Certification - December 2008 - (Page 42) INTERFACE When It Comes to IT, Vieo Gets down to Business AGAThA GIlMORE seasoned IT professionals with a firm grounding in business and industry knowledge are just what Vieo Consulting Group is looking for. structure, the server infrastructure, the databases, security, software practices, etc.,” Alesi said. “As a small community here at Vieo, we’re hiring mostly people who have many of these qualifications coming in. [But] I anticipate as we’re growing, we will definitely have a need to bring in people that we’ll have to train more so than we do today.” The company’s organizational hierarchy consists of consultants, senior consultants, project managers and practice managers who “have actually a business focus with an IT background,” Alesi said. What constitutes a good IT background? A degree is a must, and a smattering of both vendor-neutral and vendor-specific certifications is desirable. “The foundation is the business background, and then [based on] certifications, we have people being plugged and played into various roles,” Alesi said. “A senior consultant would typically have a variety of certifications, and then a more junior consultant would have some and perhaps not even any — and those we would be developing with them. “Being a strategy consultant, we try to maintain a vendor-neutral position,” he continued. “[But] once [a client] has an affinity for a certain vendor platform, somebody having a specific vendor certification can be helpful, as well.” Certain industry-specific certifications also come in handy, he said. “As an example, in health care, we have consultants that are Certified HIPAA Security Professionals (CHSP), so our clients are aware then that our people understand all the complexities of HIPAA [the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] and the requirements within health care,” he said. However, honed technical capabilities aren’t the only skills necessary to be a successful IT consultant. A candidate also must exhibit strong nontechnical skills. Alesi said there are three main kinds of nontechnical skills Vieo looks for in a potential hire: soft skills, project management skills and industry knowledge. On the most basic level, soft skills refer to the ability to work well with others. The job market — always competitive — now is bordering on cutthroat, as novice and experienced IT professionals alike vie for coveted spots on corporate tech teams. But thankfully, there’s a silver lining. The growing need for companies to streamline processes and leverage their existing inventories could spell an influx in consulting work, which is good news for Vieo Consulting Group, a small start-up consultancy that caters to businesses in the health care and manufacturing industries. For example, the company, which is focused on the Midwest region, is working on projects involving business continuity within an IT environment, as well as disaster-recovery planning, said Norman Alesi, president of Vieo. For this reason, Vieo looks to hire seasoned IT professionals with a solid business background. “We need people with a full breadth of experience with data-center infrastructure: the network infra- 2 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE December 2008 http://www.securitycertifications.org/ http://www.vieocg.com/
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.