Hire From Your Vendors And Consultants
Quintiles provide services to pharmaceutical companies such as running their clinical drug trials. So IT has always been critical to the operation. Now CIO Richard Thomas is trying to make IT a
direct driver of revenue by selling as an online service the software portfolio and workflows it uses for those tasks. To do that, he had to change his IT organization. Quintiles had a strong back-office, but it needed people with more of an outward focus. So, Quintiles has hired more people with experience in IT vendors and IT service companies, where there's a "mindset of serving customers," Thomas says.
Says Thomas: "We look for folks that have a good track record, but then everyone does that. We look for intelligence, for motivation, for drive, for folks willing to put themselves into scenarios that might be alien to them, and who will succeed in that environment. You don't find these folks generally in regular, back-office IT, you find them in the innovative tech firms and working on the front lines with revenue generating IT."
Lesson for job seekers: IT pros can parlay their skills, as more companies are embedding IT into their products and giving IT more of a customer-facing role.
Recommended Reading
More IT Pros Find Jobs, Report Suggests
How To Catch Recruiters' Eyes On LinkedIn
Top CIO Worry: People Problems
Tech Industry May Face H-1B Visa Shortage
Microsoft: Thousands Of IT Jobs Going Unfilled
Health IT Group Pushes Tax Incentives For Jobs
Tech Vendors Pledge 100,000 IT Jobs To Veterans
HR And IT Take On New Talent Challenge