[lopsa-discuss] Career planning

[Richard Westlake]

> Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 21:14:59 -0500 (EST)
> From: Andrew Maddox <madsox at Radix.Net>
> Subject: [lopsa-discuss] Career planning

*snip*

> How permanent is any job these days in IT? In systems/network fields,
> especially? How do I keep myself informed of what's going on, current on
> technology, moving forward in my responsibilities, and all that?

Andrew
Sorry this is rather a late reply to you question, I need to read the time 
management book so there is more time for email.

It might be worth looking at the Continuous Professional Development or 
CPD schemes organised by various professional bodies. These cover planning 
your future direction, identifying your strengths and weakness, and 
deciding what skills, both soft and technical, you should develop. If you 
don't like the scheme or what to join the organisation then you could use 
it as a basis for your own personal program.

In a way CPD isn't new, we do it all the time, reading the mail list for 
example, but these schemes aim to add some structure, direction and 
planning.

There are some comments below on the situation in the UK, but the ideas 
should be applicable anywhere. I would guess that in the US the big 
institutions to look at would include the IEEE and ACM. If these or 
similar have local branch/chapter meetings they could be worth attending. 
The local BCS, IEE and similar groups hold frequent meetings, which I have 
found useful. It is rare for the to directly cover System Admin topics, 
but they do provide updates on what is happening it the rest of the 
industry.

We need to try and (re)start a SAGE/LOPSA group here in the UK.

Five institutions, including the IEE, have combined to produce the 
"Professional Development How 2" site
http://www.pd-how2.org/Welcome.html
This site covers main areas of Planning, Doing, Recording and Reviewing 
and should give you a good overview as well pointers to other resources.

The British Computer Society (BCS) has its own scheme 
http://www.bcs.org/BCS/Products/Professional+Development/
The old scheme used paper or PDF and word files, which anyone could 
download. The current scheme used online records, which is possibly better 
but you do have to be a member to use it.

The BCS use an enhanced version of the kills Framework for the Information 
Age (SFIA) http://www.sfia.org.uk/ for job descriptions. This is supposed 
to make it ease to build common job descriptions across the industry, HR 
people in large employers like this. I am not sure how suited this is to 
small employers, teams or System Admin generalists who cover a broad range 
of specialises and responsibilities

With the BCS "Career Builder" site you create a job description and then 
use "BCS SFIAplus" to make a list of CPS tasks. I can't comment too much 
on this as still trying to figure out how to map my rather sprawling 
System Admin etc job on to the SFIA framework.

Oxford University, IT support group produced their own in house version 
based on the old BCS scheme. 
http://www.itssg.ox.ac.uk/training/cpd/index.shtml

The large employers here in the UK seem to like these CPD schemes and will 
integrate them with there own in house staff development program, in some 
cases the BCS will accredit a companies scheme.


Richard Westlake

School of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Tel: 020-7631-6859
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                Truth endures but spelling changes    --  Anon.
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