don't make me larfffff!

[Ravenz]

I loved this job spec for a helpdesk manager person...Large multinational company in the financial services sector is seeking an experienced EMEA Service Desk Manager with proven track record of management and customer care of a 24/7 function, preferably gained from a financial institution.
You will have an established Technology background with a working knowledge of desktops, Servers, network topology and call management coupled with the ability to work to deadlines, unsupervised and maintain a balanced approach in pressure situations. You will have proven experience of working with OLA/SLA frameworks and a broad understanding of Incident/Problem and Change Management (ideally with ITIL accreditation). Be able to demonstrate a history of performance management and management of 3rd party supplier.
You will ideally have Degree level education in computer sciences or equivalent with c.8+ years experience in IT of which 5+ years experience should be in the field of relevant technologies (Help Desk or Call Centre Manager or Supervisor). You will be a strong people manager (recruitment, appraisals, training etc) and vendor manager with a track record of delivering to deadline and budget

oh lawdie.. most of the jerks who end up running service departments have feck all nouse about IT actually works (or more to the point doesnt ) and less common sense than my cat!

 

[Kirstie]

More to the point, they are asking for a techie with people skills. That narrows the potential pool of applicants somewhat...

 

[cheadle hulme]

What does it pay?

 

[yello]

you will have, you will have, you will be.... what is it with these recruitment monkeys? Do they only have ad templates into which they fit requirements and pad out with stock phrases?

You will make the effort to make the job sound just a little bit interesting otherwise you'll get 'want a job' people applying. You will be dynamic, don't make me ****ing laugh!

 

[Ravenz]

What does it pay?

good question.... up to £50k... just shows where bigger companies' priorities lie really....

the link is
http://www.jobserve.us/W6CF79232BCA03D40.jsjob

I'm only looking 'cos my people skills have got me into trouble again and looking for a new job at end of month... altho the less interesting reason is end of contract.. if i could live on minimum wage I'd go back to fitness full time

 

[Globalti]

IT mis-management is fast becoming one of the biggest hindrances to business efficiency in Britain. My own company has struggled with a series of feckless IT people who have had zero people skills and have ended up leaving or being sacked after a couple of weeks trial. Now we use consultants from outside, which at least brings reasonably recent knowledge, I suppose. However they only come in two days a week.

Companies go out and buy expensive IT equipment but leave employees to find out themselves how it works, consequently work is inefficient, everybody works in different ways and good housekeeping and security disciplines are not applied. They should be recruiting IT managers who can make email, telephone and all systems work together, train staff and take care of how the company fits into the business environment.

The same problem exists at a national level - witness the endless issues with Government IT projects, corrupt or dodgy contracts handed out to incompetent companies and above all no attempt to address the problem through training at a national level.

 

[Crackle]

50K seems right for that. You can just see the amount of internal politics you're going to have to shovel about to keep everyone happy. That's what corporates mean by 'people skills', nothing to do with the ability to do the job.

 

[Ravenz]

you can feel for smaller businesses where IT can become a money pit, but this actual job relates to an enterprise level service desk where people skills only mean jumping on junior analysts to just keep em answering the phone every 30 seconds..... it doesnt mean people skills of solving customer problems imho!! hence the likely candidate is sometimes of poor technical ability but a fantastic ability in self aggrandisement despite the job spec....

 

[Crackle]

IT mis-management is fast becoming one of the biggest hindrances to business efficiency in Britain. My own company has struggled with a series of feckless IT people who have had zero people skills and have ended up leaving or being sacked after a couple of weeks trial. Now we use consultants from outside, which at least brings reasonably recent knowledge, I suppose. However they only come in two days a week.

Companies go out and buy expensive IT equipment but leave employees to find out themselves how it works, consequently work is inefficient, everybody works in different ways and good housekeeping and security disciplines are not applied. They should be recruiting IT managers who can make email, telephone and all systems work together, train staff and take care of how the company fits into the business environment.

The same problem exists at a national level - witness the endless issues with Government IT projects, corrupt or dodgy contracts handed out to incompetent companies and above all no attempt to address the problem through training at a national level.

