Are you ready for your next job?

Well, I wasn’t, and I should have been.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t see my last employment as what would get me my next job, but after being unemployed for 2 months I think different.

Don’t get me wrong, I like stability, but whatever you do at your work place must help you get your next job. Lets go over a few tips.

1- Stay up to date with what is out there: It doesn’t matter if your organization is small, budget constraints, you hate Microsoft/Linux, your boss is happy with the 486sx PCs you have or your are just overwhelmed with the day to day IT stuff, you still need to stay in touch with reality. You can go to vender events, online webinars, blogs, create a lab or whatever you can think of, you have to know what is out there, and not just technology, but also things like PMI, CMMI, or ITIL. Most likely you have been working at the same place for a few years and the next job will require some of the things I just mentioned. Just because you don’t use them at your current job doesn’t mean others don’t use it.

2- Have a good network of colleagues: A good way to get a job is by referral, and to do that you need contacts in other companies. Most likely you already have friends, schoolmates and colleagues in other companies that can help you. Another way is at the vender events, there you can make acquaintances with other people in the industry. You can also use social websites like LinkedIn, this site is the largest professional network on the Internet with more than 90 million members in over 200 countries. Its Facebook, but for professionals. Lots of recruiters look at candidates profiles, they can see what you have done, recommendations, what others think about you, etc. The more people you know, the better chance to get a job.

3- Try not to fall into a very specific niche: It may be that you are working in Development linking to a weird application that no one uses, or support a platform that is used by 1% of the industry. If this is the case, you may be in trouble. Yes there is some sort of job security, but you never know. Most likely, the very specific skill you have learned will not be used on your next job, for instance, I know how to integrate TAXWare with .NET, but can I use it down here in Chile? I don’t think so… so why even put it on the resume. You just might dig yourself into a hole if your niche is to specific, so keep up to date with other technologies and development trends. I heard an ex colleague mention this as the reason why is was changing jobs. What he was doing was so specific that the integration of this product he worked with that none of what he learned over the last year or so was used elsewhere.

4- Certification is a must: Ahhh…. Certification…… This should be seen as a long term investment in yourself. If you are working as a helpdesk tech, its more than clear that you most likely know by now most of the problems with Windows 7, or if you are a Network Admin, you know by now how to create a user account or email account in Exchange. So why get certified? Will my current employer pay me more? Not likely so why bother? Well, the next time you look for a job, that certification will make your resume stand out a bit more than the other 150 candidates! That’s why. Have you ever seen on a job posting ITIL certification desired? Well, the guy that just got certified yesterday will have a better shot for that job over you that have been leading projects for 5 years and have no certification. So, see what is being asked for, and get certified in it. And by the way, you might be able to sell the certification pitch to your boss and have the company pay for it!

5- Look for a job once ever year or two: I was told a long time ago to put your resume online every 18 months and apply for a few jobs just to see what your are worth. I did that in 2000 just before the .com bubble bust in the US and in a few weeks I got calls from DELL, Disney and Pandesic, all wanted to interview me… Keep in mind that you always think you have some sort of an advantage over all the rest, but why wait until you need a new job to find it out? Some good sites are http://www.careerbuilder.com and http://home.monster.com in the US; http://www.trabajando.cl/ and http://www.laborum.cl/ in Chile

6- Validate your references: I have heard a number of times (and this happed to me) that people seem not to understand why they cant get a job. Well don’t be surprised that you are getting bad references. Have a friend call your last boss and see what references you get. The best you can do is to get a Letter of Recommendation, that way you have it in writing and it will avoid or at least minimize calls to your last employer.


Don’t think just because you do your job well you will be at your post for ever, even Admiral Kirk got benched for a while. Be prepared! As a good friend once told me “prepare for the worst and hope for the best”, once you are on the street, there is not much you can do, so do it while you are in a position where it can be done.

Please feel free to comment on any of this, or add more job search web sites.

George,
The Captain.

I am back!

It has been a while... and lots of things have happend in IT and in my life.... so in the next few days I will update the site with a lot of news!
Stay tuned!

The Captain.

IT = Mr. Fix and know everything that has a button or makes a BIP sound?

Is it just me or does this happen to everyone in IT? I was once call a PDTA or Permanently Designated Technical Advisor by an ex girlfriend and from that day it seems to fit so perfectly. I think this is worse than being a mechanic or a Doctor. The get ask only things related with the car or the body, but me? I get hit with every thing in the book, from how to get that old VCR to work, or how to set a watch, to how to buy some thing on the internet. It just never ends. This is with family and friends, but at work!? Help me Lord!

Apart of knowing how all the computers, FAX, Xerox machines, work, I some how have to know how all cell phones work, how to program the Satellite Dish, how the A/C units works, or why the coffee machine is not working!

Don’t get me wrong, its nice to be the one that everybody comes to…. But come one……are IT the only ones what can figure things out?

I would love to hear some stories or what you think and deal with this “super hero” status.

George.
The Captian

Project Management 101 : The Need

The Need: It doesn’t mater the size of your IT shop, users will always need your services, if it’s a simple macro for a spreadsheet or a full blown system.

