with moving from a non-IT position to an IT position or from an IT position to a non-IT position. The vast majority of steps up the IT career ladder involve moving from one IT position to another IT position.

 

Transition Across Jobs, Organizations, Industries

We defined a job change as when someone either receives a new job title in the same organization or changes organization. During their careers, the CIOs in our sample changed jobs every four years ( 47. 8 months) on average. The average number of positions held by the IT professionals in the sample before becoming a CIO was 5. 1. We concluded that an IT professional with CIO aspirations should not stay in one position for a long period of time but rather should change positions periodically in order to move up the IT career ladder.

When looking for a CIO, organizations may prefer candidates with experience from the same industry, since they bring domain experience associated with that industry. On the other hand, organizations also might prefer candidates from a different industry, since they could bring a new perspective. As of December 2014, LinkedIn identified 147 distinct industries. 10 While this list is not associated with any national or international industry classification scheme (such as the North American Industry Classification System), it does constitute a logical, mutually exclusive and exhaustive grouping. LinkedIn keeps its industry designation consistent by allowing only registered representatives of an organization to choose the industry designation. That is, individuals creating a personal profile do not choose the industry for their organization; the designation is assigned instead by the LinkedIn authorized organization representative. 9

The 50 CIOs in our sample accumu-
lated 1,269 person-years of work expe-
rience in 52 unique industries. From
the perspective of total time spent,
17% of the years were in information
technology and services, 10% were in fi-
nancial services, 5.7% were in telecom-
munications, and 5% were in defense
and space. Of the 52 industries, 10
accounted for over 60% of the years of
organizations prior to attaining a CIO
title also changed the industry in which
they worked. Overall, we found no dis-
cernable influence of industry on ca-
reer progression, implying organiza-
tions may be industry agnostic and IT
professionals are not tied to any par-
ticular industry.
For the 50 CIOs in the sample, the
industries in which they began their
careers were quite different from the
industries in which they were em-
ployed in December 2014 when we
collected our data. Figure 9 shows that
over the course of their careers, these
IT professionals tended to move out
of information technology and servic-
es, telecommunication, defense and
experience of these CIOs. The remain-
ing 42 accounted for 40% of the years of
experience in total, with no single in-
dustry accounting for more than 2.7%
of the years.
On average, the CIOs in the sample
made 1. 5 industry changes prior to at-
taining their first CIO position. After
attaining that position, the CIOs in the
sample made an average of 1. 2 indus-
try changes. Because all the CIOs in the
sample were still working as of Decem-
ber 2014, and some had just become a
CIO, this history indicated that indus-
try changes by IT professionals may
not be less frequent after they attain
the title of CIO. We also note that 75%
of the IT professionals who changed

Figure 9. Net movement between industries during careers.

– 8 – 6 – 4 – 2 0 + 2 + 4 + 6 + 8

Banking

Pharmaceuticals
Insurance
Financial Services
Hospital and Health Care
Paper and Forest Products
Mining and Metals
Medical Device
Machinery
Internet
Cosmetics
Consumer Electronics
Business Supplies and Equipment
Aviation and Aerospace
Computer Software
Food and Beverages
Retail
Accounting
Automotive
Consumer Goods
Food Production
Human Resources
Mechanical/Industrial Engineering
Oil and Energy
Restaurants
Utilities
Chemicals
Events Services
Information Services
Military
Semiconductors
Wholesale
Management Consulting
Electrical and Electronic Manufacturing
Defense and Space
Telecommunications
Information Tech and Services