How to Successfully Navigate the Transition from Co-Worker to Manager - Spark Hire

How to Successfully Navigate the Transition from Co-Worker to Manager - Spark HireGetting promoted internally is a huge accomplishment and is certainly something to celebrate. However, when you move from co-worker to manager, your position and status within that organization will change. In bestellung to navigate the change successfully and to excel as a manager, utilize these strategiesKnow that youll have to renegotiate your existing relationshipsWhile you may have once enjoyed going to Happy Hour with co-workers and sharing personal stories and gossip, this kind of relationship will need to change once you become a manager. Its unfortunate but necessary in order to earn the respect of the people youll now be charged with overseeing. Its difficult to delegate work, analyze productivity, and offer performance reviews if youre leise spending every weekend at the bar with these people.Try to put past relationships with co-workers aside as you make decisionsWhen you go from being someo nes peer to being their manager, its very easy to let past relationships and feelings cloud your judgment. As much as possible, avoid doing this. It doesnt matter whether you loved or hated this person when you sat next to them what really matters is how they do their job. Try to enter into your new role with a clean slate and a fresh perspective. This will allow you to be effective and fair.Acknowledge the changeIf youre trying to navigate your new role, chances are that your colleagues may be feeling slightly uncomfortable with the shift too. Feel free to acknowledge this change in an honest conversation with these people. Explain your goals and visions as a manager, and keep lines of communication open.Fight the urge to become a dictatorSome people are so focused on showing that theyre not playing favorites that they go the other way and end up treating their entire staff poorly. Realize that you dont need to be a dictator in order to be a good manager. You can treat your employe es with respect and kindness, while still keeping the company on track.How did you manage a transition from co-worker to manager? Let us know in the commentsImage dolgachov/BigStock.com

A Hard Look at Soft Skills

A Hard Look at Soft SkillsA Hard Look at Soft SkillsIT executives are being called upon to demonstrate soft skills like geschftsleben smarts and communications.Cars. Advertising. Shower-curtain rings. Sales veterans like to say that a good salesperson can sell anything. Its a maxim of the profession that its not what the salesperson is selling but her inherent selling skills and experience that determine success of the sale.Can the same be said of an IT professional? From network management to enterprise applications to mobile computing, are there inherent skills and experience that allow a good IT professional to move over - or up - in any area of IT?Yes, according to hiring experts in the IT industry who spoke with Ladders. This is true in many industries, they say, because transferable soft skills are now among the fruchtwein important when selecting a candidate.For IT executives, an alphabet soup of certification acronyms is a job requirement. But the industry has focused inc reasingly on hiring senior managers who can demonstrate traits like common sense, business smarts and good communications skills, said several experts in IT hiring.One of the top qualities employers are looking for from IT workers is soft skills, said J. Tod Fetherling, president and CEO of the Nashville Technology Council. No certification is required, of course, but lots of sensitivity and good old common sense are prerequisites. Fetherling, who works with displaced workers to help them find new jobs, added that most companies will work with new employees to help them acquire any certifications necessary for the job.The nice thing about IT jobs is that its about your capability more than your pedigree, said Gayle Laakmann, a software engineer who has worked for Microsoft, Google and Apple.While at Google, Laakmann served on the companys hiring committee, so she knows a bit about what determines who gets an offer and who doesnt. When looking to fill a software engineer position, fo r example, its not about knowing a parteicular flavor of Java, its about whether you are inherently a good coder and you are inherently smart, said Laakmann, who is currently an MBA candidate at Wharton and author of Cracking the Coding Interview.Business SmartsUntil recently, most businesses treated technology as part of the infrastructure there to support the business, barely more important than the plumbing and electricity. But the advent of business applications has made technology a business driver, and business savvy is now a required skill for IT professionals.Business-analysis skills are critical to being able to understand the ultimate business objectives driving a technology initiative, said Sean Ebner, regional vice-president at Technisource, an IT staffing and solutions provider. Having the ability to see the forest through the trees in an IT effort is extremely important, sought after and highly transferable.Paul Kostek, chair of the Individual Benefits and Services Co mmittee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and principal systems engineer at Physio Control, said understanding business and how IT fits in can be a way to differentiate yourself in a crowded job market Too many IT professionals only see a project from the software/hardware side and not the business impact.Indeed, said Ebner, business capabilities are important not only for landing a job but for keeping it. We have seen in the most recent recession that IT organizations are doing more with less, he said. Having the acumen to work seamlessly between the business organizations and the IT department is no longer a nice-to-have it has become indispensable.Ebner said a record of performance in business means IT professionals can move into a wider array of functions and organizations. It is now much more common to see associates move between the functional business departments and the IT organization and back, he said.Organizations are also looking for IT prof essionals who can demonstrate that they have successfully budgeted for, planned and managed a project no matter what the IT discipline.Whether it is rolling out new hardware, upgrading existing systems or building new applications, the process, structure and experience around leading projects and ensuring that they are delivered to schedule and to design are very important, said Technisources Ebner. Individuals who possess strong project-governance skills and experience are highly sought after, as behauptung skills are highly transferable.In technology, the soft-skills trend is even affecting the hard skills on which the function was founded. Some of the newly important certifications focus on cross-technology practices like information organization, project management and systems integration. According to Ebner, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) certifications for help desk associates have increased in relevance and demand, and Project Management Professional (P MP) and Six Sigma are important certifications for project-governance associates in some organizations. Ebner also cited Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) and Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) for supporting Cisco equipment as well as anything related to security as certifications that make a difference when seeking new opportunities.