Built on ITIL: a steady stream of employment

16 Jan 2019 12:40 PM

Blog posted by: Richard Josey – ITSM expert, 15 January 2019.

Working in ITIL® adoption has given me a steady stream of employment in broader, more engaging roles and a significant increase in salary.

The demand for ITIL skills are continuing to grow worldwide and – I believe – will increase significantly over the next five to 10 years.

Most of the skills I’ve learned through ITIL are transferable: for example, my understanding of service is far more acute and if I’m receiving a service in either a professional or personal situation I find myself mapping all of that to my own knowledge and experience. I can identify what elements enable the service provider to get it right.

So, how did I begin to build a career on ITIL?

ITIL Foundation – a common language

After certifying in ITIL Foundation I was able to take ITIL thinking and principles into an IT service management (ITSM) consultant’s job for a tool provider, implementing tool solutions and incident and change management processes.

ITIL Foundation’s focus at that point on process and terminology gave ITSM professionals like me a common lexicon and enabled them to start using “problem” and “incident” definitions in a more unified manner; this helps a lot with communication between organizations and brings commonality to the way people work.

As my career progressed into more of a design capability – which included running projects with a greater focus on understanding how the organization worked in totality – I was then delivering an overall business solution rather than just a technical solution. This also introduced me to the concept that change management is as much cultural as technical.

Becoming an ITIL Expert

As I transitioned to being an independent ITSM practitioner, this was also the right time to become an ITIL Expert. From a career perspective, there was a growing market for ITIL Expert-qualified people and this equipped me to go for higher level, leadership roles in ITSM.

For example, I became a CSI manager on a contract with part of the UK National Health Service that wanted to become more ITIL-aligned. Having ITIL Expert meant I could participate in discussions about service design packages (something I’d never worked with before), which involved defining an internal structure with templates to make it easier to deliver packages. Ultimately, this made me a more rounded professional with a greater understanding of what’s important to an organization.

Building a future on ITIL

I don’t see ITIL disappearing any time soon, in fact I’m seeing increased adoption: ITIL remains the model for doing things properly and is a great framework for our era.

Even with the rates of change we’re seeing in our lives, our work and in technology, I see ITIL lasting because it’s based on service – something which isn’t going away.

For more information, see our Built on ITIL pages.

Read more Blog Posts in the Built on ITIL series

Built on ITIL: benefiting business at a time of transformation

Built on ITIL: Putting a rocket under your career

Built on ITIL: quality and consistency in service delivery

Built on ITIL: a service management foundation for the future

Built on ITIL: ITIL – the tool that just keeps giving

Built on ITIL: digital transformation is an organizational challenge

Built on ITIL: taking ITSM to the next level

Read more AXELOS Blog Posts by Richard Josey

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