How to become a CIO

As contractors' pay continues to shrink and lay-offs within companies increase, more and more IT professionals are doing their best to protect their careers by staying within the confines of their present employment, with the aim of becoming CIO.

But climbing the career ladder to the post of CIO takes more than pages of qualifications and the infinite knowledge of the technical expert. For ex-contractors, it means a change in professional attitude.

To find out what it takes to become a CIO, silicon.com spoke to Francis Wilkin, a specialist in recruiting IT functional managers at Spencer Stuart recruitment consultancy.

The first thing he advises aspiring CIOs to do is to appear credible to the CEO and the rest of the team as a business professional, and not just a technical expert.

"There's nothing wrong with being a technical expert but prospective candidates need to show that they not only understand the business issues, but also have ideas about how to address them, ideas that lie outside the IT domain," he said.

It is more important to be able to develop a rapport with the board than to impress them with a string of qualifications, according to Wilkins.

"CIOs don't necessarily need an MBA but they do need to be able to speak the language of the business. Unfortunately, few businesses are far-sighted enough to train their IT staff sufficiently in the business through secondments these days," he said.

Wilkins' sentiments were backed up by Karen Price, CEO of the e-skills National Training Organisation (NTO), who suggested business experience should be part of every IT professionals initial training.

She said: "It is essential without a doubt and businesses know that IT strategy and business strategy need to be integrated. A key skill for CIOs therefore is an excellent understanding of business. Technology can be exploited to promote business growth, but it has to come from a business perspective. That is why we are advocating practical business experience to be incorporated into computer science courses."

Many CEOs are afraid of their IT director because they think he or she is on a different wavelength, according to Wilkin.

"One CEO said to me recently that the IT director did not attend board meetings because "we don't talk about computers very much, so they wouldn't be interested". It didn't occur to him that the IT director might be interested in talking about the business," he added.