Cultivating an IT Talent Pipeline

Tim Chester: When we're going to hire people externally, we want to hire people as close to the entry level as possible. And why do we want to do that? Begin with we can get a wider pool that is much, much more diverse and not only diverse in the categories that we traditionally think of, but also life experience, diversity of competencies.

Sarah Buszka: Welcome to the EDUCAUSE Rising Voices podcast, where we amplify the voices of young professionals in higher education. I'm Sarah Buszka, and I'm joined by my co-host, the Amazing, the incredible

Wes Johnson: Wes Johnson. Nice to see y'all. Hear y'all, all that good stuff.

Sarah Buszka: Yes. Yes. And we are your co-hosts for the show. We are members, friends of the EDUCAUSE Young Professionals Advisory Committee, also known as YPAC. I am so excited for today's episode for a myriad of reasons, but I think we're going to be talking about just something that's very near and dear to my heart, both Wes and I since we have started our careers in technology, working in help desks, and we are, I think, the epitome and role models of what it looks like to promote within and to build talent within your organization. So I'm going to take that and take that claim and take that torch and be really proud of it here on the show. And I'm so excited for the topic we're talking about today and our guest, because that's what we're talking about today, is hiring is talent, talent pipelining. And that has been the goal and the ethos of the EDUCAUSE Young Professionals Advisory Committee. And really why we started is to help foster these connections and to really think intentionally about how we capture our student talent in higher education and how we actually help them understand, hey, you can have a career in higher education. It's actually a really great one. So this topic can't be more timely, more apropos, and I'm so excited to dig in. Wes, are you willing to introduce our guests? I can't wait.

Wes Johnson: Yes. Listen y'all, I'll take it a step further. The guests that we got on the screen here, Dr. Chester, Tim, Tim to us, I was even further beyond from the help desk. I was in the business office. I was going to be an accountant quietly sit back there and do my thing, and Tim grabbed me and threw me into the talent pipeline. And it's an honor to be the one to be able to introduce to y'all. Many of you probably already know, but for y'all who don't, this is Timothy m Chester. He is a professionally trained sociologist who considers his work as a technologist to be a form of applied sociology, exploring how institutions, people, and technology intersect. He has served as vice president for information Technology at the University of Georgia Go Dogs since 2011. And just to show how close it was, I started in 2010 with EIT.

Wes Johnson: That's how close me and Tim are in starting here, but keep going. Following leadership roles at Pepperdine University and Texas a and m University since 2022, he has also served as the Vice Chancellor for Information Technology at the University System of Georgia. His writing on leadership technology and culture has appeared in both academic and practitioner outlets, including current perspectives and social theory and educ college review. Tim's career centers on the belief that enduring technological change is ultimately a human challenge, requiring leaders to cultivate trust, connection, and shared purpose even in times of validity. Tim, it's my honor to have you on. It is,

Tim Chester: It's a pleasure. I appreciate the invitation and it's good to see all of you today. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say this, but we're a couple of weeks out from the conference and it'll be good to see you all face to face there as well. Absolutely.

Sarah Buszka: You're allowed to say it. Looking forward to it too. You were allowed to say it. Yes. Thank you.

Wes Johnson: Now, a question I've never gotten to ask you, Tim, in all the years I've known you, and we start this with all of our guests, what is your superpower?

Tim Chester: Oh my gosh, what is my superpower? Naturally, my personality is depending on which test you take, it could be type A. If you do the effectiveness, Institute is a controller. If you do. I mean, it's just basically kind of the natural, more assertive, comfortable type of superpower. I mean a personality type. And I think the superpower of that personality type is real comfort with changing directions. In fact, sometimes radically changing directions when the evidence or frankly, the winds have blown a different way. And so I think for better or for worse, we call that pragmatism, right? I'm willing to go work a certain direction or work a set of issues until proved wrong, and then I'm incredibly comfortable even turning around 180 degrees and backtracking sometimes from a leadership standpoint, that seems weird, but I mean, I think that's the way the world works and we work in an industry that is quite buffeted from time to time, and I think we're experiencing that again. And so if I was to say what my superpower is, it is comfortably comfortable in change and being comfortable second guessing yourself and taking a different direction when the evidence says you need to take a different direction,

Sarah Buszka: I feel like what apropos response from a sociologist, I love it.

