At CGI, we believe careers do not have to be linear. We encourage our members to move around between projects, clients and departments and explore any areas of our business that interest them, so that skills and competencies can grow. In this careers article, Inne Siera, Workforce Manager at CGI UK, shares a little more on our workforce management philosophy, so please have a quick read if you’d like to know more about it!

July 2021

At CGI UK, we make all of our job opportunities visible to our existing members. We like to show them what is out there and where they might need to tweak their competencies going forward, if they’re keen to explore different industries, specialties or clients on their career journeys with us.

Our belief is that careers do not have to be linear – you can go up, sideways or broaden your knowledge. No matter which point in your career has brought you to CGI, there will be a host of opportunities available for you to consider, whether you’re junior, senior or seeking a leadership position.

We encourage our members to pursue varied projects and move between ‘career families’ (groupings of like-minded roles) if they’re interested in doing so. All they need to do is regularly review our Member Opportunities Dashboard, work on their personal development plan and talk to their leader and work with their Resource Manager.

If you are someone who wants to work on different projects, different clients, different industries or even different roles, all those opportunities are there for you to explore at CGI. And if you prefer settling into a long-term role with one client, that is absolutely fine with us as well!

My role

In my role as Resource Manager, planning is very important.  A lot of my time is spent on the phone, either talking to individuals discussing career opportunities or to leaders about how we will get the right people for a client project they are trying to win.

Ultimately, my responsibilities can be split into four main areas:

  • Working with members who have finished their client project and are ready for their next opportunity.
  • Working with members we anticipate rolling off their client project soon.
  • Working with our leaders on the immediate needs or demands of our clients.
  • Working with our leaders on understanding what the market is doing and what our clients are thinking longer term.

These four areas together provide a good picture of which skill sets we need to grow, where we need to look at transitioning members to other roles, and where we may need to hire.

We are always looking forwards and assessing competencies, availability, rotation and priorities. Every day, we review members who might start rolling off projects soon, because the sooner we can work with them on their skills and training and get them considering internal opportunities, the better.

Of course, no two days are the same though! We often get thrown resourcing curveballs, meaning we need to have a good eye on the availability of members across the business and where they can be placed. Challenges like that certainly keep us on our toes!

CGI Career Champions

Members who move between career families are provided with a great support structure through our ‘Career Champions’.

Career Champions have built communities within their career family and are able to offer guidance on learning, opportunities, longer-term development and competency boot camps where we want to speed up the learning process.

Members can count on the Champions throughout their career as they experience various areas in CGI.

Empowering careers with the CGI Vision

The CGI Vision – “To be a global, world-class, end-to-end IT and business consulting services leader helping our clients succeed” – is complemented by five strategic goals.

One of these goals is “to be a company recognised by our members as an empowering environment in which to build a career and a company we can be proud of”. As you can see, we feel strongly about helping our members build their careers and this comes through in everything we do.

From on-boarding new members, to training our new leaders and newly promoted leaders, it really is part of the CGI culture. Simply put, it’s just ‘the CGI way’. 

Develop your career with us! Head to our careers page for job openings at CGI.