Communications of the ACM
Technical opinion
IT Managers' Requisite Skills
The skills possessed by IT managers in an organization reflect the degree to which the organization can transform its IT investment into competitive advantage and new strategic opportunities. However, some organizations have complained that their IT managers do not possess the skills required for such opportunities. Furthermore, IT skills tend to become obsolete even faster than ever before [1]. To understand the most up-to-date skill requirements for contemporary IT managers, the study reported here collected and analyzed 555 job advertisements posted on the corporate Web sites of Fortune 500 companies.
It is overwhelmingly recognized that the Fortune 500 companies are highly influential on the demand and supply of IT human resources in the U.S., which is why we chose this group for our study: empirical research concerning the skills important to IT managers in large corporations. In planning their future careers, applicants for IT manager positions in Fortune 500 companies need specific information about the skills required for employment, advancement, and professional accomplishment. While previous studies have examined the IT skill issue, this is one of the first that analyzed job ads from the Fortune 500. It is imperative for IT researchers and practitioners to investigate the skill requirements of these large corporations.
Data Collection
iLogos Research [3] reports that 81% of Fortune 500 companies announce their job openings on their corporate careers Web sites. The number of jobs on all of the Fortune 500 corporate Web sites is estimated to be three times greater than the number on any other online job boards, such as Monster and Hotjobs. Data was collected from Fortune 500 corporate Web sites every quarter from March 2001 through February 2003. For each quarter, no more than five job ads for IT managers were collected from each Web site. Part-time jobs and positions that seemed to be temporary or contract-based, such as IT project manager and IT testing manager, were excluded. A total of 555 job ads were collected: 182 in 2001, 299 in 2002, and 74 in 2003. At least one job ad was provided by each of 201 different companies from 42 states and Washington, D.C., during the two-year period.
Results
The basic analysis was performed to ascertain qualification requirements such as education, professional certification, and ability to travel. From the applicant's point of view, the basic requirements are explicit and necessary conditions to apply for the job. From the employer's perspective, these requirements are the gates that prevent unqualified applicants from applying for the job.
While about 75% (418) of job ads for IT managers collected specified the education requirements that should be met by their potential candidates, the remainder (137 ads) did not. The majority of the ads were looking for people who held at least a bachelor's degree (73.2%), as shown in Table 1. Only a small percentage of ads were looking for high school graduates (1.4%) or associate degree (0.7%) holders. This might be due to the fact the job ads collected were only from the Fortune 500. However, the message is so clear that IT job applicants with high school diplomas or associate's degrees can hardly expect to become IT managers in Fortune 500 companies. The master's degree, however, seems valuable for those seeking an IT manager job. Of the 555 job ads for IT managers, 132 ads (23.8%) mentioned master's degree holders as required or preferred.
It is well known that certifications make a positive impact on employers. The results indicate, however, that only 43 ads (7.7%) for IT managers mentioned certification. Companies listed in the Fortune 500 do not seem to appreciate the value of certifications for their IT managers. Moreover, these 43 ads emphasized that a professional certification was not a requirement but a plus. The limited advantage appears to come mainly from project management certification rather than from software- or hardware-related accreditation.
Of the 100 job ads (18%) that mentioned travel, 31 ads did not specify the percentage of working hours required for travel. These 31 ads described their travel requirement by mentioning phrases such as "some travel," "willing to travel," or "travel required." IT managers in the Fortune 500 are generally expected to travel both domestically and internationally. Note that the percentage of travel requirement varies from 0 to 90. Twenty-eight percent of the 100 job ads that mentioned "travel" were looking for road warrior IT managers, who are expected to travel more than 25% of their working hours. IT professionals change their employers very often; in fact, the average job tenure in IT is reportedly about 13 months. The high level of travel required for IT managers might be a possible contributor to the high turnover rate.
In-Depth Analysis
The list of skill requirements presented in Table 2 was developed based on the classification scheme proposed by Todd and his colleagues [4]. However, minor changes, such as the Internet and e-business, were added to reflect the time gap between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s. The figure here shows the overall trend by counting the number of ads that referred to each category at least once in the ad. At least 60% of ads mentioned phrases related to all the skills, except hardware. IT managers in the Fortune 500 are required to have technical and system skills as well as business skills. This result is somewhat surprising because most previous studies have considered the role of IT managers to be managerial and business oriented rather than technically oriented.
Technical skills. Under the class of technical skills, there are three skill categories: software, architecture/network, and hardware. The results indicate IT managers in the Fortune 500 perform their work on software (81.3%) and architecture/network (60.9%) more than on hardware (39.6%). It is noteworthy that 338 job ads (60.9%) mentioned either phrases or words related to architecture/ network at least once in the ad. It is clear that IT managers in the Fortune 500 work less on hardware such as PCs, peripheral devices, and servers, but more on architecture- and network-related systems, such as computer networking, client/server, mainframe, and security.
