Are you ready for IBM?

So, where do you want you career to go? How do you want to get there?

Individual development plan - Your career path will be as individual as you are. You might choose to move vertically, you might prefer to deepen your knowledge in your field of expertise or you might decide to make lateral moves to broaden your range of skills.

Whichever path you choose, you will create an individual development plan each year to help you to continue to grow. It helps identify the skills you need to fulfil current and future business commitments, and the available prospects to improve those skills. It is also a great opportunity to discuss your career aspirations, job satisfaction, skills and competency gaps, and priorities for learning with your manager.

Personal Business Commitments - IBM's success depends on how well all employees achieve individual goals and contribute to the company's strategic objectives. The PBC program is the means by which all IBM employees worldwide set their goals for the year and get evaluated on their performance. This program reinforces IBM's high-performance culture and differentiates employees based on their contribution to the company. To sustain marketplace leadership, we maintain an environment where every employee is rewarded to encourage them to perform at an exceptional level.

Management training - Is management your goal? IBM has an award-winning management development program that can enable you to develop effective leadership skills to help you move ahead as you lead in a high-performance culture.

Learning to manage your career is one of the best investments you can make in managing your future at IBM and we have the tools in place to help you do this.

We have produced career roadmaps that help plan your career within IBM. These maps will help identify what skills you need and how to gain proficiency in these. They also detail what specific experiences you need and projects you need to have worked on to move up the next step on the career ladder. They will help you understand what relevant education you need and will show you, where appropriate, when you will be able to achieve professional accreditation within your profession. They are essentially a guide and a map to help you plan your career.

We have created the ‘Your career’ website to help you manage your career in IBM. All the things you need to perform online career-related tasks and activities are accessible in one easy place – from managing your objectives to creating your Individual Development Plan. This tool also helps you find available projects, jobs, mentors and provides a personalised all-in-one status of your career development tasks and activities.

We have developed a virtual career coach designed to help you understand who you are, where and how you do your best work. Once you have evaluated your personality, workstyle, interests, skills and experience the coach will then help you explore the options available to you – understanding IBM and our business strategies, what is going on outside IBM, helping you understand about other areas or professions in IBM. The coach will then help you identify the experience you already have and where there are areas for development. This will all then feed into your individual development plan.

Internal job market
Employees in IBM are able to use an Internet-based recruitment tool to search through the database of all current open positions and apply directly on-line for a position.

We need people who will focus on building their expertise continuously in line with the ever-changing business environment. Continuous learning and development is therefore key for you and your career at IBM.

Learning@IBM - Whether you're looking for online or classroom courses offered by IBM's professional communities, you'll find them on the Learning@IBM website. Universal access to thousands of internal e-learning modules is included, so you can take the courses you need at your convenience. You can also reference leading business and technical publications, all providing you with the opportunity to learn and grow – key differentiators in today’s ever changing marketplace.

Job role and technical training - In addition to top-notch professional skills, IBM focuses on in-depth industry and technical training to keep you up to date on emerging technologies and skills valued in the marketplace.

Mentoring - IBM encourages all employees to have mentors as it is a great way to learn from others. In fact, most people benefit from having several mentors in different areas such as career growth, technical knowledge and enhancing business and client awareness.

IBM Professions – The IBM professions provides career paths for skills and capability development with job categories and job roles. If you ever face any professional, career and development challenges, an excellent source of support is the IBM Professions community. There are communities of practitioners with similar skills sets, who share best practice and intellectual capital.

Certification - Professionals can gain IBM certification within Professions. IBM certification is awarded to individuals who are working at a defined and sustained standard of excellence, and who demonstrate this through their experience, their projects and their education.

IBM Certification is similarly organised for all Professions and is based on the evidence of demonstrated capabilities and skills, and reviewed by your peers covering: experience, knowledge, education, business contribution and personal contributions.

Academic learning assistance program - IBM provides assistance for external education in addition to our internal training offerings to help you keep your skills aligned with our business goals.