1.7 ICT and the Professional

In this section you must be able to:

• Recall the personal qualities and general characteristics necessary for a person to work effectively within the ICT industry and as part of an ICT team.

Jobs in ICT

There is a whole range of jobs in ICT:

• Analysts & Designers

• Programmers

• Quality Assurance

• Technical support

• Sales and Customer support

• Network managers

• Team managers

• Directors and top-level management

Expected and Required Skills

When selecting a new employee, you might look for:

• Technical skills – Office, VB, C++, etc.

• Personal skills – communication, team-player, etc.

• Academic qualifications – e.g. A levels, degree

• Professional qualifications – e.g. Microsoft, Cisco, etc.

• Experience – having lots of jobs isn’t necessarily good, though!

• Interest

• Initiative – taking risks or going beyond call of duty

• Location – I.e. where they live

• Commitments – mortgage, family, etc.

• Salary expectations

How do we know?

We can assess these qualities in a variety of ways:

• CV – curriculum vitae

• Letter of application

• Application form

• Aptitude or practical test

• Personality test

• Interview

• Reviews and observations (for existing employees)

Interviews

Why do employers bother to interview applicants?

• To assess their ability to do the job

• Will they fit into the organisation?

• Do they have good communication skills?

• Do they display an appropriate degree of enthusiasm?

– One employer appointed the most and least keen applicants; who do you think stayed longest?

• They can employee techniques for unnerving applicants or testing them under pressure:

– Phoning people up before the interview

– Asking strange questions

– Joint interview with other applicants – “Why are you better than him?”

Testing Applicants

You can test applicants with:

• Exams – e.g. EU administrators sit two written papers before any interview takes place

• Practical tests – e.g. programming something, or analysing/debugging existing code

• Psychometric testing – spatial, verbal reasoning, mathematical skills, etc.

• Personality tests – the Inland Revenue gives tests which appear to ask about preferences but assess consistency of response

Can you test for every quality?

Some qualities are easily tested:

• Design skills

• Problem-solving ability (albeit on a limited number of problems!)

Some things can be determined at interview:

• Communication skills

• Reaction under pressure

Some things have to be taken on trust or from references:

• Initiative

• Professional/industrial experience

• Management skills

• Interests and other personal qualities

Why Communication Skills?

Why are good communication skills required?

• To elicit requirements from customers

• To communicate requirements to the project manager

• The project manager will need to communicate to the developer what needs to be done

• The developer and testing team need to liaise to ensure the quality of the product

If there are not good communication links:

• It’ll be like Chinese Whispers!

• The product won’t be what the customer required

Most Valued Qualities

Most people value:

• Initiative – taking a risk and going beyond the call of duty

High-achievers value:

• Networking – making links with other professionals

• Diplomacy

• Self-management

Low-achievers most rate:

• Presentation skills

• Knowledge of company/business

Professional Bodies

• Provide training and guidance

• Define roles – e.g. BCS ISM job descriptions

• Entry by exam or accredited degree

• Examples include:

– British Computer Society (BCS)

– Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

• There are also unions, although membership is low for computing and ICT professionals

ISM – Industry Structure Model

Version 3, introduced in 1996…

• Defines various roles:

– Technical

– Support

– Management

• Specifies the requirements for each one:

– Background

– Experience

– Training

• Is “a mechanism for applying quality control to the practical experience and training of ICT practitioners”