IEEE-USA President's Column

 

 
President's Column
March 2006

Providing Training You Need to Succeed in Your Career: Making Ourselves More Marketable

My fellow IEEE-USA members, time marches on.

It has been many years since the time when an employee expected to stay with a single company for his or her entire career. Long gone are the days when it was enough just to work hard and become the go-to person for your technical specialty. Now, it is crucial for professionals who want to advance their careers to pair their technical skills with "soft skills" — intelligence on how to communicate with and lead other coworkers.

Some professionals will put a big dent in their employers' budgets by taking continuing education courses that can run upwards of $2,000 apiece. But what if you don't have budget approval or are between jobs and want to increase your marketability to a prospective employer? What if you've just been promoted to a managerial position and don't have the time to spend a week in a course for new managers?

As a U.S. IEEE member, you are at a distinct advantage. We want you to have the training you need to succeed in your career, so IEEE-USA has partnered with AchieveGlobal, an international provider of training and consulting services. Together, we are offering members a series of career development courses that zero in on leadership and key interpersonal skills.

Just seven of the 29 courses that might be particularly useful to you in today's job market are:

• Hallmarks of Supervisory Success
• Speaking to Influence Others
• Negotiating Resources for Your Team
• Developing Team Agility: Day to Day Tools
• Resolving Conflicts with Your Peers
• Delegating for Shared Success
• Correcting Performance Problems

Each of the courses is available online for members to download at a discount for $89.00 apiece — a third off of the retail price. You also will receive continuing education credits for each course you complete.

But, there are many more courses than just the samples above, and descriptions for all are available at http://salary.ieee.org. After you log in using your IEEE Web Account, then click the "Shop" tab to see the career development courses.

While you're there, make sure to take a look at IEEE-USA's career development publications and top-notch Professional Engineer exam prep materials. The P.E. Review Breadth course is especially useful because it is designed to help you improve your chances of passing the exam by reinforcing the theory you learned in school and focusing on the essential concepts required to analyze and design complex systems.

In addition, IEEE-USA has been collaborating with IEEE Educational Activities to make available the best of the IEEE's educational content through one-hour online learning modules. Expert Now IEEE contains the latest information on emerging technologies and seminal works presented at the highest-rated IEEE conference tutorials, short courses and workshops. These unique, Web-based courses run the technical gamut from aerospace to vehicular technology and are designed to save IEEE members time and travel costs.

For more information on Expert Now IEEE, go to: http://www.ieee.org/portal/site/mainsite/menuitem.818c0c39e85ef176fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=corp_level1&path=education/Expert_Now_IEEE&file=index.xml&xsl=generic.xsl.

Further, IEEE-USA has also joined with IEEE Educational Activities to promote the IEEE Education Partners Program. IEEE Education Partners offers online degree programs, certifications and courses at up to 10 percent off to IEEE members. Through this program, we have access to more than 6,000 courses from 15 providers to help us meet our continuing education needs.

For a full listing of IEEE Education Partners and more information on the program, go to: http://0-www.ieee.org.csulib.ctstateu.edu/web/education/partners/eduPartners.html.

So, my fellow U.S. IEEE members, while we cannot go back to those simpler, bygone days, we can make a choice today to make ourselves more marketable to our current (as well as prospective) employers by taking advantage of the IEEE's and IEEE-USA's continuing education offerings.

You are a valuable member of society as a technical professional, and it is my duty to ensure that you get the support you need. In the coming months, I'll talk more about the other ways IEEE-USA is helping to develop technical professionals in America, but for now, I will leave you with this thought from President John F. Kennedy:

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

Updated:  12 February 2008
Contact: Pender M. McCarter, p.mccarter@ieee.org