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.”
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.
“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.
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.
