Boost your IT career — join an organization

I’m always sur­prised when MSIS stu­dents tell me they haven’t joined an indus­try asso­ci­a­tion like the Asso­ci­a­tion of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Pro­fes­sion­als (AITP) or the Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­put­ing Machin­ery (ACM).

Trade groups are an excel­lent way to net­work and find jobs. I was a board mem­ber of the Hon­olulu AITP chap­ter for 3 years. The meet­ings are inter­est­ing, and the coconut job line is alive and well.

Stu­dent mem­ber­ships in some of these groups are an excel­lent bar­gain. The ACM includes access to its dig­i­tal library. It’s a great way to do a lit­er­a­ture review with­out vis­it­ing a phys­i­cal library. The ACM is a global orga­ni­za­tion, and its place­ment ser­vice lists jobs around the world.

Any­one who stud­ies telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and wants to stay in Hawaii needs to join the Hawaii Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Asso­ci­a­tion (HTCA). This group holds a con­fer­ence each Octo­ber, and their monthly meet­ings are well attended by CXOs, man­agers and technologists.

10 Things recently pub­lished their own list of essen­tial IT orga­ni­za­tions, which pro­vides some more groups.

Tagged as: career, cxo, Hawaii, Honolulu, job, MSIS, USA