Book description
Your complete guide to building your information technology career in any economy
The IT Career Builder’s Toolkit features market-focused skills and proven methods you can use to jump-start and advance your career. While other books cover just the mechanics of preparing your résumé, writing a cover letter, and interviewing, this book provides all that plus additional insight from IT career development expert, Matt Moran, to help you plan and create a rewarding IT career over the long term.
The toolkit approach allows you to use this book to suit your unique needs:
Are you new to the IT field? Benefit by reading the book cover to cover.
Just need to fine-tune your IT career? Choose a topic and dive in.
Understand and prepare for the various and changing factors that affect your career in both positive and negative ways. Learn how to
Present the value of your technical skills in the job market
Position yourself as the primary commodity of your career
Remove the guesswork out of job searches
Highlight on-the-job skills and gain meaningful professional exposure
The companion CD-ROM includes career management tools such as résumé and cover letter templates, forms to track important contacts, and self-assessment tools. Start or further your consulting career with sample proposals, opportunity tracking forms, and a time-tracking and billing database. Financial tools, including budget and cash-flow summary worksheets, help you gain financial well-being. Use the Value-Added Technologist presentation to gain a clear understanding of the career-building process and how to use the toolkit to build a dynamic career.
Most of all, have fun! Every year, people advance along the path to career stardom. Let Matt help you to be one of them through his career philosophy “Do not accept mediocrity as a career objective–demand more of yourself.”
“I want you to see the [toolkit] techniques as one more set of skills to adopt in your overall career development program. They are skills, just like your technical skills, that you will use daily during your career. Just as you adopt new technical skills, use the toolkit to define those soft skills that you must learn and put to use. The result will be a more well-rounded and complete professional skill-set.”
~ Matthew Moran, from the Introduction
Companion CD-ROM
The CD-ROM contains valuable tools, forms, spreadsheets, and documents that work with the Toolkit to help you master key areas of your career development.
Table of contents
- Copyright
- About the Author
- About the Technical Reviewers
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- I. An Introduction to Career Building
-
II. Filling Your Toolkit
-
5. Self-Assessment
- The Power of Self-Assessment
- The Dangers of Self-Assessment
-
Four Questions of Self-Assessment
- Where the Four Questions Came From
- Question 1: Do I Make My Employer’s Job Much Easier or Much More Difficult?
- Question 2: If I Gave Notice Today, Would My Employer Have an Instant Sense of Relief or Dread?
- Question 3: Do I Perform My Job Better Than My Employer Could Perform My Job If He/She Needed To?
- Question 4: If Asked How I Can Improve in My Job, Do I Cite External Factors—People and Resources—or Do I Take Responsibility?
- Conclusion: Making It Personal
- Actions & Ideas
- 6. Attitude
- 7. Communication Skills
- 8. Technical Skills
- 9. The Cover Letter
- 10. The Résumé
-
5. Self-Assessment
-
III. Putting Your Toolkit to Use
- 11. Breaking into IT
- 12. Building an Active Contact List
- 13. The Job Search
- 14. The Interview
- 15. Salary Negotiations and Employment Agreements
-
16. On-the-Job Promotion
- On the Job
- Maintaining and Building Your Network
- Identifying Areas for Success
- Attitude
- Working for a Tyrant and Other Joys
- Determine Whether Your Boss’s Actions Are Personality or Personal
- Understand That People Are “Where They Are”
- Take an Objective Path to Evaluating What They Say
- Handling Criticism
- Conclusion
- Actions & Ideas
-
IV. More Options to Build Your Career
- 17. The Boundaries and Benefits of Working at Home
- 18. The Toolkit Approach to Consulting
- 19. The Move to Management
-
V. The Value-Added Technologist
-
20. Make Yourself Indispensable
- A Word About Value
- Being Proactive
- Understanding Technology’s Role in the Organization
- Maintain a Business-First Mentality
- Create Standards, Automation, or a Programmer’s Toolkit
- Create a Peer Knowledge Network
- Be Known As the Go-To Resource
- Be Ready and Willing to Take on the Necessary Responsibility
- Have Experts You Call On for Your Organization
- Be Passionate About Something!
- Never Blame, and Always Have a Corrective Plan
- Adopt Concept Over Process
- Conclusion
- Actions & Ideas
-
21. Concept Over Process
- What to Expect
- What Not to Expect
- COP Objectives
- COP Origins
- What Is a Process-Driven Mindset?
-
Moving from Process Driven to Concept Driven
- A Concentric View
- A Note About Time
- Developing Proactive Solutions
- A Warning/Suggestion
- COP Is Not About Technology!
- Start with the Goal of Business
- Understand Your Objective as an Employee
- What About Mission Statements?
- From Goal to Analysis
- Understand the Industry
- Understand the Business: The Organization’s Role in Its Industry
- Understand the Workflow
- Understand the Relationships: Interactions/Dependencies
- Workflow Analysis
- Project Definition
- Conclusion
- Actions & Ideas
- 22. The Role of Mentoring
- 23. Financial Control
-
20. Make Yourself Indispensable
Product information
- Title: The IT Career Builder’s Toolkit
- Author(s):
- Release date: December 2004
- Publisher(s): Cisco Press
- ISBN: 9781587131561
You might also like
book
Health IT JumpStart: The Best First Step Toward an IT Career in Health Information Technology
IT professionals can learn how to launch a career in health information technology Government regulation is …
book
Building Your I.T. Career: A Complete Toolkit for a Dynamic Career in Any Economy, Second Edition
Building Your I.T. Career A Complete Toolkit for a Dynamic Career in Any Economy Second Edition …
book
Work Disrupted
If you only read one book on the future of work, Work Disrupted: Opportunity, Resilience, and …
book
I’m the Boss of Me: A Guide to Owning Your Career
If you’re like most people, you’ve had good bosses and bad bosses. Some bosses have inspired …