itmanagersjournal.com — Some organizations, in spite of their best efforts, are not able to attract high-caliber IT personnel. In the increasingly competitive world of business, IT plays a critical role in the success of the enterprise. Failing to attract highly skilled IT employees takes a competitive toll over time.
Apr 10, 2006 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountApr 10, 2006
The places where we work for are looking for IT blend with business background kind of people to lead and mange their IT business. You are right, IT is playing a huge role in savings and efficiencies across their organization and the sector. Get your business degree my friends. Its a growing market with your IT talents, you can live rich!-G<a class="user" href="http://www.oozm.com">http://www.oozm.com</a>
calgarytechguyApr 10, 2006
@DougThat is because most IT managers don't know anything about IT. They get the candidate requirements from a list of technologies that they heard someone talking about, usually a marketing guy for a vendor, and then they put it all down in the mandatory column. Then they decide that they need someone that has had experience with that technology since before its inception (10 years .Net experience). What people should be looking for is a person with solid skills and that has shown the ability to learn and apply the new technologies.
bloodguardApr 10, 2006
A company that I won't name has been aggressively trying to lure me away from my current job and the project manager is moaning that they can't hold onto anyone good. I finally give in and say I’ll come in and talk to them. An HR drone calls and tells me I have to interview with: Development Team: 6 people. 2 hour group interview. All project managers: 5 people. 2 hour group interview. All division directors: 4 x 30 minute one on one interviews. And if *anyone* veto's me at any step HR stops the process and pushes me out the airlock.I politely declined to go further. I can understand wanting to get the right fit but geeze.
mrkiteApr 10, 2006
All managers want the same: someone that practically knows everything. Not just that, but they want someone who knows the business they're hiring for, no matter how specific.That's why people cram everything onto their resume' even if they don't know it very well. It only hurts everyone in the end. Hiring managers need to look at the position carefully before posting the requirements. If the person is going to be coding in C 85% of the time and using a specific compiler, source code management system, and bug tracking, put that on the darn job requirements! No need to put Java or .NET if you're not going to be doing it. Sheesh. Every job I've ever gotten in this business lists all these technolgies that I should know, only to find out that I end up doing the same boring thing over and over for years.
siekosunfireApr 11, 2006
@middlemanI'm a bit ignorant when it comes to IT, as I've rarely dealt with them in the past, but what common tasks do most IT 'professionals' conduct on a daily basis? Just from an eduacational standpoint, a Bachelors in CIS, from someplace like the University of Florida, only requires a programming class at the level of intro data structures (hash tables, binary/red-black trees, linked lists, graphs, etc.) and very little beyond that in terms of programming and computer knowledge. So aside from a small amount of programming and computing experience, what exactly is needed for a job in IT?Correct me if I am wrong, but when I think of an IT 'professional' I think of someone who could rewrite SIMNET (<a class="user" href="http://simnet.isi.jhu.edu/)">http://simnet.isi.jhu.edu/)</a> and revamp it for simulating attacks on a network and use it to model attacks (the program really sucks as it is), work with other IT 'professionals' to create an in-house distribution of a firewall application for any servers and workstations, manage servers, keep down-time to a minimum, offer insight to what the company needs in terms of new technology, and even provide some measure of clustering for CPU-hungry applications (for those companies that do a lot of heavy computations, like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, etc.).
jzimmermanApr 11, 2006
I have a suggestion to deal with "SPAM" comments that actually contain useful data or a valid point.When you find one...1) Digg it down2) copy the info (minus the spam link)3) Paste it into your reply with quotations around it4) Put -"-spam removed" underneath the quotation and move onEventually people might catch on.And make sure you never click on their spam link (otherwise they won't care if they are hated as long as they get traffic).
molecoolApr 11, 2006
I just went through exactly such an interview process at an IT department belonging to one of the medical institutions here in Los Angeles (fill in your best guess ;-) What can I say - the entire process took 6 weeks and they:a) interviewed me as a group(6 people)b) loved me and invited me for a 2nd interview 2 weeks laterc) CTO loves me and they want me to 'go through the process'd) I have to get fingerprinted and fill out a huge web based application, although I was sent there through a recruitere) I wait 2 weeks for the results of the background check - it's fine, now they want me to send referencesf) it takes them over a week to check my references, now they are ready to make me an offerg) offer comes in - it's $15k lower than what my recruiter told me 6 weeks ago - I refuseAnyway, you get the drift - I've been a consultant for 10 years and this has by far been the worst experience I've ever had. Funny thing is that the CTO told me that they're having a hard time finding 'qualified people'. For some reason I am NOT surprised!! :-)