Issue 90 
6th August 2003
 
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Benchmarking ICT Jobs and Skill Standards

To date there has been no industry standard for defining job roles and skillsets of IT professionals in Ireland. This is a problem for both business managers trying to recruit IT staff and for IT professionals, who cannot define their position in the industry or benchmark against any standard.

The Irish Computer Society (http://www.ics.ie/ ) has a new initiative called Skills Cert (http://www.ics-skills.ie/news.html ) designed to address this problem.

The purpose of Skills Cert is specifically to enable the standardisation of jobs and skills of ICT professionals. This process should help ICT professionals to get recognition for experience gained in the industry.

So how will it work in practice?

  • Based on a similar initiative in the UK, a Framework provides a common classification of job roles and the skill set required to perform them.
  • Candidates profile themselves on the framework and are validated before they are awarded certification.
  • Certification by the ICS ensures that a standard consistent approach is being taken across the industry.
  • Organisations can then benchmark their own inhouse skills against those available in the industry. This could not be readily done before.

An essential aspect of the programme is that the benefits exist for the individual being assessed as well as the organisation implementing the programme and for this reason the level of involvement is high for all participants.

Skills Cert is equally accessible to all organisations with an IT function from SME's to large multinationals. The ICS will now be offering Skills Cert to IT Professionals independent of any organisation which opens up Certification to freelance Consultants and people within non-participating organisations. The number of participants is increasing steadily towards the ICS's forecasted goal of having the vast majority of the IT Professionals in Ireland defining their job role by one recognised standard.