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Let's address the elephant in the room: The world is staring at a talent crisis. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is disturbing the demand supply equilibrium - creating a shortfall of new skills. This is a classic Catch-22 situation where, on the one hand, CIOs are shifting their investments in favour of digital transformation. On the other hand, skilled IT workers are hard to come by. In a recent Skill Survey conducted by CIO&Leader, we found that 45% of Indian CIOs find it "hard" to hire the right skills for their department while 14% agree that it is rather "very hard" to fill in these highskilled positions.
This is hardly a surprise because CIOs across the board identify the IT skills gap as a serious impediment to their growing digital ambition and they are under enormous pressure to help their organizations become agile and stay relevant in the current digital age.
Every CIO is probably in a classic fear-of-missing-out moment with technology. One in every third CIO is either implementing an AI-powered digital initiative or leading the digital transformation initiative in the organization.
According to recent Skill Survey, CIOs will hire skills in BI & Analytics, security, cloud, infrastructure, networking, vertical-specific skills, enterprise architecture, business consulting, among others.
Today's business expect CIOs and their IT organizations to develop digital technology and business skills such as design thinking, data sciences, usercentric design and exposure to new technologies, such as IoT, Machine Learning, Big Data, and Blockchain, to drive transformation and sustain long-term benefits.
Traditionally, CIOs have hired IT consultants, contractors and outsourcing services to meet this challenge. But we all know the reality of the modern world that this solution is far from sustainable, and is definitely expensive (even if
companies can afford to spend on it) in the long run. Developing and retaining IT talent is a critical issue that organizations are already facing or likely to face in the future. CIOs find themselves tacking this problem head first. The other not-so-immediate solution is for CIOs to focus on reskilling and upskilling their workforce. This is definitely not an option, but is a necessity of modern times.
Some of the leading CIOs in the industry are already advocating a radical new approach. They are identifying and incubating small technology start-ups within their own organizations. This way they are able to add new skills, capabilities and competencies to their teams and stay not only relevant to their organizations, and win from within. As they cultivate new skills, CIOs are not leaving any stone unturned to develop their own leadership and technology skills. CIOs today want to be in the know and get their hands dirty as new technologies get deployed within their organizations. In the survey, 65% of CIOs said that they want to develop skills in digital technologies namely IoT, artificial intelligence, and robotics, closely followed by big data (35%), cloud services (36%) and IT security (10%). Similarly, business transformation continues to be a top priority for CIOs.
Look at data from the CIO&Leader Skill Survey that will give you an insight into the CIO's skill requirements in 2018. Also read what these ten CIOs wish to hire and develop in 2018.
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