Tim Chester: Very good.

Sarah Buszka: So I kind of want to dig in a little bit to some of your writing, Tim, because I've been diving into your substack and you've written some really interesting articles and I've seen some great engagement on it on social media, of course, on substack. Wes has posted about it. I've shared it actually with a handful of folks as well. And primarily what I want to start with is your article just around talent pipelining and why hiring might stall. And so I'm curious from your perspective, what does the IT talent pipeline mean to you in the higher education context and what do you want our audience to know about it?

Tim Chester: A couple of things, right? I mean, I think to begin with guys, how do I start? I mean, I think in the bigger picture, I think the mentor mentee kind of relationship tends to be more about just being around really brilliant, fast smart people and learning things. It's not because you've signed an agreement with them to be their protege or anything. And so I have been fortunate to be around a lot of bright people, number one, and I've observed a lot of things over time that I have picked up and said, that's interesting. That kind of makes sense in those kind of circumstances. But more so to your question is I started at the entry level of the IT organization too. I wouldn't say I was a struggling graduate student, but I was certainly a misfit graduate student. And coming out of the program was not exactly sure what I was going to do, but as I began writing my dissertation, I took an entry-level job in the IT organization at Texas a and m University.

Tim Chester: And within two years I finished a dissertation on a subject nobody's read or cares about, but I was having more fun and frankly making twice what assistant professors make. And so kind of here I am. But the thing that stands out for me about that just kind of start, and we all have unique ways we got into this business, I started at the entry level and had been fortunate to progress to the top of what I think is probably the premier university system in the United States public system of higher education and pretty close to some amazing leaders where I continue to learn something new every day. To me, that's a pipeline. And so the kind of question becomes as you move from benefiting from that type of organizational culture to being responsible for stewarding or facilitating it, you begin thinking more deliberately about the picture, big picture.

Tim Chester: And for me with the big picture is making sure you are intentionally creating talent over time that is well posed to advance and grow in both personal and professional ways for whatever for matters for them. And I think that's an organizational necessity in terms of trying to create the organization that I aspire to. And I'll drop some names here that some people on the podcast may have heard, but many other people don't. But the person that hired me, Bob Mann, I worked for Steve Williams, Tom Putnam, all Pierce Cantre, all giants at Texas a and m in that previous generation of leaders, they were just really intentional about career paths, having career letters from an HR standpoint and working people through those paths. Now, that was kind of the organizational for the individual kind of perspective. From the leadership perspective, it is all about trying to keep an organization growing and moving forward in terms of its impact just given how complex the world is. The fact that we tend to, we don't pay people they can make in the private sector, we don't have as much flexibility, the benefits aren't as good. We tend to live in niche areas and so on and so forth. And so part of that strategy as a leader has been to how do I build a pipeline of employees that allows us to be successful organization? And so it's a beneficial symbiotic relationship there as well. But in short, I benefited from that and I try to keep it going as much as I can.

Wes Johnson: So you covered a lot in that answer. I'm going to try to dig in some, Tim, again, I come from the school of Tim, so some of these things I know a little bit about, but that the school of Tim, the school of Tim, ask Stacy.

Sarah Buszka: He actually does call it that.

Wes Johnson: I call it the school attempt. He really does. Wow. So I'm curious then, in regards to creating that talent pipeline, what are some strategies, I saw some in your article, but if there's anything that you want to highlight regardless of what you put in place to create that pipeline.

