Part 1: Making the Transition from University to the Workplace in IT
The transition from the university life to the working life can be very daunting and challenging for some people, especially in certain industries such as IT.
Richard Simpson’s experience has shown that IT seems to have a growing rate of anxiety amongst its younger staff and that often stems from individuals not being used to, or favourable towards interacting with others and the different types of personality they may face.
He’s found the following topics have helped employers/managers to gain a better understanding of their teams and also helped individuals to gain a better understanding of themselves:
- Understanding the main differences between the working & studying life
- Anxiety – what can cause it and how you can better manage it
- Improving communication & teamwork skills
- Improving confidence levels (and learning that it’s okay to ask for help in your first role)
- Understanding what employers may expect in order for you to earn a promotion or pay rise
Part 2: What you need to become the CIO/CTO/CDO
Technology leadership has always been about managing the uncertain, complex and often expensive landscape of business systems/infrastructure on behalf of commercial colleagues who often don’t understand how to harness their power.
Digital has brought a fantastic range of opportunities to deliver increased business value quickly through collaborating with business colleagues to deploy platform based solutions. These reduce infrastructure barriers to entry, but the complexity of organisational, process and culture change remain the same.
How do you develop a career in this wide and diverse industry? What skills are necessary, and what should you be working on to progress to the next level of leadership? You might like the idea of becoming a CIO/CTO/CDO, but what does this role require? How do you build your experience and develop the skills required to operate at a more senior level?
The focus of this talk discusses these challenges and how individuals can understand their needs and develop fulfilling careers in this increasingly varied and complex world.
If you aspire to do more and develop your technology career, then hopefully this talk can provide some insight on how this can be done.
About the Speakers
Richard Simpson
Richard is an expert in Graduates and the Millennial generation. He helps organisations to retain, support and develop their younger generational employees and helps the individuals to get the best out of themselves. He has experience of Graduate management in multiple large companies across Europe such as Accenture, Amazon, Heineken and De La Rue
Richard is currently working with two IT companies and their Graduates and has found particular interest from this field in his type of work. Especially helping the Graduates with their transition from the secluded, studying lifestyle, to working in a noisier, busier office setting.
Neil McGowan
Neil is an expert in Information & Digital Technology, who has spent the last 15 years as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for many FTSE and PE/VC funded businesses. He has a broad understanding of how technology brings value to business through his work with several Digital and High street Retailers, Utility companies, Financial Service, Automotive and Government organisations. These include N Brown, Maplin electronics, Littlewoods/Shop Direct, United Utilities, Volkswagen/Audi and the Ministry of Justice. Neil is currently using his experience to enable a number of smaller organisations to adopt digital capability experience technology capability traditionally reserved for larger organisations.
