Working on the AIIM White Paper "Career Development for Information Professionals," sponsored by Oracle, it struck me how your career is something very personal to you, and yet although you own it, it's also buffeted and steered by the organizations you work for, the places you live, the people you live with, and for many of us, huge slices of good luck, bad luck ... and knowing the right people. Intriguingly, that very personal thing which is your career timeline is now also very publicly visible through LinkedIn and even Facebook.
We surveyed nearly 800 people for the report across IT, IM/RM and business types. What came out strongly is this desire for recognition of working at that real-world boundry between IT and business. There was a strong recognition of "information professional" as a profile, and an aspiration to move to that role - not just from records specialists and IT specialists, but also from business people.
We compared salaries and qulifications in the report - it surprised me that two thirds have at least one technical or business certification, and 43% have two or more. There was also general agreement that certifications are a more up-to-date indicator of competence than college qualifications.
There are plenty of graphs and things in the report comparing the skill sets people have, the ones they would like to improve, and the ones that recruiters say are hard to find. But returning to my opening theme, whichever way your career twists and turns, the most important thing is to provide value. That's why you get paid, and increasing your value is the best way to get paid more. Increasing and updating your skill set is one way to add value. Contributing to discussions about ways the that your organization can take advantage of all the new technologies - mobile, social, cloud and big data - is another.
