Maximise your Potential
Khalil Rehman wrote in October about ‘doing more with less’ that over the last 18 months we have all had to tighten our belts and try to achieve more with less. I’ve seen this trend too in a very competitive job market, but employers wanting more from the people they hire. Depth and breadth on your cv seems to be more attractive than ever, and almost imperative too.
Oracle seem to have finally ‘committed’ to Release 12, after the wait and see attitude towards Fusion seems to have had an impact on projects and we’ve all seen the project market shrink. There was a time when we could gain experience of new releases on the job, but those roles are not really around and new projects, all seemingly Release 12, demand release 12 experience.
Where can you gain Release 12 skills without spending thousands on Oracle Education? Over the years, the on the job route of gaining experience, became the norm, in so much that consultants were trained on the job and, let’s face it, no amount of training can ever replace experience. Can this be viewed as a failure of the training market? Shouldn’t those people responsible for ‘on the job’ training be those standing at the front of a classroom?
The Training Concept
Too many times are training classes provided with a generic trainer reading from a prepared set of slides, rather than an expert imparting their knowledge and experience. This experience is what is required to be delivered, and attempt to teach the skills an understanding to implement solutions, rather than teach topics that will fill a predetermined length of time. Don’t look at the quality, feel the width!
To deliver training to people and organisations that are ‘time poor’ clientele requires the understanding of what is important and how to deliver an overall understanding of the entire problem area. The kind of gaps in the skills market are very often version dependant, with vendors ever improving their products, leaving the consultant base concerned about their skill sets leaving them behind. This also has the effect of leaving large and small organisations with an expensive re-skilling exercise for their personnel.
Version based skills and the need to re-skill.
In the Oracle applications market, there are specific niche areas with high demand of skills. This not only keeps existing contractors in the contract market, but also attracts others to it. We want to offer help by enabling consultants to gain confidence in the new releases of Oracle Applications, or introduce consultants to new applications.
Our training ethos is to use consultant-based courseware – learn what you need to do the job taught by experts in their field, not trainers.
Training the independent
Consultant focussed training provides condensed intensive implementation training, based around the entire life cycle with tips and lessons learnt from the experts. The training itself shouldn’t be the end though. On the job you have your mentor to ‘fall back on’ in the form. When you’ve spent a small fortune on traditional training, in the end you’re on your own. Wouldn’t it nice if your trainer could be your mentor after your course too. Our forum based post-course help line allows you contact with the very consultants who trained you, offering guidance and interpretation of your new skills.
This type of consultant training is just as applicable to corporate clients wishing to retrain entire departments over a weekend period, as it is to individuals not wishing to give up an entire week of work in order to gain new skills.
It is our intention to capitalise on the unique and in-depth experience, of applications implementation, of the best consultants out there, by using them to provide specific training opportunities to the market, visit our training offerings at www.theITskillsnetwork.com. Any questions please email ian.carline@oraclecontractors.com