Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Are You Proficient in These Marketable Skills?

Want to be marketable? Consider sharpening these in-demand competencies.

Computerworld’s 2016 Forecast study has identified the hottest skills for IT professionals. The top five include IT architecture (42 percent of IT hiring managers seek this skill), application development (40 percent), project management (39 percent), big data (36 percent), and business intelligence/analytics (34 percent). And business intelligence and app development rank #2 and #4 in the list of the most difficult skills to find. Let’s look at how current or would-be IT professionals can up their game in these areas.

IT Architecture

Learning how software and systems are built has never been easier. In a blog for Robert Half Technology, Jerry Clinesmith advised prospective architects to read and write as much code as possible. Through open source, you can find projects you’re interested in and study the code. “Look at how things are broken into classes, access patterns, and think through the overall structure of the project,” he said.

In terms of creating code from scratch, the only way to get better is through practice. “Take a single idea and rewrite it using different styles, languages, and techniques,” said Clinesmith. “Write it once using classes, another in a purely functional manner, etc. You’ll learn what works best and how to solve problems in different ways.”

Keep your knowledge of front-end, back-end, distributed systems, and storage fresh, and don’t forget to pow wow with other architects. “Attend local user groups and conferences, talk to other developers about what they’re working on,” suggested Clinesmith.

Application Development

No one will tell you that a degree in computer science or software engineering isn’t useful to acquire app dev skills. But it’s not absolutely necessary either. There are now a variety of courses and certifications available – online and offline – for different aspects of development. Mobile apps, obviously, are stratospheric at the moment and a great space to be in.

As with IT architecture, the best way to prove that you’re marketable as an application developer is to actually build something. Before you can, though, you’ll need a solid understanding of user interface design, multiple programming languages, and the business reasons companies build apps in the first place.

Once you’ve started a project, JavaWorld writer Andrew Oliver recommended writing your own documentation. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked on a project, only to be pulled into an executive meeting because I wrote a document or presentation they saw and understood. What most managers want to know is: who can drive this to completion and won’t BS me about how it’s going?” You want to get accustomed to writing this way so that you’ll appeal to the people who make hiring decisions.

For the rest, check out QuickBase's Fast Track blog.

How to Be a Standout in Your Field

Brand strategist Scott James of publishing firm Greenleaf Book Group knows something about making a name for yourself in a field where everyone is smart and at the top of their game. He’s come up with the four questions that separate experts from pretenders.

Scott James believes there’s a clear line between experts who have built a platform and brand around their expertise and experts who are great at their work but haven’t figured out how to do this. What does this line look like? James says it’s the ability to answer the following four questions off the cuff. It shows that experts with big ideas think about specific, high level gauges of success, progress and growth all the time and guide their actions and initiative accordingly.

What’s Working? 

Experts know the answer to this because they measure everything. Those who build a business around their expertise know which email approach adds the most to their bottom line and they know if flying to a certain city for a meeting is the right move. They have a system in place to keep track of such things, and they take the time to assess and understand their data. Every successful expert can rattle off the two or three things they do that drives their business and expands their audience—and they can do so without thinking about it too hard.

What is Making You Stand Out?

Experts with strong personal brands know that they are swimming in a crowded ocean, and they can pinpoint what it is about what they do that other people get excited about, and they know how to talk about what they do in a way that honors their uniqueness and targets the specific needs of the people they want to influence.

What’s Next?

Experts think several steps ahead. The ability to be deeply in the project that is happening now and already be thinking at 50,000 feet (and how today is laying a foundation for three years from now) is a difficult mental tightrope to walk. But whereas some people get buried in the details of their current project and let everything else go, experts can walk that tightrope because they know it’s critical. Experts can’t afford to wait until after their current project is finished to think about what’s next.

For the rest of my tips, have a look at the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Do You Know Your Sales Terms?

You know the feeling. You’re meeting with someone from sales or marketing and you’re listening attentively as they passionately describe their project. You want to understand what they’re talking about, but you don’t have an MBA and some of the vocabulary is just lost on you. However, you don’t want to sound clueless, so you don’t ask. We hope this post with common sales terms definitions offers some relief and can serve as a handy reference in the future!

AIDA

An acronym that stands for Attention/Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. These are the individual steps of the sales funnel (see below), in which your pool of potential customers moves from large to small as prospects get closer to a sale.

BANT

An acronym used for qualifying leads, which stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. Salespeople use this to assess whether a prospect has the money and the decision-making power to result in a sale, and also whether your product or service solves a critical customer problem in the right timeframe. In other words, BANT helps salespeople determine if all the stars are aligned for a deal to take place.

Buyer Persona

Based on research and outlining what, where, when, why, and how a customer buys. Buyer personas are often provided to salespeople to educate them about the ideal prospect and about the most effective way to approach that prospect.

