American Management Association

Today’s fourth and final low cost or no-cost online professional development resource is the American Management Association www.amanet.org and probably my favorite of all the sites I have blogged about this week.  The American Management Association offers a variety of membership levels, including a free membership when you go to their site and click on the MYAMA Tab on the Home Page.  Once you sign up they allow you access to free training in the form of webcasts, podcasts, and resources like industry related articles and whitepapers, book recommendations, and monthly newsletters.  This site is full of rich content regardless of your career need.  With 20 Webcast categories alone that include Communications Skills, Finance and Accounting, Human Resources Management, Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Training and Development, there is literally something for everyone.  Courses are regularly added to the webcast area, and number as of today 280, each lasting about one-hour.  These can definitely be included in a resume for job seeker or a person seeking a promotion, for overall career management, or learning opportunities for career transition.

I am sure even AMA has under anticipated the popularity of their site, but the offering of the free training has truly helped many a jobseeker laid off during the economic downturn.  The AMA is also well known by companies as many of them send their executives to the paid programs that often cost thousands of dollars and run for up to a week.  Join AMA and try some of their webcasts, and perhaps, if you can, pay or have your company pay for an Internet or full membership and pay it forward.  To your career success! 

Alison.com

For the 3^rd recommendation in my blog series on professional development I want to discuss Alison.com.  This site offers free online learning in business and enterprise skills, IT and digital literacy, personal development, languages, and financial and economic literacy.  Course offerings include Fundamentals of Human Resources, Fundamentals of Project Management, Accounting-Control and Monitoring of Cash, Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management Systems, and Fundamentals of Operations Management.  These courses include assessments where you much complete with 80% accuracy to achieve a certification, and the site tells you time to complete lessons and minimum level needed to take class.

Courses are provided by a number of publishers (sources), and encompass MIT and MIT Media Lab, Saylor Foundation, Khan Academy, Stanford, Cambridge University, Microsoft, and Sun Systems.  Alison.com seems quite suited to the majority of online learners wanting to bolster their resume, transition into a new career area, or learn more about their current industry.  Give Alison.com a try, it’s free and a great resource.  To your career success!

Lynda.com

Don’t let the name fool you; Lynda.com (a LinkedIn company) has some incredible professional development opportunities for career management, promotion, transition into a new career, or a job search.  Offering both online courses and video tutorials, on the go learning with mobile, tablet and desktop devices, and a range of course skill levels from beginner to advanced; it has something to offer for everyone.  Unlike Coursera (discussed in yesterday’s post), which is an online classroom with a traditional schedule of coursework, Lynda.com is a “set your own pace” program.  The organization also has an impressive list of corporate clients like Microsoft, Adobe and NBC, which lends more credibility to their training offerings.  

This site is particularly suited for techies with programmer/developer, game design, website development, video, audio, and 3-D courses and videos.  However there is still ample training for the business side, as Lynda.com provides 1,200+ classes and nearly 50,000 video tutorials just for business-courses, and even has education/teacher-related training's. You can try the site free for ten days and then choose one of several low cost monthly or annual subscription models, including two that allow for downloads of accompanying course project files.  To your career success!

Coursera.org

Our first stop on the professional development tour is Coursera.org.  Coursera is an exceptional site offering college/university level coursework from well-known collegiate institutions for FREE.   For instance, you can take an MBA-level Marketing course from Wharton Business School (University of Pennsylvania), Introduction to Finance from the University of Michigan, Cryptography I from Stanford University, or The Data Scientist’s Toolbox from Johns Hopkins University.  Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Rice, and Vanderbilt are also represented with a variety of coursework options.  You can take the course for free, or pay a small additional amount and receive a Verified Certificate.  All students who successfully complete a course typically receive a Statement of Accomplishment from the instructor.  These are all real courses presented by the actual college and university instructors that teach them daily.  The universities and colleges providing courses have purposely partnered with Coursera to offer these classes for universal access.    

You can read about the course syllabus, course format, language availability, suggested readings, resources required, and recommended background for taking a course at Coursera.org prior to signing up for a class.  Sign up for the site is also free and will allow you to target courses for email reminder that you may want to take in the future.  If you would like some additional coursework to pad your resume or take that next level step in your education, give Coursera.org a try.  To your career success! 

