By Natasha Lomas, 12 January 2009 15:18
NEWS
in one of the unlikeliest places - the hard-hit investment banking sector - where some banks have been investing in core infrastructure.
Meanwhile, private equity houses engaged in merger and acquisition activity also present openings to CIOs with experience of integrating a lot of systems and due diligence work, according to Heidrick & Struggles' MacDonald.
Get in touch
How IT chiefs can make the best of their prospects
Vicky Maxwell, partner at Boyden global executive search: "Networking is not something you do twice a year or send out a Christmas card. Stay in touch with people who might be able to help you."
Other CIOs that may find they have cachet in the current climate are those with experience of managing outsourcing.
"A lot of organisations will look at the cost of IT and they'll look at outsourcing and they'll look at further outsourcing - and they'll look and see whether or not they have the capability in house to really manage that outsourcing facility well, because if you can imagine an organisation that's been doing a lot of its own development work or infrastructure support then they're more doers than managers," MacDonald said.
More technically minded IT chiefs may also have an advantage, according to Boyden's Maxwell Davies: "I was with a very big CEO the other day who was talking about hiring a European CIO and he was saying 'I want someone who's technically quite strong'. I haven't heard that for years and years and years and years."
Why was this CEO keen to get a tech-savvy IT guy? "Because if you look at the past decade it was the decade of the vendor and the reason was the people in charge knew bugger all about technology and the vendors just took us for a ride," she said.
Another potential impact of the credit crunch, which could impact demand for senior IT skills in an unusual way, is if the increasing globalisation of the last few years slows significantly or even goes into reverse.
As governments in various countries look at ways to prop up key national industries - such as the car industry - with massive financial bail out packages they may require assurances taxpayers' money will not trickle out of the country, according to Heidrick & Struggles' MacDonald. Such assurances are very difficult for globalised multinationals, replete with outsourcing contracts, to give.
"What you may see - it's not a definite - is some of those companies breaking up and becoming regionally run entities. And if they do that then what's going to happen is a lot of disintegration and separation of IT systems, stimulating need for IT skills in regions that they may have had placed in other countries."
"There's a dynamic shift going on in the marketplace because of the funding issue that might create more of a regional/local focus," he added.
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