Churn Rate

A metric based on the value of the customers you retain. To calculate churn rate, you take the number of customers you lost in a given time period and divide it by the total number of customers you had at the very beginning of the period. For example, if you had 100 customers at the start of the year and only 80 customers at the end of January(discounting brand new customers), your churn rate would be: (100-80)/100 = 20/100 = 20%.

Closing Ratio

The percentage of prospects that a salesperson closes successfully. This ratio is used for all sorts of things, including individual salesperson performance, evaluation of profits, and sales forecasting. The better qualified a salesperson’s leads are, the less likely they are to be turned down (and the higher their closing ratio generally is).

Qualified Lead

A prospect that learned about your product or service, was interested, and contacted your organization to receive additional information. This kind of lead is most likely to result in a sale because half of the work is already done!

For more where these came from, head on over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Become a Project Manager

PM certifications increase your earning potential and differentiate you on the job market. The Project Management Institute offers six certifications, and here are some details about each so you can assess which one is most applicable.

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

The CAPM certification recognizes a demonstrated understanding of the fundamental knowledge, processes and terminology that are needed for effective project management performance. It is designed for project team members who provide subject matter expertise (e.g., marketing, finance, customer care, processing, fulfillment) and serve as project sponsors, facilitators, liaisons or coordinators.

The CAPM requires a high school diploma, associate’s degree, or the global equivalent, as well as 23 hours of PM education (without work experience) or 1,500 hours of professional experience on a project team (without project management education). You will need to take a three-hour, 150-question, multiple-choice examination and the cost for non-PMI members is $300 (discounted for PMI members).

If you can answer “yes” to more than one of these questions, you might want to pursue the CAPM certification.

• Have you been in project management for less than two years or are you new to project management?
• Do you participate on a project team?

Project Management Professional (PMP)

The PMP certification recognizes competence of an individual to perform in the role of a project manager, specifically experience in leading and directing projects. It is meant for those who are responsible for all aspects of a project for the life of a project, and who lead and direct cross-functional teams to deliver projects within the constraints of time, budget and scope.

The PMP requires a high school degree, an associate’s degree, or a bachelor’s degree – or their global equivalents. You must have 35 hours of PM education, and if you have obtained a bachelor’s degree within the last eight years, you must have a minimum of three years of non-overlapping professional experience, during which at least 4500 hours were spent leading and directing projects.

If you have obtained only a high school degree within the last eight years, you must have a minimum of five years of non-overlapping professional experience, during which at least 7500 hours were spent leading and directing projects.

You will need to take a four-hour, 200-question multiple-choice examination and the cost for non-PMI members is $465 (discounted for PMI members).

If you can answer “yes” to more than one of these questions, you might want to pursue the PMP certification.

• Are you responsible for all aspects of a project for the life of the project?
• Do you lead and direct cross-functional teams to deliver projects within the constraints of schedule, budget and scope?
• Do you demonstrate sufficient knowledge and experience to appropriately apply a methodology to projects that have reasonably well-defined requirements and deliverables?

For additional PM career options, head on over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Increase Your Learning Agility

An old manager once told me I had the ability to quickly assimilate information, that he could tell me how to do something and I would then apply that knowledge to a variety of different situations. I now see this feedback as the ultimate compliment, for my manager felt I had learning agility, and apparently, learning agility is critical to success.

Learning agility is openness to information and the ability to gain and apply insights. People with this trait often follow a non-traditional path and are able to develop professionally from an array of diverse experiences. Learning agile people aren’t perturbed by shifts in direction. They are focused on the end state and are willing to put themselves out there. When they fall, they get back up. They take risks and often receive commensurate rewards.

Consulting firm Green Peak Partners recently collaborated with researchers from Teachers College at Columbia University to assess the value that learning agile individuals bring to their organizations. Their study found that private equity-backed C-suite leaders who ranked high for learning agility on an assessment test also outperformed less-agile peers as measured by revenue growth and “boss ratings” issued by their Boards.

Learning Agility Can Be, Well, Learned

As project team leaders or project managers, there is much you can do to foster learning agility in yourself and in your organization. Here are five tips from Green Peak Partners.

Innovate: Repeatedly ask, “What else? What are 10 different ways I could approach this? What are several radical things I could try here?” You might not actually execute all the ideas you come up with, but you shouldn’t dismiss anything out of hand.

Trust your intuition: Always look for a pattern. For instance, think through the similarities between current and past projects and the common thread that ties various aspects of your business together. Cultivate calm through meditation, and learn to listen before immediately reacting in a stressful situation.

