I want my own PC

We’ve all either written or read a CV in our time. Aside from the usual self promotion about work experience  and education, there’s the all important ‘personal interests’  section where we’re given the chance to reveal what really sets us aside (looking forward to the day when I read about someone who is passionate about playing their trumpet J).

The section on ‘IT skills’ is something that is often brushed over in many businesses. Today we generally expect people to have sufficient knowledge of the usual Microsoft Office applications. In the PR world, there are a few people who will also mention social media in this section but whether this is an IT skill per se is probably an entirely different discussion in itself.

In recent work with clients including Compuware and Hornbill, there’s been a lot of discussion around the changing patterns of IT ownership driven by trends such as cloud computing / SaaS and the consumerisation of IT.  Now there’s probably an entire thesis or at least a whitepaper written on this topic, but coming back to the CV it feels as though the section on IT skills could in time become a really strong selling point.

The actual ownership of IT in our professional lives does come with a great deal of responsibility.  For example, making sure a smartphone is correctly maintained or knowing how to resolve a performance problem with a specific application. If working out how to charge calls from a personal mobile phone in your expense sheet today is tricky, what will happen when you’re juggling costs across several IT suppliers?

Okay, it might be a little early to take a course on the inner workings of the “Information Technology Infrastructure Library”. However, assuming the world is indeed moving in this direction, failure to add IT management expertise to the CV might see us reaching for the violin instead of blowing our own trumpet.