ENTERPRISE

Your Career, Your Call (Part 2)

2/2/2013 4:43:40 PM

What do I need to know before it gets here? That should be the question you’re always trying to answer,” says Scott Caldwell, technical services manager at Johnson County Transit in Kansas City, Mo. For example, with the explosion in the popularity of tablets and smart-phones, getting up to speed on mobile technology and the way it could be used at your company or in your industry is critical, because it will very likely play a role in every enterprise someday soon, if it isn’t already.

“You have to seek out information and make the extra effort to find what the trends are. You want to make sure you know where things are going so you can be there,” Caldwell says. “That doesn’t mean you have to be an expert in mobile operating systems, but you need to know what it is and its impact on the industry as a whole.”

In the public transportation industry for example, officials used to buy specialized equipment for buses, but eventually that equipment was no longer needed because it was replaced by tablets. “I can go out and buy a $450 tablet to replace a $23,000 piece of equipment we would have bought five years ago,” he notes.

To keep informed, Caldwell reads industry publications and websites, attends conferences, networks with friends and colleagues, and participates in gatherings of IT trade and professional groups. “Being more aware and seeking to know where the market is and what companies are doing and what the trends are in the industry all drives back to help a person take charge of their own career,” he says. “If you know what’s happening today and know what will happen in the future, you can start planning out what training you’ll need.”

Description: To keep informed, Caldwell reads industry publications and websites, attends conferences, networks with friends and colleagues, and participates in gatherings of IT trade and professional groups

To keep informed, Caldwell reads industry publications and websites, attends conferences, networks with friends and colleagues, and participates in gatherings of IT trade and professional groups

At Jacobs Engineering, IT staffers can join in regular monthly project reviews that are conducted on all active programs. “We talk about risks, requirements [and] stakeholders, and we opened up these project reviews to anybody in IT who wants to learn about that project,” Carmody says. IT pros everywhere should look around their own organizations for similar opportunities.

One of the hallmarks of the organizations that Computerworld recognizes as Best Places to Work in IT, like Jacobs Engineering and BNSF Railway, is that they offer IT workers a variety of opportunities to broaden and deepen their skills through training programs, tuition reimbursement plans and mentoring arrangements. But such initiatives might be the exception rather than the rule; many IT employees say they on their own when it comes to training to acquire new skills.

Manage Your Skills Portfolio

It’s no secret that most corporate training budgets have been declining in recent years. But at the same time, technology is changing more rapidly than ever before. “It’s just understood that every year you have to take up a new skill,” says Johnson County Transit’s Caldwell. “You never stop learning until you’re dead.”

Caldwell has paid for most of his own training, which includes multiple certifications. “The training money just isn’t there with companies. It’s really up to the individual to decide what they want to do with their career and how to drive it. You can’t expect the organization to provide that career training,” he says. To fill that gap, he has bought books, taken online training courses and networked with colleagues to learn new skills.

Description: “You never stop learning until you’re dead.”

“You never stop learning until you’re dead.”

Another option is to find a mentor.

“Everyone seems to underestimate the need for a coach and mentor. You need one, both internally and externally,” says Hamilton of Quicken Loans. “If I had to do it over, I would focus on that a lot more.”

At Jacobs Engineering, Carmody launched a mentoring program that’s open to all IT employees. Staffers can find senior colleagues to team up with at an online mentor-matching site. The initiative includes and educational program called Leadership in Work and Life that features monthly teleconference workshops on topics such as how to protect the Jacobs brand, deploying capital wisely, agile software development and the scrum method, and voice-over-IP technology.

“I believe career development for anyone is a mix of classroom, mentorship, ad hoc cross-functional opportunities and volunteering,” says Carmody. Even when the workshops are on nontechnical topics, she encourages her staff to participate.

“I tell people that it doesn’t matter how technical you are; you deal with people so your people skills will always need maintenance. And you’re supporting a business, so you [must continually] learn about the business,” she says. “If you’re a technologist, you still need to know the business and communicate effectively.”

Map it

Launching a job search?

A good starting point is to draw a career map, which at its simplest is an inventory of your skills, experience and goals. But it should also include much more.

Description: A good starting point is to draw a career map, which at its simplest is an inventory of your skills, experience and goals.

A good starting point is to draw a career map, which at its simplest is an inventory of your skills, experience and goals.

“It’s an analysis of your competencies and past work experience, plus a forward look at possibilities,” says Ginny Clarke, president and CEO of Talent Optimization Partners in Chicago and author of Career Mapping: Charting your Course in the New World of Work.

A career map also includes an outline of how to achieve one or more of the objectives you have. This could be a list of role to move into or projects to get involved with as a means of gaining experience and new skills. “It’s like a financial plan in which you look at how much money you have, how much you want and how you intend to get there,” Clarke says.

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