The Birmingham News did a story on Dr. Dale Callahan’s Reverse Interview Method for Getting a Job.

Brian Rabon, an IEM instructor, has put this process into action for his own career and was also featured in the article.

The article talks about key steps like building a network, stepping outside your comfort zone, and not being afraid to challenge conventional wisdom.

To read the full article, click here.

When you think about getting ready for a job interview you want to be sure you have covered all your bases…but what about your professional presentation? Well, a good blog will go a long way towards giving you the professionalism you need, but be careful, because a bad blog can wreck it for you.According to Allen Johnson of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, “No one has to have a blog…It can be purposeful if it’s professional, well thought out and intelligent,” he said. “But it’s a different thing if you just ramble without a strategic plan. You’re opening yourself up to disaster.”

READ MORE HERE

Check out this book. Its about how puddin-headed the manager/management education system is today. I tried to write something snazzy here to make you read it but his website’s blurb is so good, I’m gonna let it fly solo on this one:

“A hard look at the soft practice of managing and management development.

Henry Mintzberg believes that both management and management education are deeply troubled, but that neither can be changed without changing the other.

Mintzberg asserts that conventional MBA classrooms overemphasize the science of management while ignoring its art and denigrating its craft, leaving a distorted impression of its practice. We need to get back to a more engaging style of management, to build stronger organizations, not bloated share prices. This calls for another approach to management education, whereby practicing mangers learn from their own experience. We need to build the art and the craft back into management education, and into management itself.

Mintzberg examines what is wrong with our current system. Conventional MBA programs are mostly for young people with little or no experience. These are the wrong people. Programs to train them emphasize analysis and technique. These are the wrong ways. They leave graduates with the false impression that they have been trained as managers, which has had a corrupting effect on the practice of management as well as on our organizations and societies. These are the wrong consequences.

Mintzberg describes a very different approach to management education, which encourages practicing mangers to learn from their own experience. No one can create a manager in a classroom. But existing managers can significantly improve their practice in a thoughtful classroom that makes use of that experience.”

This blurb comes to you from http://www.henrymintzberg.com/mangnotmba.htm

The faculty with IEM are so committed to the goal of success that Brian Rabon, IEM professor of Technical Project Management and IEM alum is now offering new classes for Project Managers, Software Development Managers, Senior IT Leadership (Directors, VPs, CIOs, CTOs, etc), and anyone interested in furthering their skills in project management. Coming up February 19 is the Agile Project Management Course:

Agile Project Management is an in-depth one day immersion into
the world of Agile. The course is full of practical, real world techniques
that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course
will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Agile has to
offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you
experience the benefits of Agile firsthand.

There are no prerequisites and you are guaranteed to walk away from this experience with a thorough understanding of Agile Project Management
using Scrum and Extreme Programming, a new outlook on the way you manage your project team, a framework for understanding whether Agile is right for
your organization, and the knowledge necessary for incorporating Agile practices into your working environment.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER TODAY

$197 for one attendee

$147 for multiple attendees

Seating is limited.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Brian M. Rabon, CSM, CSP, MSEE, PMP is a certified Project Management Professional with over 13 years of software development experience. He is a regular instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he has been teaching Technical Project Management at the masters level for the past 3 years. In addition to his work at UAB, Brian is a course designer at Samford University, and a contract instructor for The Solutions Cube Group. Brian is the VP of Programs for Birmingham PMI and a regular instructor for their PMP Exam Prep classes. He is also the founder and CEO of the Braintrust Consulting Group, the company through which these classes are being offered.

Let’s go on a trip to Mars! Well, let’s not—but say we did.

In his article “Viewpoint: Explore Mars with robots”, John Merchant talks about a new concept called “telepresence” that will allow people to travel to Mars, and other distance planets, through an electronic medium. Merchant describes “Telepresence [as] an emerging technology that could enable humans to function in, and experience, a distant space environment such as Mars as effectively, for all practical purposes, as actually going there – but without going there!”  I assume astronauts will be the “humans” that do this exploration by telepresence, but his article doesn’t seem to specify who exactly will be “tele-present”

Who knows? Twenty years from now it could be IT professionals that go to the moon. Can’t you see that in a 3rd grade classroom: “And what do you want to be when you grow up Billy?” “I want to be an IT Professional so I can send a computer to Mars”.

The theory is that this new technology will open doors to NASA and allow space exploration to reach new heights. But the situation begs the question: If we’ve gone to new heights virtually, have we actually reached them or just taken fancy pictures?

Anyway, read the article, it is quite interesting. My only problem with it is, well, am I the only person that saw “Surrogates”? Travel by telepresence? What’s next, mechanical body doubles? Maybe. Read here and find out more.

In an economy where jobs are few, you’d think anyone with a job would be happy to have one. But according to a poll by the Conference Board research group only 45% of employed Americans are happy with their jobs. No, really, apparently you’re not alone.

This article from the Associated Press tells all about it. Read here.

In a world of staggering economies and grandiose bailout plans, it seems IT professionals are hot commodities. David Miller, of Certification Magazine,writes, “Everyone knows that 2009 was challenging for workers…But not everything is doom and gloom. Research…suggests that bright spots do exist for IT professionals…While starting salaries for most positions within IT will stay at current levels or dip slightly, some will see modest gains in 2010. Networking- and security-related jobs, in particular, remain in demand.”

Continues Here

Brian Rabon, IEM Faculty and Alum will be offering a class on Agile Project Management February 19, 2010 | 8am – 5pm

“Agile Project Management is an in-depth one day immersion into
the world of Agile. The course is full of practical, real world techniques
that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course
will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Agile has to
offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you
experience the benefits of Agile firsthand.”

~ excerpt from Agile PM Program flyer

NO Prerequisites required.

$197 | for one attendee
$147 | for multiple attendees                                                                                                                                REGISTER TODAY AT:

WHO SHOULD ATTEND                                                                                                                             WWW.TBCG.EVENTBRITE.COM
• Project Managers
• Software Development Managers                                                                                                                      SEATING IS LIMITED
• Senior IT Leadership (Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning about the benefits of Agile

BENEFITS
• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the
highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation
for on-time and on-budget delivery by setting them up for
frequent successes
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a
fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personnel efforts on the highest value tasks that
will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull”
versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by
adding another tool to your toolbox

REGISTER TODAY AT:

WWW.TBCG.EVENTBRITE.COM

SEATING IS LIMITED