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Mentoring and Nurturing
The Next Generation of Talent

By Carrie Goetz D.MCO, RCDD, NTS, CDCP, CDCS, Master IM, CNID, SMC, AWS CCP

The younger talent coming into this industry (or at least we hope are) brings with them a depth of knowledge, attitude, perspective, and ability. These qualities bring great promise to our industry, which is rapidly aging out, and growing faster than talent can be attracted. In fact, the data center industry as a whole is suffering from a significant talent shortage. Compound the growing shortage with the relocation of data center talent to the large colo markets, and a large portion of the rest of the globe faces existence without these much-needed resources. One solution lies in mentorship.

The journey I took in my career was partly as a mentee and then paying it forward as a mentor of many talented people. As an industry, we still find it necessary to define, “what is a data center.” Bringing awareness of this industry is the first reason to mentor young talent. Most of us my age (no spring chicken here) fell into this industry as IT literally became an industry. Many learned in trials by fire and trying to decide if the skillet was a more hospitable environment than the actual flame. Mentoring can be a place for questions, answers, and hopefully, sage advice. We can introduce the next generation to skills and opportunities that don’t follow a particular curriculum. We can put forward jobs and duties that don’t adhere to ANY curriculum or job description, our actual jobs!

As mentors, we begin to build the bridges…

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