Career development

A Small Silver Lining?

Although I enjoy writing these blogs, I sometimes find myself wondering if they have any real impact. In the case of my Friday the 13th blog “How Can You Get a Job that Requires IT Experience, When You Have None?” I got a very nice email back from the person whose original correspondence with me served as its impetus. I reproduce most of it next, then follow up with some comments and observations:

Thank you for blogging about my experience. Before I made the decision to go down the IT path, I found a job for a PC-Tech-like job. A company needed an individual to handle PC/laptop upgrades. They stated A+ preferred but not required. I applied for the position and in my cover letter I listed out the same experience as in my email to you. Needless to say I got no response from the company but that is when I finally decided to get A+ certified. Being 38 years old and going back to school to start over was very difficult, at first. I knew that I could do it but was it where I should go career-wise? In other words without technically being in the field, should I try it?

Years back when I first started college, I took a career profile test to see what suited my personality. The results came back auto technician or detective. I am a car guy for sure and like guns too but, I have this thing about being shot at. So, for years I did car stereo, body shop and auto parts work until I finished college( Associates in Marketing). I spent 11 years at BMW (11 years at one car dealership is pretty much unheard of, tremendous turnover), then 11 months at a Porsche dealership as a service advisor, which felt like 11 years.

A majority of the jobs that I see now want years of experience with the certifications. I know that I have a good bit but not wanting to sell myself short, not enough PC and networking yet to be on my own. That is why I am looking for job environment that has some supervision. Like a large company that does PC and laptop exchanges, were I would transfer files, set permissions, network settings….etc. I did create a profile on ADP’s web site since they support car dealerships like Reynolds&Reynolds and also on RIM’s (Blackberry) site. I know that with some good mentoring, I will excel very quickly. When I started at BMW, I had to learn a lot on my own which taught me so much. I was skipped over several times for training yet I was still able to figure out and diagnose the cars. I have found a few possibilities on Dice, which does seem like the best tech job web site out of all the ones I have been on. I will keep you posted.

I see some emerging glimmers of hope in this reply and some good positive attempts to find work as well. I also continue to see more evidence of highly relevant experience that he’s still hesitant to claim. I’d urge him to make as much of that experience as possible, to stress his abilities to learn, solve problems, and deal with complex systems even in the absence of formal training to learn them.

I’d also urge him to look beyond Dice and other job sites, to ply his own personal network to look for opportunities. I’d also urge him to look for forums and message boards online where others are asking questions about tools and technologies he knows, and posting helpful information to answer those questions. This not only gives him a chance to flex some intellectual and problem-solving muscles, it will also give him something to point to in a job interview or cover letter as evidence of technical skills and a willingness to help and work with others (key ingredients for IT personnel of all stripes). I also recommended that he research PC repair depot operations in his local metro area, because such operations always have need of qualified repair technicians. So do big technology outlets such as Fry’s, Best Buy, Office Depot, and so forth. My final word to him: leave no stone unturned in your search for work. One job will surely lead to another thereafter.

Prepping for CISSP? Check out CCCure.org

As I started working on one of our more successful books–it’s now in a fourth edition, and continues to generate modest but steady earnings–I first stumbled across French-Canadian Clement Dupuis’ outstanding CCCure.org Web site. For those prepping for the CISSP exam, this site is a real treasure trove of information, including all kinds of useful study tips and advice on how best to prepare for the exam, as well as beaucoups content and pointers to still more content to help candidates learn the subject matter necessary from each of the exam’s many categories/topic areas in the body of knowledge that they must master.

You’ll also find pointers to relevant training and tutorials, exam quizzes to help you hone your study skills, and even a nice collection of book reviews of CISSP study guides–including, thankfully, a good review of the aforementioned CISSP Study Guide to which James Michael Stewart, Mike Chapple, and I all contributed. But the best aspect of this resource has to be the on-site forums. Here, you can learn an awful lot by reading over postings from others with CISSP related questions, and the answers that some incredible security luminaries regularly provide in response. If you need answers to your own questions, please do your homework and search existing threads first before posting here, then be prepared to wait 2-3-sometimes-even-4 days to get a reply. You won’t be sorry.

Of course, I should also mention that Clement Dupuis is no slouch in the security department: he’s a well-known instructor, researcher, and consultant in this area. He’s also now teaching for Shon Harris’ San Antonio-based training company, Logical Security, where he regularly rubs shoulders with other security experts as well.

