The 2010 IT Leader

My sister, Josi, recently graduated from USC with a degree in biochemical engineering. She's crazy smart, has a great personality, is hard-working and is genuinely a fun person to be around. After interning with Solstice last year, she made the decision to forgo her biochemical career and go into IT. She starts at Accenture, my alma mater, in a few weeks.

A couple weeks ago, she asked me, what area of IT should she focus in? Where should she start? What entry level role should she try to target in her first project? Programmer? Business Analyst? Project Coordinator? What technology should she focus in? ERPs? Distributed Apps? Infrastructure? What industries should she target? Financial Services? Retail? Healthcare?

What an amazing and yet extremely difficult question. Here is a young mind, about to start her career, with all the potential anyone could ask for, and she's made the decision to jump into the increasingly complicated world of IT. I thought about her question and to be frank, I'm torn. With an aging IT workforce, should she jump into Project Coordination to start shoring up her management skills early? With the increasing trend of offshoring, should she focus on Business Analysis, since those jobs will most likely stay domestic? Should she jump into Programming like I did, so she gets first-hand exposure and understanding of the complexities of systems development?

It really is an interesting conundrum and I would like to hear your thoughts. If you were me, what would you tell my sister? And in the same vein, if you're in a hiring position, what are you looking for from kids coming out of college? What is the makeup of the 2010 IT Leader? Is it the hard core computer scientist or the marketing major with a passion for technology? What should/will the IT workforce look like in the US 10 years from now?

Please put your thoughts in the comments below, I'll consolidate the feedback and post a follow up message in a few weeks.

And to you and yours, Happy New Year!