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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Information Technology (IT)

They are talking about this topic: General Skills

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
Employers would like to see more technologists who have business knowledge, particularly budgeting skills when consulting with clients. It is also important that technologists understand the organizational ramifications of their technical decisions when working with various businesses.

Employer Quote Region
"I think one of the things we look for is someone that can really think critically. Not a heads-down programmer, but somebody that also thinks about things from a business perspective." Central
"They have to have the business basics, and they have to have the communication skills, and they have to have a personality that fits into our organization." Central
"One skill that I'm seeing a lot in the technology organization is in the management and administrative pieces. Employees have to be some of the strongest relationship managers there are. And I don't know how you train someone or educate someone to be that strong. You know, being politically correct and understanding the business and being able to talk the business." Metro
"We hire businesspeople that might have a technology competency. That's really the way we look at it. I can source technologists, and we do. But I don't really think we're going to compete successfully in that area. What we can do is meet with businesspeople that have competencies and that have value and tradeoffs, like any other business would." Metro
"The optimum combination now for technology professionals is the ability to leverage technology in the context of a business process or an operating model or something that produces an outcome that drives your business forward—whatever that means in your context. It's a different way to put those pieces together. You have to understand how the business actually works. You have to understand how the business makes money or—if you're a non-profit—how you operate. But it really is pulling all those skills together as a technologist and solving problems. It's not one or the other. I think we're seeing the amalgamation of those roles and, particularly in senior levels, being able to run your business.

I run a business within a company. We're a big, expansive, complex business and we have to do everything that goes with running a business. We have to operate efficiently. We have to manage our budget effectively. Yet, we run a P&L [Profit and Loss]. And that's not something most technologists understand how to do. Unless you come out of the services or you've actually worked in a profit center, the notion of running your function as a P&L is almost totally alien, and it's something that they're going to have to get in their toolkit."		 Metro
"One of the things we struggle with, from an operational side, is that people don't understand finances. But guess what? In technology, we've got to understand finances. We have to balance the budget. We have to provide value. We need to understand how to put a business case together. We have to understand and do risk analysis. Those type of things." Metro
"Employer: There are a lot of roles for individuals that understand the IT, understand how the business works, and understand how to take these platforms and actually derive the business value on them.

Question: So, somebody in the organization who can take the sales force platform and tailor it specifically to what your company is doing?

Employer: Right."		 Metro
"Employer 1: So, maybe the way to think about this one skill that the incumbent worker needs is to understand, 'What's the problem?'

Employer 2: And how big is the problem? How does it relate to the business? How does it affect the business?

Employer 3: Yeah, I would say that whole piece as well."		 Metro
"The other skill, aside from project management, is basic business analysis skills. It's the ability to look at and understand the business problem before you serve in technical solutions. Not 'I've got to hammer something just to hammer.' It's, 'Okay, here's the problem I'm trying to solve.' And then making sure that they have agreement about what they are trying to solve, and then going about figuring it out." Metro
"Five years from now, the emphasis isn't going to be on making this work, it's going to be on helping customers run their business more effectively with this thing that pretty much always works." Northeast
"I was just going to expand on the other employer's comment on business acumen. When I look at my top performing analysts, it's because they understand the technical concepts, the software development, and the lifecycle concepts. And they can sit at the table with senior leadership and talk to them on their level. They can explain the implications of their decisions, the options they have, and the results of those options at the business level." Northeast
"We look for three things when we're hiring someone, especially entry-level hires. Raw technical talent is one. Communication skills are second. That's a huge bonus, if you get someone that you know can write well and speak well and is comfortable doing it, because they will automatically be more effective. The third, which we don't always get, is business acumen. People who can sit in a meeting with a customer, and can understand where the customer's coming from. We're lucky if we get that. But communication is critical." Northeast
"People come in from a lot of different angles, but again, the common trade is technical aptitude and business acumen." Northeast
"Question: In terms of the curriculum, would you go to the point of advising the folks who train your potential applicants about adding courses on government regulations or how to understand regulations?

Employer: I think it goes back to business acumen. If you understand what makes a business tick, then you understand revenue, and cost, and all of that. That's pretty powerful, and this is just an addition of that, another force that affects businesses."		 Northeast
"The basic business skills—and we test those types of things through the interview processes—and if you don't make it past there, you're done." Northwest
"When we design a network, we also typically have to produce a budget for our customer that says, 'It's going to cost you X.' They have to develop a business plan to ensure that, if a client invests so many millions of dollars, that it's going to pay for itself in a given period of time. Or maybe it's an investment that needs to be deferred until later. So, it's not just the technical. The design, budget, the business planning—all those types of things—go into it." Southwest
"They have to be able to have that customer interaction and be able to work with the customers. They also need some of those budgeting skills that we talked about as well, because they're going to be managing a project from start to finish. And they need to manage it so that we're not going over the cost associated with it." Southwest
"Something they haven't been exposed to—something they don't really think about—is the budget. They think that's not their job. Their job is to get the latest and greatest equipment. But there's always a budget. They need to understand that." Southwest
"They need the foundational skills. I mean, we're looking for someone with that passion and that drive for IT, good communication skills, and some good business knowledge." Southwest
"We need basic business skills. Can they prepare a simple budget or something like that? Can they put all these components together and come up with a price or an estimate of cost? And can they give me a half-a-paragraph description of what that is—a summary or a synopsis?" Southwest
"We're looking for degreed people who can manage budgets." Southwest