Re: Advanced Computer Skills + Jobs
P83,
You need to research a little more for yourself and determine the relevance of some of the above-mentioned software applications and perhaps map these to your desired career route.
Computer skills are imperative in marketing yourself better, but for some software applications, merely mentioning passive competency on your resume might not work well.
I’ll use some examples from your post above to explain:
For example, SAP and Peoplesoft (Oracle) are enterprise platforms which form the basis of day to day operations of a company. There’s almost no way to acquire competency in the use of these systems other than using them on the job for a while. Yes, you can take courses and attend classes… this will probably familiarize you to the software application and allow you to use the interface a little better, but it won’t allow you to figure out the actual utility of the various modules in these platforms. Companies spend millions of dollars in their implementation, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in getting their staff up and running.
On the other hand, software applications such as Visio are well contained and relatively easier to master. You can pick-up a Visio for Dummies text and figure things out on your own. This will allow you to note “Visio” on your resume as one of the Productivity packages that you can use. That being said, you might still encounter an interview situation where you have to explain its relevance to your past job or future aspirations.
So think about these things before you make any decisions. It will probably take you an hour to two hours to scour the websites of software vendors and see if learning that application is a worthwhile endeavour.
Considering that you’re preparing for a career in marketing, it may make sense for you to look into CRM and Business Analytics related software applications. Large firms and multinationals may be using something like Oracle/Siebel CRM solutions… so check these out. Again, you have to realize that these solutions fall in the same category as SAP, and it will take a lot of effort to learn them and convincingly market your skills unless you’ve had real-world application experiences.
On the other hand, you can also look at software packages such as QuickBase which has functionality for budgeting marketing programs, preparing collateral, run a press release etc. and something like this could be easily deployed by SMEs.
Hope this helps.
Am I over stressing?