There I sat – an IT Manager of 20 years experience in a room with a “IT Recruitment Consultant” of around 20 years of age. Being a polite dude, I let this good person express their opinions about IT managers, without comment. Here’s the thing – even 20 year old newbies know sitting CIO’s and senior IT Managers are morons and they are not afraid to say so to the face of one such practioner.
Aparently as an employed CIO/IT Manager you are illiterate with the attention span of a goldfish. Totally incapable of reading a CV and those who are vaguely literate only spend three seconds on the document before their eyes glaze over. This is not what I did when in the game, but apprantly this made me somewhat of a anomaly.
The interesting thing is – unless you are a member of MENSA and can code in assembler with your toes whilst developing the strategic plans to save the universe with your right hand and exhibiting the communication skills of the prime ministers’ spin-doctor (using the left hand, I presume), you don’t stand a chance of becoming employed as a IT Manager. Oh yes – you also have to be totally technically current. I have not been technically current since trying to become rich during the Y2K scam. As a manager I have foundgetting other people with the appropriate skills (my “Clever People” as I call them) to do this stuff has been seriously more efficient. I believe my job is to work out what strategic stuff the clever people should be working on to make us all rich.
So what happens to this phenomenal talent once they actually get a job. Who knows? One thing I do know – the 20 year old may have some details wrong, but when it comes to choosing a IT Manager, there are some senior decision makers making dodgy calls. It is amazing what you can deduce about a manager from their “dear Johnny” excuses in response to your job application. Maybe We can share some insights about this later.
What are the other guys in the wild finding, I wonder?