Meandering up the corporate ladder

Meandering up the corporate ladder

 

By Ken Gagne on Fri, 09/21/2007 - 3:42pm

 

The shortest path up the corporate ladder may no longer be a straight line,
said David Foote, CEO and chief research officer of independent market
research company Foote Partners LLC.

 

"What is an IT Career Today?" was a workshop and four-person panel Foote
hosted and moderated Wednesday morning at Babson College. The speakers
looked at the changing definition of IT professional, what skills it
encompasses, and the changing trends in insourcing vs. outsourcing.

 

Many CIOs report a disconnect existing between the titles of their
employees, and the tasks those employees actually perform. This inaccuracy
reflects a change in the route employees take to get to the top. In the
past, when workers specialized in a single skill set, it was easy to simply
and appropriately label their responsibilities. But modern employees'
corporate progression now features more breadth as they traverse meandering
career paths. Workers no longer focus on a single skill but instead move
among different positions. In one career, someone may play the role of
vendor management, business process analyst, and enterprise architect --
jobs that normally do not lead from one to another, but which do produce a
more well-rounded employee.

 

Many recruiters consider this diversity a strength that confers adaptability
and big-picture decision-making skills. One panel speaker said that, when
hiring, she specifically looks for candidates who have undergone a job
rotation -- working within their company but outside their regular position
and comfort zone. In another case, a field employee and corporate manager
swapped places. The field worker, used to relying on phone and e-mail, had
to learn to manage and act in person, while the manager had to develop
skills to communicate remotely. Both ended up more skilled as a result.

 

Despite encouraging this flexibility, some corporations are challenged to
classify the resulting jack-of-all-trades. Foote gave the example of one
company that categorizes all its staff into four groups: consulting; IT
architecture; IT specialist; or project management. That lack of
specialization is why Foote says companies should let people, not jobs,
define salaries. With over 5000 skills and innumerable combinations thereof
coming from people who have wandered across the corporate landscape, it's
impossible to accurately reward someone for doing a pigeonholed job (one of
only four kinds, in the above example), especially when the title isn't
going to match the person's talents and responsibilities anyway.

 

With so many skill sets available, I wish the conference had connected to
whether we might best find such employees: via insourcing, or outsourcing
(either offshore and otherwise). There seems to be a growth in the former,
and I'm curious to know if it represents a backlash against outsourcing --
that is, whether those who have practiced outsourcing with an eye on the
bottom line have experienced a decrease in employee talent and diversity as
a result.

 



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