Certification Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 33) “Vertically, you have different subject-matter experts in different technologies, whether it’s widearea networks, servers, infrastructure, remote management, help desk, database, ERP — we could go on and on,” Bank said. “And then horizontally, they will work in terms of assessments and perform such duties as integration and management of systems and ongoing maintenance.” With such a variety of opportunity at CH2M HILL, the trajectory of an IT professional’s career is largely at that person’s own prerogative. “The upward potential in our company obviously is based a lot on what an individual wants to do,” Audino said. “We’ve seen a lot of promotion within our company, where people will start at the help-desk level, then they have an interest in network or security or some other function within our company. While they’re at the help desk, they’ll get the required certifications to move up into another group.” Not surprisingly, moving higher than strictly technical services at CH2M HILL requires soft skills. “As far as getting into management, a lot of it is based on their ability to not just be good technically but also to manage people and understand other aspects of the business — just like with any other business,” Audino said. “As we’ve grown as a company, having good technical people is one thing, but also having good technical people who can communicate effectively and can work well with customers and others is obviously a big piece, especially to grow within the management ranks of our IT group.” CH2M HILL looks for all its IT employees to have good project management skills, ranging from the help-desk level to the Oracle-database level. Most of the IT employees work in teams over the course of a year, very rarely placing one person on just one small job. “Typically, the jobs we’re doing involve, at a minimum, four or five subject-matter experts, so it’s important to be able to work within a team, be aware of a project plan in general and be flexible and able to put in a certain level of effort if the project is running behind,” Bank said. “They’re not caught in their own silo — they’re aware of what their other team members are doing, how they’re delivering on time, and they have the personal skills to interact with one another.” Training CH2M HILL is aware that continuous learning is particularly important within IT because the industry moves so rapidly. The company provides tuition reimbursement and pays for certifications, provided the IT employee passes the test in question. It also uses real-world, on-the-job, in-house training. One of CH2M HILL’s preferred methods for realworld training is to give a junior-level IT employee a leg up into a more complex project. “We might have an advanced project that involves five senior-level subject-matter experts and bring in a midlevel or junior employee to take on a small part of that,” Bank said. “The most important thing is their shoulders are getting exposure to a real scenario. You can go out and do a class, you can study at home, you can do it online, but it never gives you that real experience in life with a real customer. So, the both of those coupled together really complete a comprehensive training program in our eyes.” It all comes back to the fact that CH2M HILL’s IT pros are customer-facing. For this reason, the company places the highest priority on experience rather than education and certification because it knows an employee with real-world experience will ramp up to a functional level immediately. “For us, the fact that a new IT person needs to hit the ground running pretty quickly and deal with customer issues quickly, we weight the experience factor much more heavily,” Audino said. Certification This is not to say certification isn’t a factor at CH2M HILL — it is. In many situations, it’s even a requirement. “We do require that an individual have a certain level of certification beyond just entry level,” Audino said. “With VoIP [voice-over Internet protocol] for example, it might be two or three functional areas within that discipline coordinated within our advance technology services. Certification just demonstrates that the individual has knowledge within that certain skill set. That may not be the exact skill set that we’re INTERFACE continued on page 38 September 2007 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 33
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