Professional Development Resources

Last week I touted the need for continuing professional development in your career.  However, what if your company doesn't really offer opportunities for additional learning, or you are unemployed and feel you have no real options as you try to save every penny?  How do you find reasonably priced or even free professional development?  Well, each day, Tuesday through Friday this week, I will be posting options for professional coursework that often have no cost or a very low cost.  Keeping yourself ahead of the curve in learning can make a huge difference in your appeal to a new company or for a promotion within your current organization.  Let’s start, continue, or upgrade your training through the resources I will discuss this week.  To your career success!

Value of Ongoing Professional Development Coursework

Whether provided by your current employer, past employer(s) or training seminars/workshops/conferences you participated in and paid for yourself, professional development is highly valued by employers.  While you wouldn't want to list everything on your resume if you have taken a great deal of professional development in last 10 years, you want to track everything you take, and ultimately provide the best of the best info for the resume document.  Furthermore, a secondary addendum document with a full listing of development opportunities taken in the last seven to 10 years can also be created to supply for performance reviews, networking, interviews, or promotion opportunities.  

There are many different types of professional development that should be tracked and these include:  leadership, management, marketing, sales, customer service, business protocols, EEOC, sexual harassment, computer applications and systems, specialized compliance or technical training related to job or industry, and OSHA, just to name a few.  Keep those professional development completion certificates, listings from your employers, and any accompanying educational materials.  Now you will have both a terrific list of coursework along with the proof!  To your career success!    

Career Management Quotes of the Week

“Communication--the human connection--is the key to personal and career success.”

Paul J. Meyer

“A good manager is a man who isn't worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him.”

H. S. M. Burns

“What is the recipe for successful achievement? To my mind there are just four essential ingredients: Choose a career you love, give it the best there is in you, seize your opportunities, and be a member of the team.”

Benjamin F. Fairless

Job Search Quotes of the Week

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.” –Japanese proverb

“Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It’s OK to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing.” –H. Stanley Judd

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”–Wayne Gretzky

Career Tip

Keep track of your accomplishments at work on a regular basis.  From being part of a project team to saving the company money, anything you do to make a difference for the organization should be written down and saved.  Now, during performance reviews you have a list of achievements to review with your supervisor, and lots of information to choose from for a resume update.  I recommend having a file just for career accomplishments at your home where you can easily find the information.  Whether you track it month-to-month or year-to-year you will have a comprehensive account of your work success. 

Interview Tip

Try scheduling your job interview towards the end of the workday or after 5:00 PM when possible, particularly if you have a current job.  Besides being respectful to your current employer and their time, you can determine some great information about your potential employer.  First, are they flexible, as some companies will only schedule within a narrow timeline regardless of your employment situation.  Second, if you are at the potential employers after 5:00 PM you can see how many people are still working.  This can give you some insight into potential overtime.  To your job search success!

Career Quotes of the Week!

“Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiseling and scraping and polishing.”  BC Forbes

“If you follow the crowd, you will likely get no further than the crowd. If you walk alone, you're likely to end up in places no one has ever been before. Being an achiever is not without its difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. The unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time is that when people finally realize you were right, they'll simply say it was obvious to everyone all along. You have two choices in life. You can dissolve into the main stream, or you can choose to become an achiever and be distinct. To be distinct, you must be different. To be different, you must strive to be what no else but you can be.”  Unknown wise person

If You Are Early You Are On Time

The title of my article is an old military adage and very concisely communicates that to merely be on time means you will get started on your task late.  This applies to both a person’s job search and their career.  When you get that coveted interview you want to put your best foot forward, and arriving right at the start of, or late to your interview certainly won’t make a good impression.  Starting out to your interview early with a plan to arrive 20 minutes ahead of schedule can ensure extra time if you get caught in traffic, enable you to check over your outfit and pre-interview notes one more time, and to feel less rushed and less nervous. 

In your job/career, getting to work a little early can help you as well.  How about not having to drive over the speed limit, risking a speeding ticket, just to make it to work on time?  How about not having your boss or coworkers mad at you again for being late?  Imagine the feeling of getting ahead of your work for the day and maybe even being able to leave a little early on occasion without feeling guilty?  Perhaps you will miss some of the rush hour traffic or get a better parking space.  Regardless of the benefit, you will definitely avoid the hurried and stressed out approach that everyone else takes who doesn’t make a little extra time for their commute.  Start your day out a little earlier and reap the benefits of more peace and calm in your life!  To your job search and career success!