by David Riel

Created on: April 10, 2007   Last Updated: March 22, 2010

Optimizing your IT skills may help you avoid losing your job to outsourcing. But you may already have all the skills you need to be too vital to your organization to ever be at risk of termination. The problem is - they may not know it.

Here's a tip that will put you ahead of the curve, so no matter how your IT environment changes, you'll be perceived - and for good reason - as too vital to ever be replaced.

To make sure that you become indispensable to your organization, and your expertise is recognized by everyone from the CEO to the mail room, you need do only one thing:

Blog.

Now, I don't mean about your pets, or what you had for lunch. I mean, a blog about the IT questions, issues, and concerns the members of your organization face every day.

Create a private blog with access limited to members of your company, where you have FAQ's, tips, and posts with more complete answers to the more complex questions and problems.

This will save you some work - you'll often be able to refer people to your blog for answers - but even more, it will make you your company's IT expert.

So when outsourcing, downsizing, streamlining, or whatever is the next threat to your job's security, you can sit tight, secure in the knowledge that you'll be one of the last people to be let go.

In fact, you are far more likely to be brought into the decision process if outsourcing is on the table. Who better than you to determine your company's needs, and it's IT strengths and weaknesses.

So use the power of blogging to make yourself and your skills known, appreciated, and perceived as vital to the members of your organization. If you do, you won't have to worry about someone in India, or anywhere else, being able to take your place.

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