KM careers

[peter.dalmaris]

After spending years studying in areas relevant to knowledge management at the university collecting Master and PhD degrees, I have recently begun applying for jobs. As expected, so far all applications have been knocked back, most likely due to my lack of substantial industrial experience.

As, I assume, many of the members of actKM have been in the workforce for many years, I would be very interested to know how you would approach this problem.

In particular, the following questions seem to be most relevant to the problem I am facing:

1) As KM is inherently theory-intensive, how should one plan his education plan: study the theory, then practice; practice, then study the theory; or, both at once?

2) How does the industry perceive academic qualifications in KM? How much does a Masters or PhD in KM worth compared to 1 or 3 years of industrial experience in the field?

3) As KM is so different to other job descriptions (such as "Java programmer" or "accountant"), how can an employer go about finding a person with the "right" mix of skills when a CV is usually the only source of information about a candidate?

4) What are the qualifications (academic or other) that a KM employer expects?

Thank you,

Peter

[Colin]

I know of a company here in Perth that advertised for the role of Km manager and the person had to have been with the company for more than about 10 years so they had an understanding of where the knowledge lay and how the company functioned. I don't acutally know that there are many jobs that are specifically KM. I would have thought that a possible career path would be to go for a role where KM can be one of the aspects you bring but not the sole one

[tanghung]

Hello Peter,

In Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the KM Master or PhD students would involved in many joined KM projects with business companies. If possible, you may consider to come to Hong Kong to gain KM projects' work experience.

WH TANG
www.ourpkm.com