InformationWeek

2000: Year Of Opportunity

Some companies are hiring from the outside to fill their millennium top spot

Edited by Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Issue date: Feb. 3, 1997

Although the year 2000 problem is only a temporary crisis, it is giving some IS professionals a chance to enhance their careers for the long haul by overseeing critical, high-profile projects created to address the problem.

"Someone who gets the shot at overseeing these projects also gets the opportunity to be exposed to all of a company's systems and business operations," says Steve Mader, managing director at the Boston office of Christian & Timbers, a national IT executive placement firm based in Cleveland. "It's a chance to prove oneself."

While many companies are naming, hiring, and promoting directors or managers to oversee year 2000 projects, Mader says his firm is getting some requests to fill executive-level posts responsible for assuring the success of such jobs.

Among the prerequisites for those positions are heavy application development or programming expertise, analytical thinking, and a proven track record in handling strategic projects. Salaries for directors of such projects range from $150,000 to $175,000 a year--or "a little more for VP-level positions," Mader says. "These people must take responsibility for a diverse array of systems and processes in a company," he adds.

After year 2000 projects are completed, the professionals who directed them "have something on their resum�s that might very well lead to a CIO or othe r top-level IT post," Mader says.

Although some companies are looking internally for the talent to run year 2000 projects, others are hiring from the outside. For example, Lexis-Nexis, an online information provider in Dayton, Ohio, recently hired George Meinke, aformer program manager who had experience supervising a variety of projects on critical U.S. Air Force systems.

"It took us about three months of looking before we found the right candidate with the combination of skills we thought necessary for this very serious job," says Lexis-Nexis senior IS director Larry Kuzman.

Meanwhile, Meinke was attracted by the complicated nature of Lexis-Nexis' year 2000 mission.

"I was absolutely not looking for a year 2000 situation-but I was looking for a complex project to manage," says Meinke, who most recently worked as an independent consultant for a defense contractor. "This turned out to be the kind of challenge I was hoping to find." Meinke says he was drawn to the job by its tight scheduled de mands and the need for precision. "This is the kind of job where you have to ensure that all the pieces come together."

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