Information Technology

Oct 11 2008   7:13PM GMT

To certify or not to certify?

Posted by: Raj Perumal
certifications, university, mcse, Information Technology, CCNA, ccie, ccnp, mcp, mcts, college, certify, vendor certifications, experience, work placement, co-op programs, post secondary education, volunteer work, paper MCSE, IT employment

So you’ve graduated from university or college and you’re ready to go out into the world and nail that first awesome IT job. You and your family and friends all know how good you are. You’re the resident computer whiz and you think to yourself “People would be crazy not to hire me!”. So you go out into the world and you find that you get little to no bites on your resumes.

One of the reasons is because everyone and their dog thinks they know IT but unfortunately it’s getting increasingly harder for employers to tell the difference between a wannabe and the real deal. As someone who has been regularly engaged in the hiring process over the course of my career, I can tell you about two things that stand out on a resume for an IT prospect - experience, and certifications.

One without the other just doesn’t cut it. You can have all the experience in the world but if you don’t have the certs then people will wonder how good that experience actually is. You can have a billion and one certs, but if you don’t have the experience with actual projects people are going to think you’re all flash and no substance. The “paper MCSE” comes to mind here.

So how do you get both of these? Well if you are having problems finding work, what you should do is during your education get enrolled in a good co-op program (combination of study and work) where your school places you in a company to learn the trade for a few months of the year. This way you graduate with both experience and theory.

The other way is to volunteer at many organizations that need volunteer IT help. This is a great way to get experience and do something good for your community. This also looks great on resumes. This will also help you when you go to write your certification exams because some experience in the real world will always help you pass those exams.

I always hear people make fun of certifications, but those are usually the people who don’t have the kahonas to go and write them and feel like they have to put them down to legitimize themselves. Instead ignore those naysayers and go out and get that experience and those certifications. Together that will put you a cut above the rest!

-RP

Jul 19 2008   2:40AM GMT

The Perception of Managed Services

Posted by: Raj Perumal
Managed Services, Information Technology, IT Consulting, computer support

Being in the consulting field as long as I have, I have encountered pretty much every reaction to Managed Services offerings. Some people openly embrace it and love the idea of a consulting company completely taking care of everything for them, and other people get quite scared fearing for their jobs and don’t want anything to do with it.

 Managed Services (in the IT world), if you haven’t heard of it before, is basically a company providing a service to your business to take care of all your IT needs and concerns for a flat monthly fee. The service isn’t time based typically, instead it’s based on how many users, machines, sites etc. you might have. The company providing this service will usually provide to you a set of service levels for different urgency levels of service required and will provide regular maintenance and support to your company. They will also act as trusted advisor to your company, using their experience to consult with you on which IT direction you should take your company based on your IT needs.

 The Managed Services company not only acts as your “tech”, but also acts as your “CIO” and everything in between. Doing this can allow you to focus on your core business instead of having to worry about IT. Managed Services typically works well for SMB companies and more and more people are starting to discover it. Whether you have an IT team or not, there is no need to fear. Managed Services companies work great with or without IT teams; it just changes the roles a little bit. If a company already has an existing IT team they can use the Managed Services company to provide support where they would otherwise not want to focus their valuable time and effort and instead be freed up to work on more “important” things.

 Managed Services isn’t about taking away IT jobs from hard working individuals; it’s about working with these individuals towards the common goals and success of your core business.

 -RP