CIO interview: Keith Young, Standard Life

Keith Young's view of Edinburgh Castle, from his corner office at the Standard Life headquarters, is a stunning one - and it's an indication of the position he holds in the financial services group.

He's worked at the company for 22 years, and his career in IT started in 1976, and after stints at Distillers, Diageo and Bank of Scotland he joined Standard life in 1987 as an analyst. By 2001 he was heading up the whole department.

silicon.com sat down with Young to discuss the role IT is playing in the financial services industry today.

What experiences stood you in the best stead?

It's all about working for good people. Not just the people round about you, but the people who directly manage you.

That's who you learn most from and I would certainly say I've had good managers that made me stop and think. They questioned you, they asked you, 'why are you doing that?'

They encouraged your good ideas, encouraged good thinking and we were allowed to question why we did things in a particular way.

Experience isn't about just being old. It's about picking up things in your career, so I'm more effective than I was when I was 30, not because I've got a bigger brain than when I was 30, but because I can now apply my experience effectively.

As a head of IT, what's your most important skill?

Leadership - because when you are managing 1,000 people and a wide variety of functions, you cannot possibly know everything. You are the expert on nothing, because you have people in your organisation who are experts. What you need to know is who are the experts, who are the people you can rely on, whose judgement do you trust - and what support and encouragement can you give these people.

Why do you think it's important to have a policy of hiring a number of trainees every year?

We take on a range between 15 and 25 in any given year. Last year, we took on 15 and we took on 15 this year. After 2004, for three years, we didn't recruit trainees, but now we've started it again because the senior management team recognises the value in having that sort of graduate recruitment policy. Two of my team started out on the scheme in the eighties, so you can see the benefit of it going right through the department.

What sort of things do you look for in the trainees you take on?

We look for technical skills, at least in some of them, so we insist the development staff have technical skills, and Java would be one. For the rest who would work in operations, maintenance and other areas, we don't insist on any particular skill set, so they don't have to be...

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