Building an 'A team': How to find, keep top IT talent

Computerworld - DALLAS -- As the U.S. economy continues to show resiliency and the job market tightens, it's getting tougher to find and retain top IT talent. According to a July survey of IT chiefs from a group of 300 corporate managers, 31% plan to hire IT executives in the coming months. "Historically, that's a high figure," said Randall Neal, CEO of Randall James Monroe Inc., an executive search firm based here that conducts the survey on a regular basis.

But developing and maintaining an "A team" of IT managers can be a real challenge in a tight job market, he said. Most top-level IT executives aren't looking for jobs; they're valued by the organizations they work for, and they're paid reasonably well.

Still, there are effective techniques CIOs can use to try to attract and retain top talent in a strong economy, said Neal and other panelists who spoke at the Society for Information Management SIMposium 2006 conference here today.

It's important for CIOs to show their commitment to their lieutenants by fostering professional growth through increased training, clearly-defined career paths and a demonstrated tendency to promote from within, according to Mary C. Finley, deputy CIO at Partners HealthCare System Inc. in Boston.

Such steps "send very clear messages that you're about more than getting the work done -- you're about developing your staff," she said.

Finley created a career growth initiative within the IT department for the integrated health system two years ago after discovering in a meeting with her top supervisors that more work needed to be done in that area. As the program was being assembled, she said, "we discovered we were underspending our career training money. This was very disturbing to find out after you fight for this funding and discover it's being underutilized."

Since then, Finley has enacted a standard requiring each IT employee to receive a minimum of 40 hours of training each year. The training includes elective coursework but can also include time spent by IT managers sitting in on senior management meetings.

One way to set a baseline for desired skills when evaluating outside IT management candidates is to consider the qualities of those people who have been in the IT organization for many years and are successful contributors, said Renee Baker Arrington, a vice president at Pearson Partners International Inc., an executive search firm in Dallas.

For instance, Arrington said, do the external candidates and some of the successful internal IT managers share common career backgrounds such as expertise in particular industries or experience working for midsize or large companies? On the flip side, CIOs should also look at "who has been 'voted off the island' recently and why," she said.