Free ebook: Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft

9780735693616f We’re thrilled to offer another free ebook: Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft, by Katherine Murray. The ebook contains eight chapters and an appendix describing how you can assess and build your technology-based job skills.

To give you a sense of the ebook’s content, here is its Foreword, by Microsoft Learning’s Lutz Ziob:

Foreword

In the midst of a struggling economy, our fast-changing, knowledge-based
economy has created unprecedented challenges for employers and workers
alike. Employers increasingly need workers with a broad range of information
technology (IT) skills. These skills will become even more important as we
continue to retool major sectors of our economy, such as healthcare, transportation
and energy. By 2014, more than three-quarters of all jobs in the
United States will require some level of computing or technology skills, and
the vast majority of newly created jobs will require post-secondary education
or training.

To meet this demand, students need a solid foundation in science,
technology, engineering, math, and design, as well as in related disciplines
such as computer science. And this means that workforce training systems
need to be improved and expanded to meet the needs of all workers—the
underemployed, the unemployed, and students who need better access to
the requisite skills. Everyone entering or already in the workforce should have
access to the resources they need to become lifelong learners who can adapt
to an ever-changing workplace.

Technology is only one piece of the puzzle, but it has a pivotal role to play in
these efforts. It can offer students, workers, and employers the training tools
they need, and it can help to quickly and efficiently expand access to educational
resources. IT also helps people develop other essential 21st-century
skills such as collaboration and teamwork, finding and interpreting information,
and using data to aid in decision making.

In this book, students will find a wealth of Microsoft resources they can
use to identify the technology skills they need, and gather knowledge and
experience to help them take charge of their careers. Here at Microsoft, we
care about students’ career success and hope these resources will open doors
to learning that will lead them to better opportunities and a deeper understanding
of the way technology continues to change and improve the ways
people work—both here in the U.S. and around the world.

Lutz Ziob
Microsoft Learning General Manager

You can download the ebook in XPS format here and in PDF format here.

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