CAREERS NOW 03-28-07

Free Report Lists Hottest It Skills

DEAR JOYCE: I work in the information technology field. What are the skills most in demand today? - T.Y.

Ah, you're in luck. A brand new study of contract job skills by HotGigs Inc., a Minneapolis- based staffing-company network, totes up 2 million skill searches in the fourth quarter of last year, releasing the results in a free online report you'll find of interest. Read the 14-page "2007 IT Contract Workforce Report" on hotgigs.com/2007cwr.

The top 10 talent demand areas for consultants are: ERP (enterprise resource planning) and packaged software, Web development, project management, data development, analysis and design, client server development, networking, IT management, hardware/OS/systems administration and data administration.

DEAR JOYCE: I just graduated from college with my bachelor's in psychology. I am currently looking for a job, any job. When I read the postings for employment, I notice that they require two years' experience or more. How are people supposed to find a job when there are no entry-level jobs around? You can't get any experience if nobody gives you a chance to gain some. How do you get around this problem? - K.T.

That's what college internships and volunteer jobs and student jobs are designed to address.

Psych majors are liberal arts graduates, who theoretically are educated to do critical thinking, define problems and solve tasks, learn quickly what you must to accomplish a task and more.

Recruiter Nick Corcodilos, himself a psych graduate, suggests you "re-map" yourself to prepare for a business job:

- Select a business you want to work in.

- Study it in excruciating detail. (No shortcuts).

- Learn enough to begin mapping your liberal arts skills to your chosen business.

Read his entire article, "Making the Liberal Arts Degree Pay Off" on Corcodilos' Web site, asktheheadhunter.com/haliberalarts.htm.

Additionally, camp out at your college's career center. Ask for help - and, if you've been there before, this time act interested. You may benefit from a postgraduate internship.

DEAR JOYCE: I've only been working for four years but my ambition is to become a manager in my 30s. Unfortunately, my managers to date have not been good role models and I'll have to change employers, go back to school for management courses and so forth. What books do you recommend that I read to prepare myself? - No Initials.

Pick a number. Rarely a week goes by that publishers don't send me yet another business management self-help book; most are worth reading.

One new title that caught my eye has a little different feel because it's written by an author who's made a name for himself as an authority on managing post baby-boomer generations: Bruce Tulgan's "It's Okay to Be the Boss: The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need (Collins, $23.95). Tulgan says that rather than being guilty of the micro managing that everyone complains about, today's managers are inexcusably dropping the ball by doing too little. They fail to tell their employees every step of the way what to do and how to do it, to monitor and measure performance constantly, to correct failure quickly and reward success even more quickly. Tulgan cheers for "hands-on" all the way.

Another viewpoint is expressed in "The Hands-Off Manager" How to Mentor People and Allow Them to Be Successful" by Steve Chandler and Duane Black (Career Press, $19.99) The authors insist that today's employees do not respond to "the old hands-on, militaristic management styles" and that managers should coach and mentor, not hover and goad.

In yet another new take on the how-to-manage issue, "30 Reasons Employees Hate Their Managers: What Your People May Be Thinking and What You Can Do About It" by Bruce L. Katcher with Adam Snyder (AMACOM Books; $21.95), the authors premise their work on surveys of more than 50,000 employees. They think the core problem is disillusionment: "If your employees hate you, it's because once upon a time they believed they could thrive in their jobs and take the company in exciting and profitable new directions."

Among the biggies that employees hate: being treated like children, not being respected for their contributions, not being listened to, not being given the training they need to do their jobs well, insufficient feedback, pay not fairly linked to job performance, unreasonably heavy workloads or inflexible schedules and incompetent senior managers.

Reading all three new books presents a spectrum of opinion on management styles to choose from.

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