If you need to add an excellent on-line resource to your study arsenal for the CISSP exam, CCCure.org is it. You’ll also find some coverage of the ISACA CISA and CISM exams here, too, but I haven’t explored it sufficiently enough to give it the same ringing endorsement I so happily give to the CISSP coverage–though I’m pretty sure I would do likewise were I to dig into it more deeply.

Stay tuned for further “Career Assist” news from MS

Alas, the program details for the “Career Assist” program from Microsoft foretold to me last week have yet to materialize. The original launch date for this program was supposed to have been yesterday (February 4) and I waited on this blog to discuss them until the day had come and gone. Instead I got a nice apology from the PR folks for Microsoft Learning citing some unexplained but undeniably real delays in getting the word out. At this point, all I can say is “stay tuned for further details.” I’ll follow up as soon as I can get more information on what promises to be an interesting and potentially valuable cert-prep offering from Microsoft.

At this point, all I know is that Microsoft plans to offer a major discount–as much as 90%–off the price of some of its e-Learning collections. As a quick visit to the E-Learning catalog will quickly reveal (thanks to the “Most Popular” default Sort order that shows what is selling best already), the top items there are invariably collections of some kind or another.  Likewise, change the sort order to “Price (High-Low)” and collections all float to the top thanks to their higher sticker prices. You’ll see numbers that range from a high of $960 (Premium Collection 6337: Upgrade Your Windows Server 2003 MCSE…) to a great many in the $200-400 range, many of which also target specific certfication exams (70-293, 70-536, 70-431, 70-272, 70-294, and on and on). Search on “70-” and you’ll see all the items (primarily also collections) that focus on specific certification exams.

At this point, I find myself really wanting to hear and know more about this planned program. At current prices, the offerings are interesting. At substantial discounts they may be too good to pass up! I also just touched base with MS PR by phone and they tell me all will be revealed some time tomorrow, so you won’t have to stay tuned for too much longer. Be like me, and try to be patient.

Microsoft readies financial aid for IT pros

When I read on the MS learning center site last month that the company had plans to help cash-strapped IT professionals boost skills and knowledge, quite naturally I e-mailed their PR folks to ask what was up. At the time, they couldn’t yet tell me anything but I have recently come into possession of some information that provides a foretaste of announcements planned for next week in this general arena.

A new learning program is on its way from Microsoft: it will be called “Career Assist,” and will be laid out in detail on Wednesday, February 4. Certain e-learning course collections–especially those that aim at specific certification exams–will become subject to a substantial discount (wish I’d saved my $100 of “try-it-out money” already spent last month to investigate offerings for this opportunity!). The Second Shot offer will also attach to this program, so that individuals who go on to take exams based on their learning will be allowed a second, free re-take if they don’t pass on a first try.

The whole idea is to make obtaining certification easier and more affordable. I’m not necessarily sure about the “easier” part because none of the content or exam coverage has changed (nor am I sure anybody really wants it to). But for those willing to follow an e-learning path toward certification preparation, those costs are going to get significantly cheaper. And because MS has focused its e-learning collections first and foremost at the most popular/sought-after certification exams, this could provide an interesting double-whammy where the costs of self-study actually go down for the first ime in many, many years.

Be sure to visit the Microsoft Learning pages on February 4 to get all the details. I know I will!

Don’t forget “other sources” when funding IT training

As veteran blogger and commenter Suzanne Wheeler (she writes “Views from the PIT-People in IT” blog here) noticed about my previous blog, it’s important to factor other sources of financing into the equation when job loss, underemployment, or other circumstances lead people to ponder the suitability of and financing for continuing adult education. Thus, I am very nicely reminded to point out the following potential sources of funding for those in need of additional support for a training, skills development, or “back to school” adventure:

• Federal Student Loans, about which information is available on the Web at http://studentaid.ed.gov/. See also this nice third-party overview of available programs at SallieMae’s CollegeAnswer.com.
• State employment or unemployment programs (use the search engine on your state’s Website, or Google something like “Oklahoma education assistance” or “Oklahoma employment assistance” for more information). See also the State Unemployment Insurance Benefits page from the US Department of Labor.
• Be sure to ask at local employment or workforce centers about available training benefits, vouchers, or programs as you apply for benefits, or otherwise interact with such offices.
• Check with local community colleges to see if they have any free or discounted training offerings for unemployed or underemployed workers: many do. Community College Week Magazine sponsors an active an informative Website that you can use to find such resources in your geographical area.