Become more reflective: Explore “what-ifs” and alternative histories for projects with which you’ve been involved. Never pass up and opportunity for genuine feedback, asking: “What are three or four things I could have done better?” Make sure the question is open-ended but specific so that you can take action on what you learn.

Take more risks: Look for stretch assignments where success isn’t a given. These might involve new roles, new parts of the company, or new geographies. Learning and exploration, rather than positive business outcomes, should be the main goal.

For the rest of the article, visit Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Prepare for a Career While You're in College

n a research study this year, IBM set out to uncover what’s wrong with higher education. In collaboration with the Economist Intelligence Unit, the IBM Institute for Business Value surveyed more than 900 academic industry leaders from private and public colleges and universities, vocational programs, community colleges, education service providers and corporations throughout the world.

The survey revealed concerns regarding the higher education system’s abilities to address consumer requirements. Less than half of respondents believe the system meets the needs of students (49 percent), industry (41 percent) and society (47 percent).

Why? As job preparedness studies indicate, the very skills needed for workforce success are the same skills exiting students often lack, including analysis and problem-solving; collaboration and team work; business-context communication; and flexibility, agility and adaptability. IBM reported that 70 percent of corporate recruiters experience challenges finding college-aged applicants with sufficient practical experience.

In terms of economic value, only 51 percent of industry and academic leaders believe higher education is providing value for money, and just 49 percent view it as contributing to economic growth and competitiveness.

Nevertheless, the institution of higher education isn’t going away, and it is unlikely to be significantly reformed any time soon. For this reason, it’s up to students to determine how to best use educational resources so they are fully prepared for the work world upon graduation.

Take advantage of experience-based learning. Put away your textbooks and look for real-world learning experiences like internships and apprenticeships that will allow you to practice the skills you’ve heard about in the classroom. Select professors and courses that practice “flip” teaching, where students learn basic content outside class and do homework and problem-solve in class. Work with mentors to establish metrics that objectively evaluate the impact of these programs on your skill acquisition.

Partner with potential employers. Develop relationships with corporate recruiters early in your university tenure. Inquire about on-site shadowing and job opportunities and get their input on the course work and concentrations that will be most helpful in securing and thriving in an entry-level role in their organizations. Understand their needs and acquire the right combination of skills to properly address those needs. Study their businesses and note how, where and why they’re successful and unsuccessful.

For the rest of my tips, check out the full article at U.S. News and World Report.

Do You Encourage Citizen Development?

Many leaders today are missing an opportunity. Their teams spend all day catering to business needs when in fact the business managers can and should be empowered to solve problems themselves.

There is an old saying that goes: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” IT leaders who facilitate low code rapid application development knowledge in employees outside IT greatly improve IT’s efficiency and productivity. Unfortunately, they don’t do it nearly enough and spend a great deal of their time rushing around putting out fires with the few resources they have leaving little time for more strategic initiatives.

According to Gartner’s IT Glossary, a citizen developer is a user who creates new business applications using development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT.

Citizen development is possible because end users now have the ability to build a variety of enterprise applications through model-driven platforms and cloud computing services. As long as users understand the principles behind application design and development, they do not have to learn the programming languages that were necessary in the past.

Here are five reasons IT leaders may want to re-consider sanctioning and even encouraging citizen development.

IT Demands Have Gotten Out of Hand

Most enterprise IT departments do not have enough resources to handle every request that comes in and must therefore prioritize by value to the overall business. This means that often, individual groups like accounting and marketing will have important requests put on the back burner while a short-staffed and overwhelmed IT group struggles to keep up. In fact, though, IT might not even be essential in developing solutions for these requests and is simply acting as a bottleneck.

IT Might Not “Get It” Anyway

Even if IT was to take on the request, who’s to say that the IT professional who accepts the project fully understands the requirements necessary to develop the most appropriate technology solution? A citizen developer who has deep subject matter expertise could use a low code platform for rapid application development to more quickly arrive at a solution that meets the department’s needs.

For more where this came from, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.

What Does the Future of Education Look Like?

This isn’t his mother’s first grade class.

My son is seven years-old attends a public school in Oak Park, IL just outside Chicago. He reads ahead of most of his classmates, so he accesses a specialized online curriculum instead of the standard printed book. He uses a mobile device to compete in math games with kids all over the world. Much of his homework involves picking a subject he’s interested in, investigating it on his own, and then reporting back in a classroom discussion.

Although my son’s college education will likely be unrecognizable, we can speculate about changes that will take place over the next 10-15 years. The two main trends rapidly picking up steam are online learning and vocational training.

Online Learning

In recent years, we’ve witnessed the rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which are online classes aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. MOOCs consist of a variety of materials from video lectures and assigned readings to quizzes and interactive user forums for instructors, students, and teaching assistants. The current technology, however, requires some tweaks.

