ITP Techblog

Here's a quick weekly update from ITP CEO Paul Matthews

This week I thought I'd focus in on some of ITP's upcoming initiatives for members. Not just the what, but also the how and why.

In short: what we're doing to help our members get ahead - and fast.

How we'll help you plan your future in 2020

This year, along with lots of other activities such as certification, events and short courses, putting in place some new initiatives to help you grow. 

These are designed to help you get ahead in your career and ensure you have the best tools available to figure out what that is - regardless of where you're at now.

ITP Mentoring Revamp

We're very excited to be only weeks away from a major update to the ITP Mentoring Programme. This project has been hanging around for a while after being deferred a couple of times due to other commitments, but we're pleased to be now approaching rollout. 

Shortly, mentoring will be available as a core member benefit. While we have a great mentoring programme now, it's currently an additional cost and the changes we've made to streamline the process will enable us to offer it free for members, and scale it significantly.

But why bother with mentoring?

Research shows that those who undertake mentoring will not only progress in their career faster, but also do it in a more organised way - significantly increasing the chances of getting where you want to be and sooner.

Our programme is focused on Career mentoring; helping you understand more fully where you are now, what options are available to you, and what you need to pursue those options. In many cases, it opens up mentees' eyes about a whole new set of career prospects.

But it's not just a win for those being mentored. Mentors also get a massive amount out of the programme - as well as the opportunity to give back and help others grow, it often helps open your own eyes and gives yourself a fresh perspective too.

In short, mentoring is about helping you design your future, not just running along blindly.

If you're serious about getting ahead in your career, whether you're just starting out, mid-career or in a senior role now, Mentoring can and will help you and will shortly be freely available and strongly encouraged for all our members. 

Skills self-assessment tool

Later in the year we'll also be releasing a skills self-assessment tool, based on the SFIA Framework. This will guide you through determining exactly where your current tech-related and professional skills lie. 

Even if you think you know your skills really well, to be frank you don't know what you don't know. And it's also great to have what you know verified - and a plan put in place to use that to get ahead.

In short, you can't plan your future if you don't have a really clear idea about where you're at now, and this tool will help you get that.

More activities around CITPNZ and CTech 

Chartered IT Professional NZ (CITPNZ) and Certified Technology (CTech) are core professional certifications that all members should be considering.

It's not just about getting "the piece of paper" - it's about growing to the point the profession itself thinks is the benchmark, and giving your clients, employers and the public that independent assurance that you're at a level where you do genuinely know what you're doing - an assurance provided by our industry's professional body.

Certified Technologist is for those who have the experience, educational background and ethics to be responsible for their own work.

Chartered IT Professional NZ is for senior professionals with the background, experience, skills and ethics to be responsible for major outcomes - whether that be a team, project or other piece of work.

Neither are guarantees that you'll always get it right. But both show that you have the experience and professional community behind you and that you'll be accountable for your professional and ethical actions.

We're running an increasing number of activities and promotions to ensure more people understand what these certifications are and why they're important. You'll also hopefully have seen a range of upcoming webinars on the what, why and how - it's great to see well over 50 people signed up to the first one already.

Putting it all together

Combining our schools programmes, tertiary initiatives, immigration assessment activities, and work to ensure tech-related qualifications are fit for purpose for our industry, you can see we're very focused on ensuring clear and direct pathways into our profession.

With our membership, events, presentations, video library, conferences and other activities, we're also doing everything we can to bring together our professional community.

And with skills assessments, mentoring, career planning, short courses, CIO prep course and more, we're ensuring that you have the tools available to progress in your career - and fast. Then gain the recognition you deserve through CITPNZ and CTech.

In short, we're helping you develop into the professional you want to be, rather than just someone who "does IT". 

We hope you'll take advantage of everything your ITP membership has to offer the coming year - it's certainly an exciting time for our profession!