CIOs Must Take Lead to Address IT Skills Gap

The chief information officer is at the forefront of addressing a critical issue impacting nearly all organizations today: the IT skills gap. 

Providing a clear career path for IT professionals is essential, with many IT workers seeking continuous skill development and staying current with the latest technologies. 

CIOs must therefore not only focus on acquiring talent but also on retaining it by offering growth and development opportunities. This involves competing with tech companies that offer more attractive experiences and career development paths, as well as large outsourcing providers that offer broader skill development opportunities. 

Sarika Attal, vice president of enterprise architecture, tech services and store platforms and interim CTO for pizza chain Papa Johns, explains that CIOs are responsible for not only their team members’ work but also their growth. 

“Through understanding where their teams stand and the problems they face, it’s our job to help connect the two and lay out a feasible plan to help find solutions while encouraging the growth of employees,” she says.  

At Papa Johns, space is made for ongoing learning and training opportunities on the platforms they use. “For example, during conferences like Google Next, we have a community of architects and engineers block calendars and attend live sessions,” Attal says.  

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She adds that by placing an importance on how technology informs and leverages the business strategy, more potential is created for the team to tackle the “big work” and solve the challenges of the rapidly evolving restaurant tech landscape. 

“We also offer curated training paths to help team members meet their goals for the next role," she says. 

There are several local/regional conferences with a variety of topics (technical and non-technical) that the team attends in groups to share learning experiences. 

Buck the Degree Focus 

Adam Jackson, CEO of Braintrust, argues that the focus on formal qualifications -- i.e., the degree -- is misguided. 

“Expensive college degrees say nothing about your technical ability,” he explains in an email interview. “It’s all about skills and experiences. What have you accomplished?” 

Jackson points out that the pace of technological innovation today is warp speed, with some of the skills possible to learn on YouTube, while others take years of study and on the job experience. 

“CIOs need to be addressing both -- creating a culture of learning among their teams and bringing in the right talent fast who will get the job done,” he says. “Because if they don't, someone else will.”  

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Marc Tanowitz, managing partner, advisory and transformation, West Monroe, says that a good CIO maintains a portfolio of managed services and contingent labor providers to source the talent necessary for delivering capabilities. “These stakeholders are crucial as they provide the specific technical skills required for various projects, such as cloud security or network skills,” he explains in an email interview.  

He adds that successful IT leaders understand the importance of distinguishing between managing talent and managing outcomes. “They know when to directly oversee the talent acquisition process and when to focus on the desired results,” he says.  

This strategic approach allows them to effectively address the IT skills gap by leveraging the expertise of external providers while ensuring that the outcomes align with the organization's goals 

Upskilling in the AI Era 

Attal says in the era of AI, where tech is changing at a faster pace than ever, upskilling is an existential trait. “We partner with our platform providers to create curated training paths to get folks upskilled, for example from a traditional network engineer to a cloud network engineer role,” she says. 

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Through Papa John's “Dough & Degrees” program, engineers have acquired their associate, bachelor’s and master’s degree. “The technology leadership team ensures the ambitious engineers get the support they need to acquire these degrees,” Attal says.  

Tanowitz says that CIOs need to establish a clear path for continuous skill development for their IT staff, allowing them to learn new skills that are hot in the market. “If IT leaders are simply looking for what skills are hot today, they’re going to end up missing what’s hot tomorrow,” he says. 

From his perspective, the most challenging aspect of a CIO’s role is to ensure their team can capture the next skill. 

He says CIOs can measure the effectiveness of their initiatives to address the IT skills gap by looking at the quality of their outcomes. This includes evaluating the efficiency of the product release process and assessing the quality of the IT products being delivered. 

Key indicators of success are metrics such as uptime, defect rates, response times, user acceptance or any outcome that a business has intended to provide. 

“If these metrics are positive and the IT products are high quality, then it's a good indication that the skills gap is being effectively addressed,” Tanowitz says.