Saturday, March 8, 2014

Week 1 of Training: IRM Tradecraft

This week was the first week of our specialty-specific training. The week was labeled as the "Information Resource Management (IRM) Tradecraft." IRM is the name of the Bureau that IMS and Information Management Technical Specialists (IMTS) fall under when stationed in Washington.

The week started off with a bang... also known as a snow day. It continued with a two hour delayed start on Tuesday, making the coordinator of our session scramble to reschedule speakers. He ended up getting in almost all of the sessions, by abbreviating most of them by a few minutes. Although this week was technically our first week of 'training,' I think it's more accurate to call it 'Orientation Week Four.' It consisted of a bunch of briefings shallowly touching on subjects only important to IMS (and IMTS). For example, we went over topics like crisis management, hiring locally employed staff (LES), IRM career development, and the remote support structure available to us while overseas.

All in all it wasn't the most exciting week so far, but for our last session they handed out our schedules for the next 13 weeks! Many people have told us that the IMS training is comprehensive, and we'll be ready to do everything on day one... I thought I had a pretty good handle on things going in, but this training includes a bunch of stuff I've never really had to deal with before. Time to learn more about phones, satellites, and radios than I ever expected to!

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