Jobs Fair February '97

The Jobs Fair was presented in cooperation with the STC Central Jersey Chapter. Participants attended Get-a-job and Keep-a-job presentations, browsed vendor displays, and learned more about area employment agencies. Meeting notes by: Craig Cardimon The Jobs Fair web site was set up for advance information. (This link may expire within several months after the Jobs Fair.)

The Career Workshop given Saturday, February 22, 1997 in New Hope by the Central New Jersey and Philadelphia Metro Chapters of the STC was a great opportunity to network, learn about Career Resiliency, and attend seminars on getting jobs and keeping jobs. About 60 people came to browse the vendors' tables and stay current. Not only could participants attend such presentations as "Doing an Online Resume" or "Encrypting for Secure Transmission," they could also visit several technical services agencies represented at the fair. To me, the entrance fee of $35 was worth it just to get all those tech agencies in one room. The presentations I attended were all first-rate, but the one that struck me was the keynote address given by Ross Squire of Knowledge Transfer International (http://www.ktic.com) on "Staying Career Resilient in 1997: Staying Two Steps Ahead of the Grim Reaper." Career Resiliency The Grim Reaper, according to Squire, is not, as you might suppose, the unemployment line, pink slip, or layoff, but rather a personal apathy, blindness, complacency, or indifference toward what you do for a living and where you do it. An attitude any less than "gung-ho" is going to show. If one employee is noticeably enthusiastic and one isn't, who do you think will get the axe first? People assessed as valuable are the last to go. If you don't look forward to waking up and going to work every day, maybe you should re-evaluate what you do, or at least where you do it. What's important to you? What's your passion? Your attitude goes a long way toward establishing your public identity--that is, what the people you work with think of you. If your public identity is not one of excellence, you are going to have to polish your image. You need to make a personal commitment to your profession. You must take ownership of your career and assume responsibility for it. It's your job, not your bosses', to make sure you get the training and development you need. We should work to satisfy our internal customers more. Our supervisor and our supervisor's supervisor. They have promotional control of your career. Even if you are on the staff level, you should ask yourself if are you creating value, and you should be measuring the returns on your investments of time and effort. The emphasis today is on creating wealth and value for customers and shareholders. If you are not doing so, you'd better start. You can learn more about your job and current events in your line of work by joining and becoming active in organizations such as the STC or IEEE. Read publications and magazines, network, and surf the "net." You can learn a great deal by just plugging in a phrase, such as "technical writing" and doing a search. Experiment with different search engines. Squire related a story about a young man who works at a McDonald's near his home. The man has a smile for everyone, and shares his sunny disposition with every customer. He looks at you, treats you, and waits on you as if you are his only customer. Squire says he deliberately goes out of his way to patronize that particular McDonald's because of the service he receives. Do your customers go out of their way to use your company's services? Does your supervisor go out of their way to speak you during the day? Squire says that young man from McDonald's was promoted recently to a management position, and has a bright future there, or anywhere else. He creates value for his customers, and they become repeat customers. Knowledge Management Squire followed up his keynote address with his Keep a Job seminar on "Knowledge Management: A New Paradigm - Creating Value, Not Paper" Squire says if you're enthusiastic about what you do, you'll create value, and creating value is part of what he calls Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management is the designing and developing of documents, training, and other tools to "produce new capabilities of value." Business solutions must be targeted directly to specific business concerns, challenges, goals, and objectives. This should lead to improved financial performance, quality, customer satisfaction, cycle time, flexibility, and company mood. The current business "common sense" emphasizes downsizing and rightsizing, eliminating middle management, producing more with less, more quickly, a rapidly evolving technical landscape, creating a flexible, quick response organization, justifying all capital expenditures, and strategic alliances. The separate fields of documentation, training, and business analysis are merging into the new field of Knowledge Management. This is creating a new, combined skill set that includes the ability to create value, technical aptitude, business analysis, instructional design, value measurement, and project direction. Squire closed his seminar by saying those who learn to create value and measure it will find their efforts rewarded with increased acknowledgement and appreciation, leading to greater participation in corporate decision making. Conclusion The Career Workshop was a superb idea. Congratulations to those hard-working people who organized it.

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Last updated: March 1, 1997 (wq)