SIM Background
The Society for Information Management (SIM) is the premier professional association for executives, managers, and educators in the field of information technology management. SIM is international in scope through a network of regional chapters. The Boston chapter of SIM is well established with over 200 members and has a long history of providing professional development programs for its members along with leadership and IT policy contributions at the national level.
Shortage of Entering IT Professionals
Boston SIM shares a national concern regarding the shortage of individuals entering IT professions, especially into IT careers that are focused outside of the highly technical R&D community. We believe there is a substantial lack of knowledge about the wide range of IT career opportunities that exists in industry and professional services organizations for students who are not becoming computer scientists, but could be otherwise oriented to careers that focus on information management. This would include students with academic backgrounds in business, math and sciences, and liberal arts.
Informing Students About IT Careers
The Boston SIM organization has established a new program for informing college students about IT careers by bringing insightful career information to campus. In short, we have created a regional speaker bureau of IT executives, managers and senior professionals who have volunteered to be available at no cost to either students or their schools. Speakers will include CIO's, IT managers from various specialties, IT consultants with diverse backgrounds, and IT educators.
The Boston SIM speaker bureau has targeted the career services offices of regional colleges and universities as a primary gateway for connecting speakers with career-minded undergraduate students. SIM believes that career services offices are central to providing career information to students through organized career information events. In addition, we expect that the career services offices are best positioned to inform faculty of the availability of industry speakers for classroom speaking opportunities through internal communications practices.
Arranging for a Speaker
A list of available speakers is included in the "Boston SIM Speaker Information section. Speakers should be contacted directly for further information about presentations and for scheduling.
Topics Typically Covered
Speakers will present and discuss the role and composition of the IT organization in their individual companies. In general, the topics covered would include:
- Overview of the business (markets, products, services) and the general organization of the company
- Role and positioning of the IT organization at the corporate and business unit levels
- IT organization and review of roles and responsibilities of the IT organizational units
- Overview of some major projects and initiatives currently underway
- Overview of different IT career tracks in the company
- How people enter and move within the organization
- Types of backgrounds for different positions
- Views on future careers in IT
- Personal career history of the speaker
- Q & A