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”