6 and a bit years ago I went through a 3 week Induction course for IBM PUEs to give us (as 17 and 18 year olds) all we’d need to deal the ‘real world of IBM’. It covered basic technical and business skills, including an ‘Invitation to Tender’ which was a day long exercise in dealing with a business problem, meeting ‘customers’ and having difficult meeting with them. It was a lot of fun, quite silly really, but did cover the basics of dealing in a professional customer environment, and most crucially, what not to do.
Today I saw a bit of the grown up version of this exercise, the final presentations of ‘Foundation Skills in a Project Environment’. This is a ~7 day version of the above for new joiners to many parts of IBM UK. I won’t go into details so as not to spoil the surprise for future attendees. The participants seemed to have enjoyed the exercise (once it was over!), and seemed to be able to confidently represent IBM. Just 3 weeks in that’s pretty good and I’m happy to welcome them as our newest IBMers*.
* A cheezy term I know, but a well known one**
** Though interestingly one not known by Google
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