Change agents needed
IT project and programme managers with front-line change management experience have the pick of jobs both inside and outside City IT departments.
"Every single one of our clients is looking for programme and project managers, because company and cultural change is driven through change programmes," says Mark Wilkes, head of executive search at recruitment firm JM.
High demand is creating opportunities for IT change specialists in government or manufacturing to transfer to the investment banking world, particularly if they have experience managing outsourcing or off-shoring deals.
As change management skills are cross-functional, there's also huge scope for senior IT staff to extend their skills beyond IT and take over change roles in other business areas. "There's a lot of crossover between HR, finance and IT because of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems," Wilkes points out.
Andrew Barber, a senior consultant at recruitment firm McGregor Boyall, is seeing demand for configuration, business process engineering (BPR) or review managers with a strong track-record. "What we look for is a demonstrable track record of complex deliveries that include disparate teams," says Barber.
The upsurge for managerial skills is cyclical, believes Barber. Last year, companies were looking for developers - the "doers" to create new systems - which means that this year the emphasis is on finding people who can manage and extract the most benefit from these new systems. Wilkes says he placed a contractor on 1,500 a day contract with a bank to manage the aftermath of a Basel II project.
Project managers can typically pull in 600 to 800 day, rising to 1,200 to 1,300 for a programme manager. On the permanent side, experienced project managers can expect to command 80k to 90k and programme managers in charge of multiple projects can achieve salaries of 80k to 130k.
