Archive for 2008

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Should An IT Manger Be A “Secret Shopper” When Looking For A New Job?

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
IT Leaders Need To Check Out Both Their Next Job And The Company That's Offering It

IT Leaders Need To Check Out Both Their Next Job And The Company That's Offering It

So let’s pretend for a moment that you are NOT fabulously satisfied with your current job as an IT Leader. You’ve decided that global recession or not, you really, really need to find yourself a new IT job. How do you plan on going about doing this? There is nothing new that I can tell you about Monster.com or Dice.com, writing the perfect resume, or even how to leverage social networks like LinkedIn in order to get an offer. Instead, let’s talk about what you need to do AFTER you get the offer.

When you were just out of school, or when a job that you had suddenly went away, you probably went searching for the first job that would start providing you with a paycheck. However, times have changed. You now actually have a bit of a career going and, assuming that you currently have a job, you’d prefer to not muck it up.

What this means is that your search for you next IT Leader job needs to include a few additional steps that just might strike you as strange – but could very well save your career. Interested? Let’s see what you need to do next.

Once you have an offer from a company, STOP! Don’t accept it right off the bat. Tell the company that you need some time to consider their offer. Two days would be perfect, but you can even accomplish what you need to get done in a single day if you move quickly.

We all know that job descriptions are generally junk – originally created too long ago by someone who thought that they knew what they needed and then transformed into junk by caring members of the HR and legal teams so that nobody would be offended or even know what the job was about. This means that you need to make sure that you can get along with your potential new boss (hopefully you have already talked with him/her). Now you’ve got to find out if this COMPANY is the right company for you.

In a nutshell, if the company makes a lousy product / service and all of their customers are ticked off at them, then this is probably not the best place for you to take your career to. This is the new angle that you need to add to your job search: not just checking out the new job, but also checking out the company that you are considering joining.

How do you do this for an IT job? If the company that you are thinking about joining has retail stores or distributors that carry their products, then this part is easy – it’s time to go shopping. If you were considering joining Bose’s IT department, then you’d want to visit your local Best Buy and check out their home theater section.

Even more important than confirming that Bose products are still available (proof that they aren’t going out of business), would be what you learned by talking to the sales associates. What do they think about Bose products? Do people return them? Are they selling well? Although these are not IT questions, they are critical to making sure that you are joining a growing thriving company instead of a stalling, shrinking one.

If the company that you are thinking about joining does not have their products in retail stores, then you’re going to have to be a bit more creative. Almost all firms have some sort of help / support line. Play the role of a customer and give it a call – how do they treat you? Do some on-line searching for reviews of the company and their products. Look for legal actions against the company – discrimination lawsuits are never a good thing.

At this stage in your IT career, you need to adopt a bigger view of the world when you go looking for your next job. It’s no longer just about the job, but now it’s also about the company that you might be working for…

Did you take the time to check out the company that you are currently working for? How did you go about checking them out? Was the information that you found accurate? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in jobs in information technology | 1 Comment »

How Can A Manager Manage IT Workers When There Is No Company Loyalty?

Friday, December 5th, 2008
Company Loyalty Is Going Away - What Should IT Managers Do?

Company Loyalty Is Going Away - What Should IT Managers Do?

Welcome to the 21st Century where all IT workers now view themselves as temporary workers. The constant cycles of downsizing and outsourcing have made even the most committed workers view their jobs as being not so much as a career, but rather as a temporary pit-stop.

Add to this situation the arrival of the young Generation Y workers and all of a sudden an IT manager has a situation on his/her hands that they were never trained to handle. Put all of these factors together and suddenly company loyalty is a thing of the past.

The way that IT employees used to move forward is also something that is going out the door. Gen Y IT workers are actively looking for career paths that have shorter steps. What this means for IT managers is that they need to find ways to understand what the expectations of their team members are. Once this is known, the manager will need to make sure that opportunities to gain experience are made available.

As though this was not complicated enough, an IT manager needs to be careful. There are also lots of IT employees who have been working their way up the career ladder using the traditional route and they are not going to be happy if others start moving up quicker than they did.

One thing that may help IT managers is that their companies are also changing. We are starting to see companies moving away from the traditional seniority-based IT career paths and are now starting to focus more on employee performance and future potential. This can mix things up as good workers of all ages start to move up through the ranks.

The tools that are used in the IT workplace reflect the new reality of the office. Face-to-face contact is going by the wayside more and more often. This is due to work groups that are spread out and workloads that seem to be always increasing. Just like phone conferences replaced fact-to-face meetings, emails replaced phone conferences, now IM and texting are replacing emails.

It turns out that loyalty still exists in IT departments – it’s just no longer given to the company. A great IT leader or a project that has real merit will capture the attention of jaded IT workers as well as Gen Y workers. IT managers who can clearly communicate a driving purpose for the work that is being done will always attract the best and the brightest workers. No company loyalty required.

