April 2016 – Accelerated, Collaborative Technology Training Services

San Francisco’s booming technology sector is a pretty great place to make a living if you’re a man. Men hold 82% of leadership positions, on average, at Google GOOGL -1.02%, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the industry’s biggest companies. And they don’t have to concern themselves with that pesky gender pay gap. Men with bachelor’s degrees or better in Silicon Valley earn over 50% more than their female counterparts.

Luckily, the Bay Area isn’t the only place for women in tech to grow successful careers. Financial technology company SmartAsset analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data to come up with a list of the best cities for women in the tech sector. San Francisco didn’t crack the top 15.

SmartAsset looked at four metrics across the 58 largest cities in the country: women as a percentage of the tech workforce; the gender pay gap in tech; income after housing costs; and three year tech employment growth.

April 25, 2016
Posted by dherrig1 at 9:32 am
Comments Off on The Best Cities For Women In Tech Aren’t On The West Coast – Clare O’Connor
Career Success, IT Trends, News

College students shouldn’t wait until senior year to meet with a career counselor.

Make sure that your LinkedIn profile is complete, including full descriptions of what you’ve done, skills, volunteer activities and languages you speak.

Dialogues with college seniors in the midst of trying to figure out “what comes next” often reveal a disconnect between student life and launching a successful career. It’s easy to empathize with the cry, “I can get an A in my senior seminar but I don’t have a clue about how to get a job.”

Ideally, colleges and universities would fund career services departments with a full complement of savvy professionals. However, more often than not, budgets are cramped and the staff doesn’t have time to do as much as one would hope and expect from them.

To get the most out of this practical college offering, students shouldn’t wait until senior year to build a relationship with a counselor. Even when they’re freshmen or sophomores, students can take aptitude and other diagnostic tests to identify important traits and preferences to keep in mind when figuring out what career path to pursue. Still, sometimes professors and career services aren’t up with the latest in the realm of workforce development and staffing best practices.

April 18, 2016
Posted by dherrig1 at 8:55 am
Comments Off on 4 Misconceptions About Getting a Job After College – Arnie Fertig
Career Success, Interviewing, Resume Tips, Social Skills

When it means taking on more experiences.

Experiences are the ways in which we obtain knowledge and skills. That’s why anyone searching for a first job understands the conundrum that “You can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job.” When you have the opportunity to see or feel something, it has an effect on you that goes beyond what you can learn through observation.

Whether you are launching your career, considering a career shift, or simply wanting to stay relevant where you are, it’s important to have a plan to manage and acquire a variety of experiences. Being able to answer the question: “What kind of experiences have prepared you for this role?” with practical and tangible examples can provide you with surprising leverage and desirability. That’s why we advise you to be greedy about experiences.

The word “greedy” is almost never used in a positive context. However, when it comes to experiences, the best way to future-proof yourself is to be voracious in seeking out as many opportunities as you can. Experiences are the most effective way to learn new skills, reinforce what you know, and help you build on your strengths. People who have developed a repertoire of skills throughout their career know that this is a gradual and continuous process. It takes practice and repetition. People who are developmentally engaged look for new chances to stretch and capitalize on experiences, even when they don’t seem particularly relevant to their current role.

While repetition aids in building expertise, when it comes to experience, you will want to seek out diversity to stretch to the next level. You must acquire new experiences, and not just repeat the same ones over and over again. A third benefit is that they are a great way to help you expand your skillset, especially when the experiences are a bit outside your comfort zone. Continue reading »

Ask any boss which employee in their firm really stands out as a star, and they will most certainly bring up the person who shows initiative. Everyone wants a hardworking employee who does a good job, but the person who goes beyond that and shows initiative is rare indeed (and seems to be harder and harder to find, as I often hear from leaders).

Initiative is the power, ability or instinct to take action (to begin a task and follow through on it) without waiting for someone to tell you what to do. It means going beyond simply the “9 to 5” aspect of your job. It means taking the “next step” before being asked to take it. Getting in early, staying late, or looking for things to do when your own work is slow.

Whether you are a new employee at the firm or starting a new job in another part of your company, initiative is key. Most firms are explicitly looking for go-getters who can independently take action to get things done. And yet, few applicants talk about their strengths in this domain or realize how important it is in the workplace. Employers, on the other hand, are eager to hire individuals who want to keep learning and growing in their knowledge or skills. Think about the employee who takes additional courses or workshops in order to learn how to do their job better. This makes a positive impression on employers. Or those who volunteer to give back to the community. Those who do these things really stand out.

April 4, 2016
Posted by dherrig1 at 3:31 pm
Comments Off on Career Coach: Want To Stand Out At Work? Take Some Initiative! – Joyce E.A. Russell
Career Success, Interviewing, Social Skills