Hybrid IT help

Companies seek a mix of technology savvy and operational expertise.

There's a new type of position emerging in IT departments called "hybrids," roles that mix technology talent with business acumen or sector-specific experience to create an employee who gets IT, but also gets the company.

Companies should seek and cultivate IT employees who have the skills to analyze how doing their job makes a difference not only to end users, but to the business itself, says Jeff Markham, San Francisco branch manager of Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing and placement firm. These employees "need to know 'how does the company make money, and if I develop an application, how does it affect that?'" Markham says.

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There's a new type of position emerging in IT departments called "hybrids," roles that mix technology talent with business acumen or sector-specific experience to create an employee who gets IT, but also gets the company.

Companies should seek and cultivate IT employees who have the skills to analyze how doing their job makes a difference not only to end users, but to the business itself, says Jeff Markham, San Francisco branch manager of Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing and placement firm. These employees "need to know 'how does the company make money, and if I develop an application, how does it affect that?'" Markham says.

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Technology has become the backbone of information provider Thomson Corp.'s business because it's the primary way in which the company reaches its customers. "We encourage [the IT staff] to think like the customers and think across [departmental] borders," says Carl Giaimo, senior director with Thomson's Technology Best Practices, a small group of technology professionals who work across the many divisions of Thomson. "The way we get there is an experiential approach; teamwork and exposure to the other groups."

Specifically, the company each year will train about 25 or 30 employees out of its 9,000-member IT department by pulling in directors from all of Thomson's business units to educate them about company operations.

"The purpose of the program is these guys know the technology, but they need to know the business side. The intent is that they're going to get a significant increase in responsibility within their tech organization within 12 to 18 months," Giaimo says. "By rotating them through the company, it gives them such an advantage of really seeing the big picture."

Community Medical Centers is another business benefiting from this blend of IT and operations savvy.

"I don't think my company would be in the [strong] position we are today if it weren't for those hybrid roles," says Rich Cummins, manager of network services with the healthcare firm in Fresno, Calif. Of Cummins' 11 direct reports, he says about half of them operate in a hybrid role.

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The healthcare company has three major IT initiatives underway -- one to replace X-ray film with electronic images, another to let doctors remotely sign off on charts and a third to build a portal with access to a number of crucial applications. Without hybrid employees who understand how doctors, nurses and other staffers use these programs, these critical business applications would not be nearly as effective.

"We would have had a vendor come in and install [the applications] and say, 'Well, you're up and running' and have a group support it, but there would be no integration. The beauty of the hybrid role is the person understands the technology infrastructure and the end user," Cummins says.

The concept of the hybrid IT worker isn't new, particularly to transaction-based sectors such as financial services, says David Foote, president of management consultancy and research firm Foote. But the trend is starting to spread to different sectors and reach deeper into the ranks of IT departments. "We're projecting [hybrid jobs] are going to become more and more common in industries where the percentage of the IT budget to overall spending on business processes is much higher than the norm," he says, citing banking, healthcare, retail, insurance and education.