Qualified Industry Veterans Are Ideal Fit at Dow Chemical

  By Deanna Hartley —

“We have enough work and enough different aspects in our comprehensive IT shops that it would be typical in the first six to eight years that [these new hires] might have three different job experiences — maybe even including a location change,” Asiala said.

In addition, the company seeks out experienced hires directly from the marketplace.

“In evaluating midcareer experienced hires, we typically look for candidates who can succeed in the job we hire them for as well as have the potential to do other roles in our organization,” he said.

Some of these hires are equipped with master’s degrees from prestigious MBA schools. “Just to get into the MBA school, they would have had to have eight to 10 years of relevant work experience,” Asiala said.  “[These candidates] would [first] do a summer internship and we would look to hire successful candidates into full-time roles after their graduation.  Those hires will come into a rotational job assignment program where their job will change every 12 to 18 months for three to four rotations across multiple functions.”

It certainly isn’t uncommon for employees to try their hand at an assortment of tasks.

“We’ll have someone go from being an expert on a subject matter expert-level role to being a project manager or the other way around,” Asiala said. “Eventually, with those experiences and maybe running one of the services we provide to our users, they could be a program manager and run a whole set of projects and ultimately could be a director of one of those areas.

“IT is kind of the glue that glues a lot of the business processes together, and if you understand the glue points and the ability to bring your experience to bear on one of the disciplines, [it] seems to be a bit easier,” Asiala said. “We find that people with backgrounds in IT have lots of opportunities in other functions.”

– Deanna Hartley, dhartley@certmag.com