Tim Chester: Yeah. Well, I mean I think a couple of things. I mean, to begin with kind as a leader of a large complex organization, I frequently we experience this problem as managers coming to me saying, Hey, we're not paying these positions enough. I can't hire anybody. I can't find anybody with the skillset that I need. And generally that is they want more money to pay the position. Now that is right. We do not pay our people enough and we need to do more. And I can tell you for the president and the youth University of Georgia, that is what he cares about more than anything else. But we still work within a system that has a set of constraints. And so I think again, just as a management practice over time I have learned that the more and more you hire external talent into the organization at kind of mid-career and later career kind of senior positions, it becomes really challenging.

Tim Chester: You tend to not be able to pay people what the way would want. So the pool kind of bids limiting, but then if you make one of those hires, they come in and blow equity and compression. And if you're not careful, it can kind of just destroy the whole morale of everybody. So the system that I have adopted over time is when we're going to hire people from externally, we want to hire people as close to the entry level as possible. Now, why do we want to do that? Begin with we can get a wider pool that is much, much more diverse and not only diverse in the categories that we traditionally think of, but also life experience, diversity of competencies. And what you hire for is some basic competencies about people who are accountable. They hold themselves accountable to values and ideals that they're important.

Tim Chester: They can communicate those things reasonably to you. They are willing to stretch themselves with assignments that they're intimidating is hell, and you can teach 'em and they're teachable. You can teach them everything else they need to know. So somebody comes in and says to me, gosh, we're trying to hire this grade four systems database engineer to do these wonderful things and we can't find anybody because we don't pay enough. I'm going to say, well, I think there's actually six candidates in the organization that that would probably be a great promotion opportunity for, have you recruited any of them in a disposition? And so the conversation starts there, but to the degree to which we bring new people into the organization, we do at that entry level where skills are less important, but being teachable and all those competencies are more than important. And as I look out on this podcast right now, I'm looking at one person who I know long time ago got tapped on the shoulder and got asked to go do some crazy stuff to him at that time was crazy intimidating.

Tim Chester: So what you want is people who will grow and self-aware and are willing to take those kinds of risks. And if you look at some of the best leaders at all of us in the organization, they tend to be those people that who are really accountable, communicate really, really well, pretty transparent and certainly are teachable. And that is what has worked for me. But again, on the management leadership standpoint, this is how I can make things work, keeping an organization going, keeping people feel that they've had some progression and some career and style or growth when the fact that anybody can move down the street to Atlanta 90 miles away and double their salary, or at least they could prior to, I think when there's a recession in the tech industry right now, and certainly pandemic wise, they certainly could do that. So I think that's worked. And I can tell you that model has paid off for me almost a hundred percent of the time. There's maybe one or two in a 30 year career where it's not worked. Anytime I have hired at the junior or senior level of the organization brought somebody externally, it is a roll of the dice and it's generally 50 50. How many of those work out?

Sarah Buszka: I think Wes is a product and an example of the school of Tim. So you are walking your talk certainly. Oh

Tim Chester: My God. But see, that's what Bob Mann did for me, and that's what Steve Williams did for me. And I got my big break going to be the CIO of a small branch campus, a guitar, which sounded a lot more impressive on a resume than it actually was, but there's nothing more intimidating than getting a couple million bucks and put in a plane ticket to the Middle East and go figure out how to make it work. And again, we had a lot of success, but it came down to being able to symbol a really, really good team there.

Sarah Buszka: Something that you've, oh, Wes and I are jumping over each other. We're so excited to interview.

Sarah Buszka: Something that I heard you, or at least I read in your articles, is this kind of concept of being a cultural architect. And that's what I'm really hearing you say. And of course I'm looking at this from the sociological perspective, but also just from the leadership management perspective as well, is what I've taken away from your writing is really taking this personal sense of responsibility and accountability on architecting that culture where folks like Wes can be given those crazy challenges and be set up to actually execute and achieve what is being set out for him. And I am kind of thinking about just the idea of promoting from within of not wasting the talent that you have. That's one of my biggest pet peeves I always say to folks is wasted talent and wasted potential. So this method and this philosophy and this mindset of just being this cultural architect, I'm really interested in and want to maybe ask you if you could share in your opinion, what can a career in higher education offer that will get young professionals in the door in the first place, right? Think about Wes, you grabbed him, threw 'em in here, but had you not been there, what are some of those things that folks who are listening can be considering as they want to become that cultural architect? Where might they start?

