Techies need more business skills, says job guide – February 2007

IT workers need to become more business-savvy, move up the management ladder and keep up with the latest technical skills if they are to avoid being outsourced, according to the Outsourcing Survival Guide by recruitment company ITJobBoard.com. This warns that outsourcing is too significant a trend for anyone who works in the IT industry to ignore and that it should be factored into career progression.

Stronger business skills make an IT worker less likely to be outsourced, as will having genuine expertise in the company’s business processes. Technology skills will not be enough. You will be expected to have business process expertise and be very user-oriented. Hybrid business technologists are the future of IT. Being one will increase your value to your business, and so make it less likely that your role will end up overseas.

The roles most likely to be in demand in the future include technical architect, project manager and system or business analysts. There is also likely to be a growth in commercial managers who are expert at managing relationships with outsourcing and offshore suppliers, according to the Guide.

Moving up the management ladder into more senior technical and non-technical roles is also a sure-fire way of avoiding being outsourced.

Ray Duggins, MD of ITJobBoard.com, said in a statement: “if you keep ahead of the market, recognise that there is an increasing need for techies to understand business and use this knowledge to enhance your career, it’s likely that you will be perceived as an asset which makes taking your position outside the organisation less tenable.”

Contact Brinley Platts on 07973 745 640 at CIODEVELOPMENT.COM to find out how you can engage your colleagues and team on the issues raised by this article.