To succeed in telecom in the next few years, IT professionals will need to build teams with new skillsets in areas like scripting, development and customer service, according to participants in an IAUG WIRED 2024 panel discussion.
“Voice is alive and well, but the technology is constantly changing,” said IAUG board member Anna Maria DiFilippo, senior technical support analyst telecommunications, McMaster University, who moderated a session on “The Future of Telecom: A Customer Panel.”
“Half my team is retiring in the next three years, and who do we replace them with?” said Tyler Preder, telecom design engineer, University of Washington. “Staffing is going to be an interesting thing for all our organizations. In our case, we are looking for skills such as customer service and development ‘light.’”
For Jayne Hogle, director unified communications, American Heart Association, the ability to write scripts is fast becoming a requirement. “Voice enabling applications is a key for the future,” she said. “Our voice mail experts are helping to educate us, and we recently hired an expert on scripting and texting. Tools like Copilot can give your team a head start on development work.”
IAUG board member Rory McKenna, director of unified communications and end device services at University of Washington Medicine, agreed, noting the importance of hiring people with a developer mindset and cloud and mobile experience. “Our ideal would be an RF engineer with a development background who’s spent 10 years in telecom already,” he said.
McKenna added that IT professionals need to promote their services internally, so stakeholders understand the value they bring to the table. For example, he explained why it was better for nurses to send SMS patient reminders through a hospital system than using their personal mobile phones.
Nick Kwiatkowski, manager, unified communications and adjunct professor of data networking and cloud computing, Michigan State University, agreed with the importance of development skills. “Do we want to own our own stack, or hire a third-party at a certain cost?” he said. “Today, our vendors give us a toolkit expecting us to do the integration to enhance the user or customer experience. For instance, we had a user request for authentication, and our team put together a verification script in just a few hours.”
However, IT professionals should be prepared for more turnover on their telecom teams than has been the case in the past, according to Timika Franklin, customer service manager, Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services. “We are hiring and training people in competition with the private sector,” she said. “Meanwhile, we are looking for professionals with soft skills who can interface with our customers, manage our projects and show they have the ability to learn.”
Taking a strategic perspective, Hogle noted that the changing nature of the telecom industry opens new doors for IT professionals to become leaders in their organizations. “We are at the cusp of outstanding technologies such as cloud and AI that will allow us to be consultants rather than just doing day-to-day maintenance,” she said. “By harnessing the power of communications, we can be the problem-solvers for our organizations – and that’s an exciting change!”