Tim Chester: Yeah. Well, I've been fortunate. I've worked at a small branch campus that started with less than 50 students. Even today it has less than a couple hundred students to learn the biggest flagships in the country. But the thing about higher ed that's really special is just how big the community is. And so again, it is kind of that cultural archeology standpoint. A community is a set of people with a set of very similar values and reasonably similar expectations who have a language, a set of beliefs, a set of values, a set of cultural markers that are absolutely important to them, and being a part of that community, I mean for good or for bad. And some people might say, this is to my detriment, I've never worked in a corporation. I don't have a clue what it would look like to work for Bank of America or Ellucian or FedEx or any of those things.

Tim Chester: I've hired people from those organizations who have come in and immediately feel that sense of community and feel that it's a place to belong If you're interested in maximizing your paycheck every time, this is not the community for you. We don't pay people what you would otherwise make. But in general, the job tends to be more stable, tends to be, it's not always true in the kind of the ups and downs of what I call phases of disruption, higher education has gone through. But for the most part, it is a caring organization with the set of symbols and language and values that really, really speak to community and stability. And I think there's a lot to be said for that. I joke I went to college and never left. I think that in many ways is true.

Sarah Buszka: I think it's true for all of us.

Tim Chester: Yeah, it is. But it's been a ride of a lifetime for sure.

Wes Johnson: So on that a little bit, Tim, thinking back to all of us, let's think back to even before we got to the manager title. When your leader or someone came to you and you got that first opportunity, however small it may appear now, it was the first time when you started thinking, you know what? I actually think I'm going to go down this path and see how it goes to a young professional. What would you say to them to even recognize that they are now facing down a talent pipeline? How do you even know that you're in this space of opportunity and what do you do with it?

Tim Chester: Yeah, I mean, I think what you're asking is how do we help people think about this opportunity and recognize it? I mean, I think as a leader, you try to cultivate that by making the work interesting. To go back to the previous question a bit too, when I was at Pepperdine, we had a brilliant network engineer who went to work for Bank of America, and six weeks later he called and said, can I have old job back? And he's somebody we wanted to have back. And we said, sure, you're welcome. And so we asked him why eventually, and it was about the fact that I get to do so many different and new things. I just think that the work itself is more interesting and I feel that it challenges me to learn. And so to go to your question, Wes, I think as a leader, you want to help people to see different types of work and more moderately to complex type of work as being an opportunity to learn and grow.

Tim Chester: And to the degree that you think about a career path, think about it in the sense of the work itself and looking to take skills that you've applied and grow with and apply 'em in new context to continually be successful. I think this is a cliche more than anything. It is really easy to look backwards and connect these dots. It's impossible to project 'em in the future. And I just think you don't worry about that. I just think you look for interesting work where you feel valued and make a contribution and the dots retrospectively will line up when you look back.

Wes Johnson: That's fair. The one thing that, yes, and I would add to all that, looking back again, like you said, connecting the dots now are a little easier. But in particular, when I started with EITS, from the top to your middle layer down to the bottom, there were certain things that were put in place that signaled if you wanted to grow here, all you got to do is kind of wave the flag and you probably will hitch some ride to some. So hearing that you wanted to dedicate time to training, there was a training council that you could be a member of to advocate for. All those things played a part in me saying, okay, and then an opportunity showed up. So I'm speaking to my fellow younger girl professionals at this point. I'm starting to get up there, Tim, but aren't we off? You see, I'm telling you when you see those things though, yeah, it really matters. Yeah, yeah,

