Is business training any good?

July 30, 2008 12:47 PM

Is business training and certification as well recognized and rewarded as technical training?

I have worked with software development for all my career, and I have progressed quite well by reading books, taking trainings and certifications as much as I could. These have been recognized and rewarded by all my employers so far, basically because they provide a practical way of ensuring I know a certain development technology well enough to pass the exams, therefore even if I do not master it, I can get up to speed on it fairly quickly.

In my current job I'm starting to make the transition into the business world, and frankly it seems to me that most of the expertise is quite subjective and not as easily assessable as in the technical "world".

So how does one become "good" as business, in a way that he/she can be easily evaluated and rewarded by employers? I'm thinking MBA here, but I don't want to be so shortsighted.

posted by dcrocha to work & money (3 comments total)

Project management certification

Agile / Scrum certification

These make me at least sit up and take notice when evaluating candidates.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:23 PM on July 30

So how does one become "good" as business, in a way that he/she can be easily evaluated and rewarded by employers?

Know people. It's all networking.

No, certifications don't mean much at all.
posted by rokusan at 3:06 PM on July 30

You may enjoy reading Managing Humans (website) - all about management for people dealing with or coming from a technical background.

I've taken one Learning Tree course (so far) on management skills, and found it useful; I've got three more in the hopper. When you say "business world" I presume you mean "management." If so, soft skills are key, and they're pretty subjective, though there are tools you can use.

You may find the Manager Tools podcast interesting / useful too.
posted by lowlife at 3:07 PM on July 30