Commentary

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Senior Writer, InformationWeek  

Is Tech Talent Getting Harder To Find?

There were almost 300,000 new IT jobs last year, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that doesn't surprise Bob Keefe, new president of the Society for Information Management. He says talent issues are the top challenge these days for his fellow CIOs.

There were almost 300,000 new IT jobs last year, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that doesn't surprise Bob Keefe, new president of the Society for Information Management. He says talent issues are the top challenge these days for his fellow CIOs."It's been very hard to recruit tech talent" at many companies, says Keefe, who started in his new post as SIM president on Jan. 1, but has previously served in other leadership roles at the senior-level tech professional organization.

Keefe, who's been in IT more than 25 years at companies like Kraft, ConAgra, Russell Corp., and Wyeth, is currently CIO at manufacturer Mueller Water Products in Atlanta.


More Global CIO Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

In his new SIM role, Keefe will help the group continue a mission launched a couple of years ago: getting the word out to college and high school students -- as well as guidance counselors -- that IT is a promising field for building a career, despite the bad rap it's been getting in recent years.

"Yes, there are some jobs that are being offshored, but the preponderance aren't," he says. Similarly, in manufacturing -- an industry where the offshoring of jobs has probably been most prevalent -- there are shortages of some very key talent, such as engineers. "Even if an engineer can fog up a mirror, we'll hire him," Keefe quips about how tough that talent market has become.

But back to IT talent. SIM's annual survey last fall about top CIO concerns also highlighted the worry about recruiting, developing, and retaining IT people. That issue topped the list, followed by related challenges, including building business skills among techies.

And without an adequate infusion of new people into the business tech field, it'll be difficult for companies to build bench-strength for coming talent needs, especially when it comes to preparing people for future leadership roles.

SIM is addressing those issues as an organization, says Keefe. Last year the group upgraded its Web site so that members can better share information and insight beyond their regional SIM chapters.

"We're making it more of a community experience," he says. Also regional leadership forums help SIM members "move to the next level" in leadership preparedness and up the career ladder, he says. "I send someone from my staff to these each year." So, what is your company doing to meet its present and future talent needs?


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links