Tim Chester: Yeah. And again, to use the example of Wes, we had a project that was tougher than we thought it was going to be. My natural personality skillset was not the right type for match of many of the challenges we were having. And so again, part of leadership is just having self-awareness to know that and get people who to plug into that. And one of the needs was kind of patient, thoughtful, collaborative relationship building, and the other was just being really sensitive to the details. And so I run a pretty flat organization. I mean, we have to have some hierarchy for, you have to have an org chart for the way things work, but in the most part we're pretty open and pretty transparent and pretty flat. And so naturally they learned that One of my direct reports has got this great young accountant named Wes Johnson who's really good with details.

Tim Chester: And then Wes made himself available. He had volunteered for some training and done some other things, and he said, why don't Wes has got the skillset we need that fits right here, and let's just put him in the role and see how it goes. And if he comes to us in a month says, I'm miserable, can I be out? We'll figure that out. We can make that work. But it worked and it took off, and that was a great match. And so I think I just love trying to figure out those matches more than anything else. And again, across my career path, out of hundreds of those, there's only been a couple that really didn't work out.

Sarah Buszka: And building on that too, I mean kind of listening or looking at this from the perspective of other leaders who might be listening to our show too as just I would say a final kind of put Bo to put on this topic is the reason why to do what I'm hearing Tim and Wes talk about

Sarah Buszka: Is it's actually going to save you time, resources, money, all of those things long term. Because we all know at this point the cost of hiring is rough. There's a lot of challenges there, and it's actually beneficial for us to just look to our left and our right and identify that talent and just give someone a shot because like you said, Tim, him, if Wes didn't perform well, which would never happen, but if he didn't, he still is in an organization that supports him where he's still employed, where he can go back to a role because he put his foot in this area, dipped his toe in and realized, Hey, that's not for me. I'm younger in my career. I'm trying to learn where my strengths are and where they're not. What better way than to be in this crucible where I have the opportunity to try and to learn? Because something I've also read in your articles too, Tim, is it's best for the organization and for the person in the role when both can mutually figure that out and have a safe space to do so.

Tim Chester: It's got to be a match. And again, fairly large organization, 240 staff people, 10 to 12% of that organization retires and moves on or their spouse graduates and stuff like that. So that gives you some slack of about 24, 25 positions, create room to kind of make this work. And we use that flex to make it work and to create those paths.

Sarah Buszka: I think it's amazing. There's actually, I have to do this because there's something you read or you wrote in your article that I read that I loved so much, and I know Wes loved it too, and I hope you'll be willing to indulge me. I just want to read it and share with our audience because I just think it's such an important quote, and I think Wes already knows where I'm going with this because typically on the show, we ask for our folks to kind of share their final takeaway or share one thing you want to leave the audience with. And I just want our audience to hear your words, and I'm going to ask you to give some additional commentary on it, if you will, because I just think this quote is so great. This is from your field guide to CIO article and you said A CIO must set the tone, build and mentor teams and create a culture where people feel safe to take risks and grow. Personal discipline is as vital as technical skill. You must speak hard truths, stay present during tension and never shrink your philosophy to fit institutional fears. You are there to guide, not to conform. I'm going to just do a mic drop right now. We have mic drops on this show. There's a mic drop there.

Sarah Buszka: Wes and I are shaking our heads. I mean, I love this. I think personally as a young professional hearing my leadership say something like this would make me just respect the hell out of that CIO. And I hope our producer let's me say that word on the show. But I mean, kind of answering this question a little bit for myself is what would draw me to work at an institution, especially when pay and all those things are a challenge, is hearing a CIO and hearing a leader say something like that where I actually believe that they walk their talk, someone who I really feel like I can get behind. And I really want to thank you for writing that and thank you for indulging me and saying your own words on the show. I just really want folks to hear that and I invite you to add any commentary or other thoughts that you would like our audience to hear.

