67% Yes
33% No
The Big Question is an initiative between Computer
Weekly and recruitment consultancy PSD. Each week we put the Big
Question to top IT professionals to get their take on a current
talking point.
While business alignment and communication skills are important
ingredients in any IT department, IT professionals fear that this
emphasis is undermining the importance of technical expertise.
Two-thirds of IT professionals answering this week's Big
Question said such expertise was undervalued by UK business.
"In today's workplace, more IT roles do involve an element of
customer and client-facing skills, which include the understanding
of business needs and being able to communicate these to
stakeholders. However, there is still a huge demand for purely
technical individuals that are key to the IT industry," said one IT
consultant.
"These characters are the unsung heroes of IT that no one knows
exist, but without them there would be no technological advancement
in business today," the consultant added.
Phil Carr of Computappoint said that there was still a place for
the pure technologist, but business skills were increasingly
necessary. "If two candidates have similar technical skills, you
cannot escape the fact that it is always going to be the candidate
with better people skills who gets the job."
Dereck Wilson, who works for hotel group LHS International, said
technical expertise had not been undervalued, but said it
inevitably helped to have communication or organisation skills.
Read article:
Benefits of an IT skills framework
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