Certified Outsourcing Professional

By Mary K. Pratt

September 25, 2006 12:00 PM ET

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“Those are things you don’t get in a hard-core technology program,” says associate professor Bill Hefley, who is also associate director of Carnegie Mellon’s IT Services Qualification Center.

Carnegie Mellon began offering the concentration after corporate executives at a 2004 symposium expressed a need for workers who could manage outsourcing relationships.

Hefley says the introduction of these kinds of courses and the COP designation show a maturation of outsourcing. He says there aren’t enough trained and experienced workers to meet corporate demand, and even if there were, most companies wouldn’t know what to do with them. Many companies keep people with these skills in old IT positions and just add responsibilities, he says. Or they put them in the procurement office.

But that’s starting to change. Progressive companies are developing career paths for these professionals as more and more of them come to the table with experience and credentials, Hefley says.

“It’s probably a good sign that people are asking, ‘How are we going to train these people?’” he adds. “It shows there’s an increasing national attention on servicing and the service economy.”

Pratt is a Computerworld contributing writer in Waltham, Mass. Contact her at marykpratt@verizon.net.

Read more about careers in Computerworld's Careers Knowledge Center.

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