That's a bit one-sided. Too often, companies have an unrealistic expectation of what IT can deliver and how. I've lost count of the number of times everything I said after 'but......' was just not heard or read. Everyone buys the 'vision' as the shisters call it but don't want to know about the reality.

 

[yello]

Top post RR. I agree entirely. I have no idea what the answer is but it seems clear enough that so many businesses make the investment in the technology without a similar investment in the people sufficiently skilled to make the technology work for the business. Perhaps there is a genuine shortage of such people, I don't know. In my experience, I could certainly believe that.

And I'm not talking technical skills, I mean a blend of skills that enables someone to get technology working for a business. That is, in the way a business needs it.

 

[yello]

Crackle, imo an IT professional should be able to measure a company's IT expectations and re-align them with a deliverable reality, if needs be. I don't expect MDs and the like to know IT. That's why they pay good money to (and hopefully listen to the advice of!) an IT consultant/director/manager/underling/whatever.

 

[Globalti]

The financial services industry got hit a few years by a massive tightening up of standards, compliance rules etc. I wonder how long it will be before the same happens in IT? At the moment I reckon most companies or individuals are using their computers recklessly and with no attempt at proper record keeping, security or discipline. One of the reasons why fraudsters are so successful is that many of the civic and financial systems we operate still rely on a degree of trust; however the old days when you could trust people have sadly gone and we need to make all our systems bomb-proof.

 

[Crackle]

Crackle, imo an IT professional should be able to measure a company's IT expectations and re-align them with a deliverable reality, if needs be. I don't expect MDs and the like to know IT. That's why they pay good money to (and hopefully listen to the advice of!) an IT consultant/director/manager/underling/whatever.

I would agree but liken it to finding a good tradesman you can trust who isn't trying to rip you off or doesn't actually know what's wrong with your boiler but wants to put a new one in anyway coupled with yourself having a complete lack of knowledge about trades and boilers and you have IT systems installations in a nutshell.

The responsible thing to do is get a few opinions and diagnostics, couple it with some self-education in the area of boilers, decide what needs doing, get a few quotes and then commission someone to fix it. It's a two way process, you don't just blindly trust what you're told but this logic often doesn't seem to apply to IT projects.

 

[yello]

I think we might be seeing things from different perspectives... well, of course we are! but saliently on this issue, the difference between internal IT advice and external representation.

A business employs an IT bod to know about IT and take any representations made to the company at face value. I agree, putting a non IT (or non boiler) person in that position makes the business vulnerable to miss-selling from the external advisor. In fact, even some internal IT bods are insufficiently knowledged (!!), or even too excited by, IT solutions to know whether they are suitable for their given business. That, for me, is part of the problem that RR refers to.

But IT can't be alone in this kind of 'do we know enough?' dilemma, can it? Any purchasing decision must, at some point, rely on the advice or representations made by someone.... even a pack of A4 pads!

What I'm saying is that whilst I don't disagree with the 'self education' maxim there always comes a point where you have to take on trust. A business should be able to trust an IT professional (a somewhat circular argument, I know!).

Perhaps the real problem is that businesses do not fully appreciate the scope (not just in the IT vernacular but also in the everyday usage) of the issues and decisions it needs to make on IT and is ill equipped to get the right help.

 

[Crackle]

Perhaps the real problem is that businesses do not fully appreciate the scope (not just in the IT vernacular but also in the everyday usage) of the issues and decisions it needs to make on IT and is ill equipped to get the right help.

Well, certainly part of the problem is this 'IT solution' mentality. Which includes IT bods seeing the beginning and end of the project in IT terms and business bods not seeing the wholesale change required by the business to adopt the solution. That happens less nowadays, instead you have timescale and cost overruns due to an expansion of the orignal brief, added 'oooohh, can it do this' complexity or plain getting the scope wrong from day one. Succesful projects, also tend to get jumped on and become a bit of a liferaft for other parts of the business and end up doing things they were not designed for.