IT Career Builder's Toolkit

February 9, 2005 —

James Gaskin spoke with Matthew Moran about his new book IT Career Builder's Toolkit. This is an edited transcript of that conversation. You may also listen to it here.

Welcome to ITworld Voices. My name is James Gaskin and I'll be your host for this series of interviews with the leading technology book authors of today. Our interviewee today is Matthew Moran, author and Strategic Consultant for about 17 years. His book is the IT Career Builder's Toolkit. It features market-focused skills and proven methods that you can use to jumpstart and advance your career. It was published in 2005, in January, by Cisco Press. Matthew, thanks for joining us today.

Matthew Moran: Thank you very much. I consider it an honor.

First of all, why is your book different from other career books, because there's certainly a shelf full of career books in most bookstores?

Moran: Absolutely, and one of the things I try and tell people is I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. What they'll come to when they read my book is they'll say, gosh, this makes sense or I heard my parents say stuff like this. What I've tried to do that makes the book unique is focus a career message for the technology pro. There's books that are great, like Bolles', What Color is Your Parachute? But I've tried to focus on a comprehensive skill set that is typically lacking or an area where technology professionals struggle. And I try and focus on business savvy communication skills. Some of the software skills -- there's a section on technical skills, but I really try and focus on some of those skills that technology professionals traditionally have struggled with.

Gaskin: So you're actually trying to get technical people, like engineers, to learn how to speak and talk and communicate with normal people?

Moran: That's absolutely the case. There was an article I wrote back in 2001 called Why Technologists Must Learn to Speak Business and it forms kind of an underlying principle I carry through the book, that's one of the ideas. But it really grew into this project and so I try and address some of those issues, communication skills, speaking skills, but also written communication skills. How do you structure a paper? How do you organize ideas, which for the technology professional would seem to be intuitive, but often on that medium it's very difficult.

Gaskin: You said you wrote an article a couple of years ago. Is that how you came to write this book?

Moran: Well, I wrote the article, Why Technologists Must Learn to Speak Business and you can get a copy of that on my website. And I have a website, CBToolkit.com, which is CareerBuilderToolkit.com. And you can get the article there, but then I took place on several online discussion forums. I've always been a writer, never thought I would write a career technology book. And what happened is I took some input that I've received on these online discussion forums and then I posed the question, this was in 2002, would any of you be interested in me organizing all these career ideas I've thrown out there into a toolkit of sorts? And the response was overwhelming. So that's how it started and it started as a 40-page and then 50-page PBS that I would give out for free, or when I spoke at various locations. And eventually grew into this book.

Gaskin: Now you've been a consultant in a variety of IT areas. What pulled you toward the job career and helping people find jobs area of technology?

Moran: You know, I think there's really two reasons for that. One is, I've always been a natural teacher. When I was going through school -- my background is actually in English and philosophy, not in technology, but I've been programming since I was 13. And I've always loved the aspect of teaching and coaching. And so it just became a natural outcropping as I took part in these online forums. It's not even a transition. It's just one book that I've written that seemed to address a particular need. There's certainly been a lot of very positive and encouraging feedback from people who have read the book.

Gaskin: Excellent. Now Cisco Press is a fairly new label or new publisher for the technology business, but they certainly have made a big splash. How did you get hooked up with Cisco Press for this book?

Moran: Well, that's a great story. I basically self-published my book. I turned down another publisher that will remain nameless, basically due to timeframe. I was already speaking at University of Phoenix and some other venues and so I wanted to have a book available, really a workbook. Also, the book was still in process so I didn't feel I was ready to finalize what I had to say in the book. So I turned down one publishing deal and I self-published it as a workbook. It was purchased by Mary Beth Ray who is an editor at Cisco Press and two weeks later I was contacted and she said, I love your book. We would like to publish it. So, I was pretty fortunate in that sense. We are working on a new book called The Profitable Consultant's Toolkit, which really focuses directly on consulting. I include some consulting information in the IT Career Builder's Toolkit, or there's a CD that comes with the book that has some sample proposals and some other things for career development and also consulting, but we've really decided that there is enough of a market and a need for a book that covers consulting more comprehensively.

Gaskin: As a last question, what kind of key idea or underlying theme will reader's from your book come away with?

Moran: The underlying theme throughout the book and that people walk away with is the issue of value to the organization you serve. And I try and point out that, to technologists who are worried about outsourcing or who are worried about layoffs, that you need to look at your career and your particular role in an organization for the value you bring that organization. And a lot of times people don't make that effort or don't spend time to recognize, in the last three months, is what I'm doing helping the organization be more efficient, be more effective, do I provide value to my employer or to my client? So it's really a theme that says, you must be providing value and if you provide value, you become indispensable. That does not mean the company won't shut down, be sold. I'm not saying it makes you immune to fluctuations in the economy, but it certainly is a step in the right direction.

Gaskin: Well, that's wonderful. I wish you all the luck with that. This has been Matthew Moran, author of The IT Career Builder's Toolkit, a book from Cisco Press that became available in January 2005. My name is James Gaskin. Thanks for listening to IT World Voices and hope to see you next time.

ITworld.com Voices