Tim Chester: Well, I appreciate that. I mean, what I tried to do in that article, in any article I put on Substack, there tends to be a preamble that's got some personal story that tends to have some meaning for me that introduces the idea. And that one was about two colleagues, one who's moving into his first CIO job at a fairly big place, and he jumped from one big place where he was kind of on the senior team into being in charge of the show at a very prestigious place, and then another one who was interviewing for a dream job, which he didn't get, but he's still working through it and learning. And so trying to think about what the position is really like and what the real position should really do. Again, I hark back. I'm very sentimental about my own career journey and the people who mean a lot matter a lot to me.

Tim Chester: And some of the names I've dropped Bob and Steve and Pierce and Tom at Texas a and m, Nancy Magnusson at Pepperdine, and then Jerry Moorehead here at the University of Georgia. Again, we never signed this agreement that says, I'm your mentor, you're my protege, Rob. But it's just around being around smart, brilliant people and watching them do incredibly difficult challenging jobs and seeing what you can learn about that. And again, part of my whole substack thing started when Clara, Jalen Cova and I, she's the CIO at Harvard, where at a meeting, I don't know, nine, 10 months ago together, and we started reminiscing and said, we realized, oh, we are about the same age now that people like Dave Lambert and Greg Jackson and right along there, Brad and others that were leading the profession, and maybe we ought to step up a bit to make sure we're measuring up to what they did as well.

Tim Chester: And so I started putting some of this stuff together and kind of articulating this stuff. And again, I appreciate, gosh, Sarah, you're so generous with your kind words, but Wes will tell you, this is a pretty damn hard job, and sometimes it is a great amount of weight to carry, and people who carry that way can be difficult to be around. So I certainly have my moments with that as well. But I don't know how long I've got on this earth. And again, I'm talking more sentimental than most people do, but when I go, I'm going to go knowing. I touch the lives of people like Wes Johnson and Stacy Bulls and Jonathan C at Pepperdine and Tom Hoover at Louisiana Tech and Danin 40 at Ellucian, and a lot more. There's dozens more, and that's your work. And so that's some product of the work.

Tim Chester: I mean, I've done, I've done half a dozen ERP implementations, I've done this or I've done that. We're trying to figure out gen ai Now, none of that stuff matters. It's the fact that you created an environment where you found people to help you be successful. You did things so that they could grow and be long-term successful. And what matters at the most is the environment that you've allowed them to create for their own families, their own children, and provide. And that kind of sums up the job. And people ask me, why have I stayed at UGA so long? There's a couple of reasons for it. Number one, the president and I are very close, and he hired me when he was provost, and I'm committed to him. I have a dual appointment now, but my other boss in Atlanta, Theresa McCartney, is just a gym to work for. And we do really hard stuff together. And that's the journey. And again, you ride that journey of a lifetime for as long as you can.

Sarah Buszka: Well, what a mic drop, Wes and I both for

Tim Chester: That. No, thank you. Cut. We're done. Well, you're very generous. If my wife was here for you to say, you're just kind of making this up as you go. But again, I am very sentimental about people who helped me along the way. And as I have in my later fifties now, I'll be 57 next month and hoping to do this job for a good another decade. I just did an ED cost piece about what I think that next last decade for me looks like. Increasingly, I'm thinking about leaving behind people like those people who I've mentioned earlier, left behind, and that's what I'm hoping to do, and that's what I will remember more than anything else.

Sarah Buszka: Well, we couldn't have picked a better guest on the show to talk about talent pipelining and higher education technology. Thank you so much for all that you have done, all that you will continue to do. I'm so excited for it. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't plug and say, we have an amazing group of young professionals through the Ypac and the Y a's leadership, and I'm just so grateful for your willingness to be on the show and to share some of your mentoring along the way, and of course supporting Wes as well. So thank you.

Tim Chester: Yeah, absolutely. It's an honor. It's a real honor. Thank you so much.