Fast Track

Then there are changes in the quality of new recruits to consider. Christensen says he has noticed that these days new recruits seem to graduate with a much more encompassing appreciation of IT and a much broader skill set. For instance, where over the past 15 years many products were only introduced to people through their working careers, much of that is assumed knowledge for graduates today. He believes that may mean that many more new recruits will be positioned to take a fast track into more senior positions.

"I'm seeing tremendous compressions in time frames from the perspective that the rate of change is very, very fast - it's almost like they're cramming what they used to do in the year into a month. So I think that is going to accelerate careers but I also think that the industry won't tolerate the explosion we had in the late 90s with people jumping from university degrees to consultant levels in two years. There is going to be acceleration, but I think it's going to be a lot more structured," Christensen says.

Sawyer points out that not only is the CIO role these days very much more business-focused than it was in the past, there is much more politics involved than there was 10 years ago.

To help groom them for bigger and better things, Monash encourages promising project managers and section managers to undertake an MBA program, seen as an important step in moving towards senior management in IT. To prepare them for the political side of the role, Sawyer says, there is nothing like sitting on project steering committees alongside the business leaders within the university.

Others, such as AXA, run graduate rotation programs that give recruits a chance to rotate into different areas of IT every six months. And Thorpe says some IT staff have successfully applied for roles in the business areas. "[Recruits also] get involved with presenting to business managers about the things that they're working on and those sorts of experiences but we haven't transitioned across an organizational-wide graduate program at this stage," Thorpe says.

Some other companies are reducing their graduate intake while focusing on succession planning. For instance Munich Reinsurance Company of Australia general manager IT Udo Bauermann says his company takes on new recruits perhaps twice a year, and with much of the IT work done globally can offer them only limited opportunities. Still, recruits have the option of taking up roles in the business, and the company runs a management training scheme with the Australian Graduate School of Management.

"This is really an expensive thing we do but we know that succession planning is important, and my time here is limited anyway," says Bauermann, who is due to be recalled to Munich in two years.

The CIO who replaces him will, as usual, need to acquire a vast library of different skills before being ready for the job. It is just that the current batch of recruits will likely face a much more uncertain path to the top than even their predecessors did in their time.

SIDSEBAR: Grooming the Next Generation of IT Leaders

by Thomas Wailgum

Jeff Campbell is not your typical CIO. He didn't start off as an entry-level coder 20 years ago, grinding his way up through the IT ranks to the top spot. Campbell actually began his career on the other side of the cube wall, as a junior cost accountant for FedEx. His first IT job is his current one; in 2002 he became vice president of technology services and CIO at The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway. Even so, Campbell is aware of how important it is to attract and retain entry-level IT staffers at BNSF in order to establish a firm foundation for tomorrow's leadership ranks - especially as the spectre of programming jobs heading offshore looms over computer science undergrads.

Campbell is concerned about the horde of baby boomers at BNSF who will be retiring soon. The average age of the company's non-union employees (half of Campbell's 1164 IT workers are non-union) is 45 years, with an average of 18 years at BNSF. "What's more alarming," says Campbell, "is that we're hearing that there won't be enough workers from gen X and gen Y to fill the baby boomer void."

BNSF executives have made talent development a top priority, and Campbell is no exception. He says his technology services group has a recruitment program that looks for prospects who have an understanding of core technologies and also know how to do project management and business process redesign, and can manage service-level agreements and determine ROI on IT. "But we haven't reached a point where we're finding [those skills] in the marketplace," he says. "So we try to infuse them here."

Prospects come in all shapes and sizes, Campbell says. There are interns, whom BNSF snags as undergrads; recruits from universities and job fairs; general marketplace hires; and transfers from BNSF's other departments. One of the ways BNSF "infuses" some of its new hires in technology services is by sending them through a six- to 12-month cross-functional training program. The Corporate Management Trainee program is for recent university graduates in the operations, engineering, mechanical, finance, marketing and technology services departments. The purpose of the program is to provide a source of future managers, support diversity goals and bring in fresh ideas. Trainees take railroad industry courses, meet with BNSF senior executives, receive new-hire orientation and work on railroad case studies.

Mark Lutchen, a partner in the IT business risk management practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, stresses the importance of this apprentice-type IT career model that incorporates the other parts of the business. The benefit for CIOs is that the more steeped their staffers are in business knowledge, the more aligned IT will be with the business side.

Though Campbell is serious about grooming BNSF's future IT workers, he also believes in outsourcing; currently IBM Global Services is responsible for the railroad's mainframe and midtier computing infrastructure, and 40 percent of new application development is done by Infosys in India. This blended approach allows him to take advantage of outsourcing's cost savings while keeping a firm grip on the knowledge of in-house staffers.