DEMAND/SUPPLY PROJECTIONS FOR INFORMATION …



Attracting, Developing and Retaining Information Technology Professionals

Henry Daniels

Evelyn Days

John Mayes

Kelly Richter

IS 6800: Management of Information Systems

Fall 2005

Table of Contents

I. Executive Summary

II. Introduction

a. What is an IT professional?

b. Talking With a CIO and a CPO

c. Why is there an IT Shortage?

III. Attraction

a. The Recruitment of IT Professionals

b. What Organizations are Looking for and How They Hope to Get It

c. The Big Picture

IV. Development

a. Training IT Professionals and Its Benefits

b. Transfer Learning

c. Public vs. Private

V. Retaining

a. Demand and Supply Projections

b. Inequality in Demand and Supply

c. What Does All This Mean and Why is it Important?

d. What Can be Done to Reduce Turnover

e. St. Louis County and Nexstar

VI. Conclusion

VII. References

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This paper examines the current trends in employment, necessary skills, and career aspirations of Information Technology (IT) professionals, specifically in the United States. With the increase of businesses operating on a global scale, technology and the professionals that are adept at using and manipulating it become more essential. Beginning with a general description of an IT professional, two specific, local organizations, St. Louis County government and Nexstar Financial Corporation, are introduced along with their various attraction, development and retaining practices.

Attracting qualified and dedicated IT professionals to your organization is an important step toward strengthening your company. Examinations of the actual recruitment of IT professionals, what various organizations are looking for in their professionals and the larger role IT professionals play in the organization are included. The information gathered in the interviews is presented throughout the paper to provide detailed examples of specific practices.

Developmentally, the training of IT professionals in your organization is beneficial and significant. It is also valuable for your IT professionals to transfer their learning from the training site to the job site. Specific examples of development of IT professionals from Nexstar and St. Louis County government are given.

Finally, the retention of your current, and fully trained, IT professionals is vital to the organization. After addressing the demand and supply projections for IT professionals, and examination of why it is necessary to retain current professionals and how to reduce employee turnover follows. By examining the current trends of education and employment of IT professionals, it is possible to suggest some best practices for attracting IT professionals to your organization, developing the IT professionals you have into truly skilled employees, and retaining those IT professionals within your organization.

INTRODUCTION

What is an IT Professional?

When most people think of Information Technology (IT) professionals, one of the first examples that comes to mind is the individual on the other side of the computer help desk. However, the IT profession is much more complex than that; it includes computer programmers, software engineers, architects, application specialists, systems specialists, systems analysts, database administrators, network systems analysts, and other types of specialists. In today’s job market, IT professionals are required to possess a variety of skills programming languages, like COBAL and Ada; database skills, like Oracle and Microsoft Access; operating systems, like UNIX and Windows/NT; and networking skills, such as Novell (5).

With such a vast array of specialization options coupled with the ever-increasing uses of technology in organizations, it is surprising to note that many of today’s students feel that information and computer sciences is not a career path worth pursuing. One of the more prevalent opinions of high school and college students is that only nerds and smart students choose computer sciences as a discipline to study (19). However, these same students did not view IT professionals as nerds or socially lacking (19). While this opinion is mostly based on a lack of information, this perception still exists and is just one of the factors contributing to the shortage of qualified IT professionals. For example, a 2005 survey of 1,100 Missouri college freshmen showed that only 53% of the participating students realized eight of the top ten fastest growing careers are in IT (19).

Talking with a CIO and a CPO

You can find Robert Bence sitting behind is desk in an unassuming office in the county government buildings located on Clayton Road. Mr. Bence has been the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the St. Louis County government for the past five years, previously working for Monsanto and SBC in a variety of occupations. Mr. Bence prefers to look at his position with the county as a role in a small-to-medium sized business instead of a governmental body, even though he realizes the government has fewer resources than the private sector with which to attract IT professionals. He has twenty-five IT professionals on staff, four of which report directly to him, and twenty-five to fifty more professionals provided through an outsourcer. This outsourcing seems contradictory to the perception of government, but it has been working extremely well for Mr. Bence and his organization. Currently the IT division of the organization is decentralized, but Mr. Bence is working towards increasing the centralization and decreasing the redundancy of tasks, with a probably increase in the amount of outsourcing.

In the private sector, Michael Garcia holds the title of Chief People Officer, or CPO, with Nexstar Financial Corporation, now a division of MBNA within Bank of America. Nexstar is a mortgage outsourcing company, processing the loans of a wide variety of clients such as Washington Mutual and a number of credit unions. While Mr. Garcia is technically in charge of Human Resources, he is acutely aware of the importance of qualified IT professionals—the CIO of Nexstar is also the Chief Operating Officer (COO), so technology has been extremely integrated into the business practices and IT is completely aligned with the business objectives of Nexstar. Of the ninety IT professionals with Nexstar, there are twenty-five in St. Louis who focus on the maintenance and problem-solving of their current system and sixty-five people in Boulder, CO who are devoted to improving the system, in such roles as architects and developers. Nexstar only uses contracted or outsourced help for special projects, which are extremely limited.

Superficially, the goals and opinions regarding IT professionals of these two managers may seem at odds with each other, IT vs. HR and government/public organization vs. private corporation, however their practices are more closely aligned than one may think.

Why is there an IT Shortage?

As of 2000, there was a shortage of 400,000 IT professionals in the United States alone (18). The US Department of Commerce estimates that the US will require more than 1.3 million new and highly skilled IT workers through 2007 (19). One of the explanations for this shortage is actually one of the driving factors of IT’s expansion—the trend towards globalization. This spread across cultures, and the perspectives and perceptions that they have, via technology positions the qualified IT professional as a strategic corporate player. The problem is, however, finding a qualified candidate to fill that role; many companies are demanding more experience in business and technical areas than ever before (19).

Another possible explanation for the shortage of IT professional is the expectations of management and customers alike. The increase in demand by customers coupled with the management’s desire to be ahead of the competition strategically, in ways such as methods of operation and services provided, work together to create new expectations of IT professionals (19). Additionally, many organizations are seeking professionals who are able to adapt quickly, which could limit the pool of qualified IT professionals from which to choose (19).

Salary also has a great deal of impact on a career. In 2004, according to the National Compensation Survey, Computer Systems Analysts (CSA) and Scientists had a mean average annual earning of $63,694 and worked 2,079 hours (40). The mean annual earnings for all categories was $39,536 with 1,998 hours worked annually (40). While there was no data for state and local government salaries, in the private industry, the mean average annual earnings were $70,744 with 2,083 hours worked for a CSA and a total average of $39,373 with 2,053 hours worked (40). The median hourly wage was $30.67 for CSA employees and $15.67 for all categories (40).

Education also has an impact on a career, especially how far an individual can progress. When the IT shortage is viewed in light of computer and information sciences degrees conferred on students graduating at the various levels, it is not difficult to see concrete evidence that the qualified IT professional is in great demand. The table below illustrates the shortage of students graduating with IT degrees, which could be related to the conception of an IT career as discussed earlier. Below each year is the total number of degrees conferred that year per degree level (39).

|Degree |Bachelor’s |Master’s |Doctorate |

|Discipline |IT |Business |IT |Business |IT |Business |

|1999-2000 |36,195 |257,709 |14,264 |112,258 |777 |1,196 |

| | ................
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