Reprinted with permission © 2008 TreeTop Technologies
Alignment of personnel and projects with the business goals of a company has been a mantra for so long that some would call it a cliché. But it is important; it also can be challenging when it comes to the world of IT.
The July 1 issue of CIO magazine featured an article titled “Hire for Alignment” that points out that for a while now, alignment has been a top-10 concern of IT leaders. At TreeTop, we agree that it still needs to be, and it’s a shame that it continues to be such a tough concern to address. On the other hand, if it wasn’t, it would cease to be a top-10 concern.
Hiring managers simply have to be willing to hold out for IT pros that have strong backgrounds in business and not simply hire for technological savvy, or vice versa. That’s if they truly want to achieve alignment. It’s not that such people don’t exist; but the fact is too few companies ask for them, either in their employment ads or when working with recruitment and staffing firms. As the CIO article points out, an IT staffer who doesn’t know the difference between a debit and a credit cannot properly support IT needs for accounting and finance.
One thing that hiring managers can do is to start focusing more on people with information systems degrees and less on those with computer science degrees. A corollary here is that people who hold computer science degrees but have no business experience might want to start considering some business courses to keep themselves as highly marketable as possible.
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Footnotes: From "View from the TreeTop" Volume 2 Issue 9 September 2008