Of the six skills under the software category, packages (51.4%), general knowledge of software (42.2%), and database (31.2%) received the most attention. Packages ranged from Microsoft Office to SPSS. Oracle and SQL-Server were referred to by 61 (11.0%) and 13 (2.3%) job ads, respectively. Phrases and words related to data warehousing were found in 24 ads (4.3%) for IT managers. All the skills in the architecture/ network and hardware categories did not receive much attention from the Fortune 500. Less than 30% of job ads mentioned skills under these two categories.
The Business skills class includes three categories: management, social, and business. The number of ads that mentioned each of these three skills at least once in the ad was 547 (98.6%) for management, 513 (92.4%) for social skill, and 496 (89.4%) for business. Specifically, most attention was given to interpersonal skill (82.5%) as well as the general knowledge of business (87.9%) and management (87.6%). This result clearly indicates that Fortune 500 companies expect their IT managers to play managerial and behavioral roles.
IT managers must be people-oriented. Both interpersonal (82.5%) and communication skills (76.8%) were required by more than three-quarters of job ads, whereas applicants described as independent/self-motivated (22.7%) were sought in fewer than one-quarter of ads. Communication skills that appeared in the ads encompassed not only verbal skills, such as presentation and persuasion, but also non-verbal skills, such as writing and body language.
The main function of an IT department is to support other business functions such as accounting, finance, marketing, and production. For this reason, it is not surprising that functional knowledge was mentioned in 60% of the ads. It is surprising, however, that more than half the job ads for IT managers mentioned enterprisewide knowledge (51.2%). IT managers are required to understand not only business functions but also the whole business processes of the enterprise that connects those independent business functions. This result seems to be somewhat related to the adoption of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems such as SAP and Peoplesoft. ERP software has saturated the market, especially the Fortune 500 market. Electronic business, a newly evolving concept, drew little attention, as only 9.7% of job ads mentioned "electronic business" or "electronic commerce."
The System skills class includes two categories: development and problem solving. The figure indicates that phrases or words related to development and problem solving appear at least once in 546 (98.4%) and 498 (89.7%) advertisements, respectively. However, no specific skill under these two categories turned out to be very critical for IT managers. This result can be interpreted to mean that even though Fortune 500 companies do not typically require IT managers to possess specific skills for problem solving and development, they want their IT managers to have an overall understanding of the skills in these two categories. It should be noted, however, that such development skills as general knowledge of development, implementation, analysis, knowledge of technological trends, and operation/maintenance were mentioned in more than 60% of the ads, whereas no skill under the category of problem solving was mentioned in more than 50% percent of the ads surveyed.
Under the development category, the five skills that were mentioned in more than 60% of job ads were general knowledge of development (66.3%), implementation (65.9%), analysis (61.8%), knowledge of technological trends (61.1%), and operation/maintenance (61.1%). Although the percentages of ads are not as high for these five skills, the 42.3% of requirements for design is high enough for IT managers to pay attention to it. For such purposes as budgeting, technological directing, and leading technical projects, IT managers need to be very sensitive to technological trends. Such sensitivity is responsible for the employers' interest in applicants who are adaptive/flexible (48.3%). It is very true that "the way to mastery is the way of a permanent beginner [2]."
Almost 50% of job ads mentioned three skills under the category of problem solving: quantitative (49.4%), adaptive/flexible (48.3%), and customer-oriented (48.3%). Quantitative skills include budgeting, management science, mathematics, and statistics. The customer-oriented mindset is another requirement for IT managers who are otherwise very susceptible to changes driven by new business environments as well as by new technologies. This result is also consistent with recent trends indicating an IT department should no longer be a cost center but rather a service center for organizational customers. Almost four out of 10 ads mentioned technical expertise (39.6%). Although IT managers perform managerial tasks more than technical ones, it still seems important for them to have technical expertise. For example, IT managers need to assign technical jobs to their subordinates and, furthermore, must understand technical requests from users as well as other IT workers such as programmers, systems analysts, and network administrators.
Conclusion
This study represents one of the first attempts to investigate IT managers' skill requirements by analyzing job ads posted by Fortune 500 companies. From the analysis of the results, we could come to the conclusion that IT managers should possess both behavioral and technical skills; it is not either/or but both. By collecting data continuously, this study will attempt to contribute to a longitudinal study to delineate changes in IT skill requirements over time through turbulent changes in the business environment and technology.
References
1. Arnold, D. and Niederman, F. The global work force. Commun. ACM 44, 7 (July 2001), 3133.
2. Denning, P.J. Career redux. Commun. ACM 45, 9 (Sept. 2002), 2126.
3. iLogos Research. Where the Jobs Are: Fortune 500 Job Postings on Careers Web Sites and Major Job Boards. Recruitsoft, Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2002.
4. Todd, P.A., McKeen, J.D., and Gallupe, R.B. The evolution of IS job skills: A content analysis of IS job advertisements from 1970 to 1990. MIS Q. 19, 1 (1995), 124.
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