In order to satisfy the “customer” you need to understand his needs and this obligates you and your team to know the business. If you are unable to have a good understanding of the business then you can’t understand the need and most importantly, you can’t understand the impact this new development will have.

As an example, I was once approached because an application was needed to help reduce the time it took to create a given report. The solution was simple, take the original spreadsheet, dump it in SQL and then run the report with the filters in the SQL. But knowing the business, the real problem was not the report, it was the data itself. So the real solution was to take the original data source, the one that was used by several people for reporting and load this data into SQL.

This solution not only helped the department that came to me, but also helped two other departments.

You need to take time, understand the problem, what it means, who and what it impacts, is it a real problem? Or is the problem the way things are done? Is this a simple isolated thing? Or is it part of a bigger problem and need to be taken care of as a department/company wide application.

The other detail regarding the “customers” needs is that there is a big difference between WANT and NEED. Users rarely know what they need, but they are convinced of what they want. The trick is to turn the wants into needs. To do this, you need to spend some time understanding the requirements of the project.

The next post will cover the requirements.

George,

The Captain.

Project Management 101

I have read my good set of books regarding project management in college and at work to know most of the text books are just that. Oscar Soto a Microsoft Professional that owns his own company (ActiveTainer) that I work with on special projects gave me the idea to write a book. I am not sure if this book material but at least it might help resolve the Project Management dilemma.

So what I propose is to in several posts touch each important subject that covers Project Management and most important, using real life examples.

Step 1. - Form a Team: No mater how many people are in the development side of your IT department, you must have a team well defined. It is very important that you define your team, you need to know who to talk to on your side, and your internal customers need to know who to talk to and your own people need to what their role is in the project. This may seem obvious, but it is not. If your internal customer doesn't understand the structure of the team, the will start talking to everybody, and that will cause confusion, changes to the specs without proper documentation, and at the end this will put and jeopardy the project.

As an example of this, when my Development team was working on a project some time ago, it was clear for me that one of the developers was the team leader but the internal customer would every so often talk to the other developer. This would create problems in the team it self, things that where not in the original specs would get in the project and therefore the timeline got bumped without an official acceptance by the customer and at the end I would get the heat from upper management for the delays, delays that up to some point I was not total clear why they had happened.

So, if the team that will be working on the project has more than one member it must be very clear to everyone what their roles in the project are.

George.
The Captain.

IT’s role in internal projects

This could be a tuff one to cover, but I am going to “impose” my vision.


When it comes to Internal projects, IT has a key role. Why? It’s because IT is omnipresent in the organization. IT should be aware of all (or most) of the business process and therefore is the “guardian” of the business.

So if your organization has decided to migrate to a new Sales Application, or a new financial package, IT must be the leader of this project, even if this migration is done by a third party.

The steps should be these:

Requirements: IT Should talk with the users and understand what they need (not what they want) and create a draft document that will serve as the basis for the project.

Find a partner: IT should “shop around” and find a third party for this project. The draft will be the foundation for this. The first meeting should be IT only, remember you are shopping around.

Involve the customer: Once you have narrowed down to 2 or 3 partners, get you internal customer involved. There should be ONE official project leader from the customer’s side. Try the find the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Supervise: Never leave the customer and the partner alone! If you do…. you will pay for it. Because the user has no clue what he needs and you can end up with a white elephant.

Feet on the ground: Your job is at all stages to keep the feet on the ground.

Make sure testing is done correctly: Once the project is “done” there must be a well-designed testing phase where “everything” must be tested and checked and signed off by the team leaders and until every business unit that is touched by the project has given the written OK you CANT NOT go live.

There are more details to this but this is the bulk of the steps. I am open for comments or debate.

George.
The Captain

Keep your Hardware updated

It’s very important to keep you hardware updated. Why? Well, every now and then, the hardware integrator will upload updated to the firmware and to the drivers for the OS.

Some would say why fix it if it’s not broken, but in general the updates fix problems that can bring down your Data Center. Let’s check what happened to me this weekend.

Scenario: 4 DELL R610 (Intel 5520s) running “the latest” DELL build of VMware ESXi 4, all connected to a DELL MD3000i.

The problem: Every 30mins (give or take) one of the Virtual Machines (VM) would loose connectivity for a few seconds.

During all Friday night and the entire weekend, I got alerts every 30mins that this VM was off line. This was driving me nuts. Once I connected to the office, I could ping the VM, I could login via Remote Desktop, I could view logs.. all normal… so what was wrong?

A bug in the “latest” build of ESXi. If you delete a LUN from the MD3000i and you do not refresh the Storage Adapter in ESXi, you will get a strange error. Every 30min, ESXi checks the LUNs and if it cant find one, it will check the other path (if there is one) for the LUN, and because its not there, it brings down the server for a few seconds and this will make some VMs disconnect from the NIC.

The solution: Update ESXi to the real new build from DELL. This update avoids the NICs to disconnect.

So the real question is how to deal with this dilemma. How do you keep up to date with your updates? To be honest? No idea……

Today was a “fix the problem” day. Tomorrow will be “avoid this to happen again” day.

George.
The Captain.