Caldwell’s Shawn Banerji, Managing Partner of Data, Digital & Technology Leaders Practice, joins Dan Roberts of CIO, to discuss what will drive talent strategies and leadership careers in the year ahead.
Learn more in the excerpt below.
Managing Generational Differences in the Workforce
Dan Roberts: In our conversation during the podcast about the nature of work, Abhi Dhar, TransUnion’s chief information and technology officer, asked who you think will ‘win’ when it comes to the expectations mismatch between management and the workforce. He also wanted to know whether you think boomers retiring and millennials becoming the largest working cohort will have a meaningful impact on this mismatch.
Shawn Banerji: I’d say there isn’t as significant a delta between boomers’ expectations and some of the millennials’ expectations as we might think. I think they share many of the same desires as far as the experience of work and the covenant of how they work, where they work, and when they work because of this post-COVID world.
I would add that we are seeing a slowdown in boomers retiring. I’m seeing that there are boomers who want to, in some capacity, even if it’s part-time, remain in the workforce. For some, it’s an economic necessity; for others, it’s because it’s something that they want to do. The beauty of this may be that you’re hiring boomers whose attitude is, ‘I just want this job. I want to do this, and I want to be recognized and rewarded for doing it well. I don’t have a broader ambition of moving up in the organization or whatever that career trajectory may be.’ That is a different and, in some ways, easier dynamic to manage than millennials who may say, ‘I don’t want to come to the office, I want to work from where I work, when and how I work, but I still have career ambitions and expect the arc of my career to grow in certain ways.’
It adds another level of complexity to what the CIO leader is going to have to rationalize. Because in some cases it’s a mismatch, and in some cases, there’s an opportunity there. In one IT services company, for example, the leader is specifically targeting people who are in what would normally be considered a transition-to-retirement period in their lives because he’s found them to be fantastic, hardworking people without some of the other baggage that is brought to the table with people who need to be effectively developed and have expectations in terms of career trajectory.
The Role of a College Degree
Roberts: Do you see the role of a college degree diminishing in the IT talent market?
Banerji: IT has been a field where, depending on the organization and the role, the value of a formal degree has varied. I do have some clients who have a hard line in terms of, the person has to have a degree in order to operate at, typically, the executive level, and others that aren’t really that concerned. In many of the digital roles, we are seeing industry-specific certifications being the priority versus a generic computer science degree.
Whether it’s a Cisco, Microsoft, or AWS certification, or the myriad of others in security and areas of architecture, I think it creates a really interesting leveling opportunity for many people who don’t have the desire or the means for a formal four-year college degree to gain meaningful employment and earn an excellent income. In fact, we’ve seen community colleges, which I’m a huge proponent of in terms of the ecosystem of education, partnering specifically with certain organizations and offering these certifications as part of their curriculum, thereby virtually guaranteeing employment for their graduates.
So I think the need for a formalized college degree is likely going to diminish, and specific, vendor-based industry certifications will continue to play a broader role in filling the gaps. Because there’s still a tremendous need, and many of the roles that companies are recruiting for cannot be filled with just someone with a four-year degree in computer science; they’re looking for specific platform experience that certifications will address and a four-year degree may not necessarily.
Advice for CIOs Exploring Professional Engagement Beyond Operational Roles
Roberts: What’s your advice to CIOs who are considering opportunities to stay professionally active after leaving their daily operational roles?
Banerji: The best advice I can give is this: Don’t retire. Hold on to your operating job for as long as you can, even if it means compromising on what that ideal role might be. Operating partner, advisory, and board roles are achievable, but the truth is that, unless one is locked down while the executive is still in an operating role, attaining these positions can prove elusive. I have known too many CIOs who having been in roles of penultimate operating influence find that their professional stock does not hold up as they would have hoped or expected once they move out of their operating day jobs. Friends at former vendors don’t return calls as promptly or at all, operating exec peers aren’t as interested in their opinions, requests for content and invites to conclaves aren’t so readily forthcoming.
It’s not that the career ends when one moves out of an operating role, but the practical reality is that the number of opportunities for CIOs to commercially contribute does diminish. Despite the litany of examples to the contrary, this is sadly compounded by ageism and amplified by the misguided belief that tech is a youthful domain. If the CIO maintains the will and corresponding constitution, retiring from a career as a functional business operator is a decision that needs to be made with the utmost clarity and a clinical understanding of the consequences of that decision, not just financially but also in terms of one’s personal/professional worth and purpose.
Navigating Today’s Challenges in Recruiting Top IT Talent
Roberts: Shawn has this Heraclitus quote on his LinkedIn profile: ‘Out of every one hundred, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior and will bring the others back.’ What does that quote mean to you from your perspectives as tech recruiters?
Banerji: We deal with so many people, and our clients are are so discerning. They have to have whoever the very best person is, and the truth is, there’s only a limited number of those people, and everyone either wants them or wants to keep them. It used to be that a person who worked 20 years at IBM, Coca-Cola, you name it, could write their ticket to do anything they wanted. Now, there are a lot of organizations that say, How much of their success was their ability to navigate the protocols and social avenues of that organization versus being able to come here and really adapt into our world? As a recruiter, there are all these different pieces of the puzzle you’ve got to put together.
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