“MOOCs are not working that well because people only take one class at a time and then don’t finish it because it isn’t compelling,” says Erica Orange, Executive Vice President of New York-based business consultancy The Future Hunters and member of DeVry University’s Career Advisory Board.  “The next generation of MOOCs will be sensorily immersive, leveraging virtual reality to put students in the world they’re studying. Instead of having to memorize facts about the Civil War, for example, a student in a future MOOC will be on the battlefield.”

New modes of online learning will cater more effectively to Generation Z – or those students born roughly 1997-2012. “The oldest Gen Z-ers have been forced into an industrial model of school and we are seeing all these attention problems,” says Ms. Orange. “Their brains are wired differently and actually function better with input from a variety of sources.”

For the rest of the article, please visit the original piece at Time.com.

Virtual Reality is Coming to an HR Function Near You

Ever heard of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One?

It’s a novel that takes place in the year 2045. Human civilization is in a dark period, so people seek refuge in a virtual reality world called the OASIS. Many spend all their waking hours in the simulation – working, taking classes, exploring different cultures, and trying out new hobbies.

The book became a pop culture phenomenon when Steven Spielberg signed on to direct the film version, but that’s not why I was interested in it. I’ve long been intrigued by the promise of virtual reality, and I think Ready Player One presents a reasonably accurate portrayal of what our lives will be like around mid-century.

Is The Prospective Company A Good Fit?

Ready Player One does not talk about HR and the employee lifecycle, but my mind went to this application immediately. The first thing I considered was hiring. We instruct candidates to think carefully about whether a prospective company is a good fit, but without the opportunity to spend time in the organization, there’s a great deal of guesswork involved. Virtual reality could enable a candidate to experience a day-in-the-life of an employee in their role. She could walk through the facilities, meet managers and co-workers, and start a project. But most importantly, she could get a much better sense of the culture.

Virtual reality could also revolutionize talent management. At present, leaders have trouble managing global, dispersed workforces. Employees might clock in from locations all around the globe, work variable schedules, and communicate using different methods. Virtual reality will certainly change the degree to which remote workers feel engaged and part of a unified team. By mid-century, you’ll put on your headset and send your avatar to work alongside colleagues who could be physically located anywhere. Conferences, meetings, presentations, performance reviews, brainstorms, and team building/social events could all be conducted in the virtual world, facilitating ongoing communication, relationship-building, and innovation.

This post was written on behalf of SilkRoad. For the rest, check out the TalentCulture blog.

Israeli Army Experience Teaches Innovation

As part of my entrepreneurship tour of Israel sponsored by Vibe Israel, I had the opportunity to learn about the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), or the Israel Army. IDF service is mandatory after young male and female citizens turn 18.

When I first heard about this, I'll admit that I didn't necessarily think it was a good thing. However, after seeing what the IDF teaches in terms of critical business skills, I've come to believe that it provides a great training ground for young professionals heading into the work world - especially those who want to start their own businesses.

First, a bit of background. The IDF was officially established in 1948, shortly after the founding of the State of Israel. Its mission is to defend the existence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state of Israel; and to protect the inhabitants of Israel and to combat all forms of terrorism which threaten daily life.

Preparation for Entrepreneurship

In a recent panel, Dov Moran, inventor of the USB flash drive, pointed out that IDF service is a major driver of high achievement. "Military service, combined with the continuous external threats to Israel, cultivate a seriousness of purpose and a cultural willingness to accept economic risks," he said.

"Creating a new business may seem relatively tame when neighboring countries are hostile to your physical survival. Besides this, Israel’s investments in defense technology and commercial products spun off from defense technology have encouraged – and even required – ongoing innovation."

Living with the constant threat of war has spawned a culture of Israeli military research and development, and battlefield inventions have been transformed into technologies used worldwide to save lives, guard against cyber-attacks, and simplify mobile communications.

One example is PillCam, a capsule with two tiny video cameras that enables visualization of patients’ intestines without the need for endoscopy. The PillCam was invented by Gabi Iddan, an IDF-trained engineer who used miniature missile-guiding technology for the purpose of medical imaging.

Infused with this R&D spirit, young servicemen and women are ready to launch their careers. "How do you approach a complex problem and solve it? We do this in the IDF every day," said Iron Dome innovator Brig. Danny Gold in an interview with Israel Brain Technologies. The Iron Dome is a revolutionary, mobile all-weather air defense system designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets headed toward populated areas. 

“Many of the people involved in these types of projects then take their skills to industry. What they learned about putting together complex multidisciplinary solutions serves them well in fields such as high-tech and brain-tech," added Gold. In addition to problem-solving and innovation, these skills include accountability, self-discipline, project management, and interpersonal communication.

If you lived in Israel, would you want to serve in the IDF?