1.7 ICT and the Professional

1. 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.

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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)

5. 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?”

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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”