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GOING HIGH-TECH GUIDE
Time for a change? Take the tech direction.
While it's true that companies snap up college grads with technical degrees, Judy says that, "the four-year college degree isn't a requirement for finding a good technology job." This is especially true for career enhancers, those who are pursuing professional careers in fields such as accounting, finance, or management, and want to either switch to a technology company, or combine technical certification with on-the-job experience.
The Talent Alliance, a non-profit coalition of businesses, industry associations, professional services firms, government representatives and educational communities, helps both individuals and businesses prepare for the future job market. As a career enhancer you should check with your company to see if it's participating in this consortium. If so, you might qualify for the Talent Alliance's skills examination and career direction. If not, the Talent Alliance plans to offer fee-based services to individuals, so watch their Web site for more information.
Local career enhancers with job experience and newly minted technical skills can look forward to rewarding opportunities in consulting, especially if they learn programs such as SAP AG's R/3 or Oracle Corp.'s Release 10SC suite of business and financial software.
There are scores of openings in the region's consulting firms for workers who can apply those technical skills to specific business areas. In fact, these are some of the most sought-after professionals in the market. Even those without technical skills but having strong subject matter expertise can often leverage their functional knowledge and provide front-end analysis in consulting efforts while they're adding technical skills to their tool kit.
The outlook for entry-level jobs is also bright for career changers, those who are fed up with their current jobs and want to move onto something better. The auto mechanic who becomes a network engineer, "is not an uncommon story," says the Computer Learning Center's (CLC) John Kiem, national director of product development. In fact, The Washington Post
recently reported how the Rockville contractor Tracor Systems Engineering started a training program for database programmers and selected a courier, a secretary and a warehouse worker for the program.
Continue to Are you industry certified?
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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