Do you feel that you have any loyalty towards your company? Do you feel that others on you team have loyality to the company? Is lack of company loyality a big deal when it comes to getting work done? Do you know of any ways to improve company loyality? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in IT staff retention | 6 Comments »

What Can Top Athletes Teach You About Being A Better IT Leader?

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
Top Athletes Can Teach IT Leaders How To Reach The Next Level

Top Athletes Can Teach IT Leaders How To Reach The Next Level

So we all know that Tiger Woods is a fantastic golfer. However, do you think that he’d be any good at running an IT department? The answer, somewhat surprisingly, is that yes, he probably would do a good job. The reason is that there is a lot of similarity between being an excellent athlete and being a top-notch IT manager.

Graham Jones is the founder of a company called Lane4 which uses studies of professional athletes to help managers do a better job of managing. One of the interesting things that he has discovered is that in the area of sports, just like in the world of business, one of the main obstacles to achieving something that has been identified as being “impossible” just might be a self-limiting way of thinking.

One of the first things that you have to realize about being an IT leader is that great leaders are not born, but are rather made. Sure some leaders have nature gifts such as communication skills and leadership attributes; however, the most important skill that they need to have is mental toughness – this means that they get better at doing their job when things get tough.

Great IT leaders rise up not due to chance or luck, but rather because they planned to succeed. Specifically, they identified and achieved lots and lots of little goals in order to get to where they are. This requires them to sharpen their skills and to, much like Madonna, reinvent themselves many times in order to stay out in front of their peers.

So what can IT leaders learn from top athletes? Simple, how to succeed over and over again. Here are the steps that are needed to do achieve top performance over and over again:

Gotta Learn To Love That Pressure

Call it what you like, but pressure is what drives great athletes and great IT leaders to achieve their best. What this means for you is that you’ve got to find a way to learn to love pressure. Another way to say this is that you’ve got to commit yourself to using work pressure to continually improve yourself all the time.

One secret to dealing effectively with pressure is to only focus on making yourself better. Don’t let yourself get distracted by other IT leaders who mange / complete successful projects, get promoted, win awards, etc. Instead, focus on those things that you can control and don’t spend any time thinking about the rest.

You need to be able to step away from the workplace pressure. This means that you actually do need to have another life – family / hobbies / sports, whatever. Top athletes have the ability to flip the pressure switch on when they are “on the job” and then flip it off when they are involved in their other life.

It’s All About The Long Term

By the way, you will occasionally fail. This means that you need to have a way to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back to work. A good way to be able to do this is to have long term goals that you focus on.

What star athletes do is to create very detailed plans that are made up of a series of short term goals. The plan is laid out so that the athlete can do his / her best at the right time – not peaking too early or too late. IT leaders need to do the same. You want to make sure that when you have a big success, it is the right time for it to get maximum exposure within the company.

Push Baby, Push!

We all push ourselves based on the people who we work directly with. If we are working with a bunch of slackers, then there won’t be much self-pushing going on. Instead, we should be searching for opportunities to work with the best-of-the-best. This is very similar to when top athletes train with their fiercest competitors in order to push themselves to be their very best.

Invent And Then Reinvent Yourself

Always be sure to get feedback from trusted sources. This will allow you to understand what you are doing well and where you need to make changes. These changes will allow you to reinvent yourself so that you can become the best IT leader that you can be.

Party Like A Rock Star

Something that IT leaders all to often pass over is to take a break after a major achievement and celebrate. Spending as much effort celebrating a success as you did achieving the success is a way to reward yourself. This is the time to blow off some steam, pause and catch your breath before you push on to the next higher level.

Do you feel like you are performing at your peak management level? Do you have a plan with goals for how you are going to reach the next level in your career? Are you “training” with the best of the best in your office? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in career development | 3 Comments »

Happy Thanksgiving – Take The Week Off!

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Here's Hoping That This Week Is Special For Everyone

Here's Hoping That This Week Is Special For Everyone

Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming week is a great week for you – I’m taking it off! Blogging will resume next week…

For my readers in the U.S., you know that this week is all about family, turkey, and of course football. I’m not sure what it is about turkey that always seems to make everyone fall asleep, but I’m hoping that when I wake up this year the economy will be on an uptick, gas will still be under $2 / gallon,  and the world will have settled down for awhile.

For my international readers, pretty much all of the United States will be taking time off this week to celebrate the arrival of Europeans into the New World. For better or for worse, it’s what has gotten us to where we are today and we think that that’s a good thing.

Have a happy and safe week no matter where you are and we’ll talk next week.

- Dr. Jim Anderson

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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Need Some Help With Self-Promotion At Work?

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
In Order To Be Successful, You Need To Know How To Promote Yourself

In Order To Be Successful, You Need To Know How To Promote Yourself

It’s just a little bit off-topic, but Meridith Levinson over at CIO.com just interviewed me as a part of an article that she wrote titled Self-Promotion at Work: 8 Tips for Shy People.

In these times of economic uncertainty, these tips might be just what the Doctor ordered for your career. Check the article out and let me know what you think about it.

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Posted in career | 2 Comments »

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