Career Trap #3: Not keeping your skills fresh. So if management is not for you does that mean it’s ok to just keep doing what you’ve been doing? NO! You can’t just stick your head in the sand and expect that all will be fine with your career. You have to keep your skills current. I get very frustrated when I read job board message boards where folks are complaining about the lack of jobs out there. The reality is that there are certain IT skills that are HOT and others that are NOT. The best way to ensure that your position doesn’t get cut or outsourced is by ensuring that you keep your technical skills current or build new skills into your bag of tricks. If your company isn’t using the latest technology then find another one who is. Don’t stay stuck in the same position for more than two years. Your skills will get stale and it will become that much harder to leave when you finally realize that a new generation of technology has passed you by.So speaking of those hot skills. Have you checked out the list of hot positions? The reality is that the most sought after positions in IT today are part technical, part business. Positions like business systems analysts, relationship managers, and project managers are a hybrid of technology skills and people skills. What makes them sought after (and highly compensated) is that they bridge the gap between IT and the business and are critical for shaping the image of IT to the rest of the organizations. The help business users “get it” and they are highly rewarded for it.

How to Beat It: If you want to move ahead quicker make sure you develop not just your technical skills but your interpersonal and business skills. That means developing your ability to deliver a technical presentation to a business audience, facilitate a meeting, lead and collaborate on large project teams, building support for your ideas, understand the business and industry that you’re in, and be able to build a business case. There isn’t a set way of developing these skills. There are some courses that you can take but most of these come skills are developed as a part of the projects you work on. Make sure you are getting that exposure as a part of your long term plans.