CIOs need more non-IT skills

Added by The Editor, 5 months ago.

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You may be up to speed on where virtualisation is taking your business or how a new suite of business intelligence tools will help staff at your organisation to access key metrics, but how good are you at financial management or business process analysis?

By 2010, chief information officers (CIOs) will need experience of non-IT business areas if they are to develop their careers, according to research from analyst Gartner. In fact there is already a growing trend for new CIOs to take on duties in areas other than straight technology, according to Gartner analyst Ken McGee.

"Candidates are not required to have formal technology-oriented backgrounds but they must be able to show that they have managed a non-technical business unit," said McGee. "Professional qualifications and competence are still necessary for those wanting to become CIOs, but these qualities will not be sufficient in coming years."

Gartner's report is based upon interviews with the heads of recruitment at four of the world's largest headhunting firms. Together these firms place roughly half the CIOs joining the world's 1,000 largest companies each year.

Comments

There are currently 3 comments about this blog.

Victoria, 5 months ago

Gary, you may be right. The annual global CEO study from PricewaterhouseCoopers (http://www.pwc.com/extweb/home.nsf/docid/2AE969AC42DD721A8525725E007D7CF2) found that organisations were struggling to find people with enough hard technical and business experience. So perhaps those CIOs that arm themselves with enough technical and business experience will find that they're not only better equipped to fit the CIO role in the future, but also the top CEO job.

GaryE, 5 months ago

Yes, they're having to spend more time searching for qualified staff in the midst of an IT skills shortage ! Seriously though, are we finally seeing the move of CIOs towards a more CEO-oriented role (which has been predicted for years but not really come to bear) ? Soon we'll be seeing CEOs with technical skills !

Tamara Little, 5 months ago

I agree - and as someone who specialises in recruitment, I think a lot of candidates (not just those in IT) would really benefit from working across different departments in their organisation to understand how the business works as a whole. It's the basis of most graduate recruitment schemes and there's no reason why it should be limited to graduates.