent, but the training will make the candidate stand out and be more competitive in a crowded marketplace," he says.
Likewise, for hands-on programmers and others constructing core enterprise systems, a firm grasp of the big picture is essential, notes Susan Merritt, dean of the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Pace University in New York. "The ideal candidate has at least a baccalaureate degree in computer science or a related field. He or she must also know how to build and 'read' software as well as have a good overview of systems and services," she says.
2. Project management prowess
DHL boldly asks on national TV, "Whatever happened to customer service?" The answer, offers Niemann, lies partially in the current dearth of project ownership. "For us, project management is a skill we consider a core competency and one we demand of all of our senior IT people around the world," he says. "It used to be the case that we would hire a program manager and that would be it. Now we realize this is a skill set we all need to have."
Applicants looking to become agile project managers should cut their teeth in the real world, not in the classroom, advises Andrew Field, CEO of PrintingForLess.com in Livingston, Mont. "If I were to make a recommendation to an IT person trying to sharpen skills, it would not be to run out and get an MBA. It would be to lead a project team and get something like that on your résumé," he says. "Even if it is a small team, just prove not only that you can do things yourself, but also that you can get others to do things for you."
Self-starters will likely take the lead in the enterprise quest to blanket an IT shop with project management know-how, adds Brendan Courtney, senior vice president and group executive of IT recruiting firm Spherion Professional Services in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "Volunteer for a project; get involved in business networking groups; perform work beyond the job you were hired to do," he suggests.
3. Critical thinking
With data warehouses bursting at the seams, enterprise IT shops are crying out for business analysts and others able to link IT efforts with corporate missions. "There is so much data available everywhere that we need business intelligence analysts. There will also be a greater need for high-level business relationship managers," observes Eric Fowler, a senior corporate recruiter on the human resources/talent acquisition team at Columbus, Ga.-based Aflac Inc., a Fortune 500 health insurance company.
"Critical thinking is also very important to us," says Niemann. "We are looking for people who can execute what you ask them to execute. We want them to have an opinion, speak up when they may not be going in the right direction, tell us to take a left here instead of a right to get there faster. Rote workers are not what we are looking for."
4. Security sharpness
High-profile security breaches and the specter of security audits that stem from daunting new regulations have hiring officials scouting for talent with sound security credentials and experience, says Carly Drum, managing director of Drum Associates Inc., a New York-based executive recruiting firm.
"Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 passed its fourth anniversary in July," Drum says," the need for security, risk management and compliance specialists has put executive-level information security officers in even greater demand. These positions can't be offshored and require an underpinning in security as well as good analytical and program management skills."
The stepped-up hunt for job applicants with security experience is tied to the ways corporations now house and share information, says Larry Bruce, vice president of Woburn, Mass.-based IT staffing firm Sapphire Technologies LLC. "Security jobs are in very high demand right now, and we expect this trend to continue. As businesses increasingly rely on Web-based information sharing, security replacements are remaining high on corporate priority lists," he s