Perspective-driven IT talent acquisition

  • Authors:

  • Makoto Nakayama;Norma G. Sutcliffe

  • Affiliations:

  • DePaul University, Chicago, IL;DePaul University, Chicago, IL

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMIS CPR conference on Computer personnel research: The global information technology workforce
  • Year:
  • 2007

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical framework based on exploratory research so IT managers can plan and procure their organization's IT skills more effectively. Open-ended interviews revealed that IT managers have difficulty in describing specific profiles of the ideal IT candidate. In contrast, IT managers are very specific for an existing open position. Yet, when asked about their IT skills portfolio (at the organizational or individual level), both IT managers and IT professionals had difficulty in articulating its strengths and weaknesses. This is partly because IT is rapidly changing and evolving, often unpredictably. In addition, while the existing IT skills taxonomies have commonalities, their anchors are arbitrary choices of career levels, technologies, job domains, task types and responsibility levels. These taxonomies often confuse IT professionals because there are no many bases for anchoring skills. This proposed framework uses three skills management perspectives (task-oriented, fundamental skill, and socio-cultural) to prioritize the countless IT skills into more manageable scopes. The combination of critical factors for a job position (technology/firm specificity, job tenure, organization size) dictates which perspective is most appropriate, thus giving to an IT manager a focus for analyzing IT skills.