If you can’t come up with the money for continuing education, IT certificaiton, or skills and knowledge development entirely on your own, please don’t be bashful about looking for–and, more important, asking about–other sources of help and funding. This is a case where some persistence and lots of knocking on doors can really make a big difference.

Foote Partners Pinpoints 10 Top IT Jobs for 2009

My old buddy David Foote at IT compensation specialist firm Foote Partners, recently shared with e-week the results of his latest compensation data in a slideshow named “10 Hot IT Jobs for 2009.” Here;s a list of what he came up with in “David Letterman Top 10″ (reverse) order:

10. Storage Directors: coordinate storage, reduce overall hardware outlays (consolidated storage usually costs less than decentralized, distributed storage). Relevant certifications include SNIA, plus offerings from ECM, HP, Dell, IBM, Cisco, Sun, Oracle, and many others

9.AJAX Developers: Microsoft’s ASP.NET technology that support Web 2.0 interactivity and media on Web sites, using browser-neutral ECMAScript/JavaScript and dynamic HTML. Relevant certs: ProCert, Microsoft, Brainbench

8. Security Architects: somebody’s got to design security policy and implementations to match; that’s what these people do. See our infosec cert survey for plenty of pointers.

7. Virtualization experts: everybody’s doing it, and certs are starting to pop up in this area, primarily from VMWare and Microsoft, but also IBM, and probably other big vendors (HP, Sun, Dell, and so forth) soon

6. ITIL Managers: with governance interest and participation at an all-time high, and growing further, ITIL and business process expertise are increasingly valuable. Check the ITIL site for more info and pointers.

5. Enterprise Architects: These guys get tagged to “automate and streamline processes and infrastructure,” and can save organizations big bucks. Related certs: Sun/Java, IBM, Microsoft, EACOE, Institute for Enterprise Architecture, ITAC/Open Group

4. Outsourcing and Vendor Managers: Project Management Specialists who run existing vendor relationships. Related Certs: PMP plus items from number 3.

3.  Vendor Procurement Specialists: in a tight economy VPAs and other vendor agreements will be reworked. Foote says “…companies are going to be renegotiating contracts like crazy.” Related certs: American Purchasing Society, Institute for Supply Management, Senior Professional in Supply Mgmt (SPSM)

2. Resiliency Services Professionals: A new buzzphrase for BC/DR, these services are gaining major traction in the middle of the marketplace (enterprises are pretty mature in this respect, but there are a lot more medium sized businesses in need of such things right now). Related cert programs: See “Cert Programs“

1. Business Intelligence (BI) Experts: help organizations keep up with customer thinking, market makeup, pricing, services, and other key aspects of the target audience. Related cert programs: IBM, Microsoft, TDWI/CBIP

Let this be an inspiration to those looking for more ways to fill their personal development and training dance cards for 2009.

Microsoft’s Take on Planning a Career in IT

In my ceaseless trolling of the virtual byways and highways on the Internet, I keep digging up interesting sources of  IT career planning information. I can now cheerfully confess to needing a laugh rather badly today, having just elicited a few chuckles from this earnest and well-meaning Microsoft Web page: “Prepare for an Information Technology (IT) Career.”

Before I reveal the sources for my mirth, let me make a few additional framing remarks. First and foremost, I don’t mean to ding on Microsoft too much here: this page includes plenty of useful, worthwhile information and shows plenty of evidence of careful forethought and editing. Second, I must confess that my Dad is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army. Thanks to him, I grew up to this mantra: “There are three ways to solve any problem. There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the ARMY way!” As I read over this Microsoft Web page, that mantra marched across my memory, for reasons that you will soon see if you visit this page for yourself.

The bulk of the page is a table that describes resources for IT job descriptions, roles, and information; career planning and development; continuing adult education and learning; and even your local chamber of commerce to obtain pointers to career centers and employment offices in your vicinity. There are an even dozen types of resources described in the table. Can you guess how many of them include a link to Microsoft?

If you guessed less than 3, don’t forget whose Web site this page is on. If you guessed 6 or more, you may be more prone to “Evil Empire thinking” when it comes to assessing Microsoft’s motivation and information delivery skills. The real answer is 5, or 4 if you don’t want to consider a link to Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions a Microsoft link (I do, FWIW). Shoot! They even include a link to their own career site, where the company posts all of its open positions.

My favorite bits of advice on this page are these:

• “Network through coworkers, family, friends, and instructors to contact people currently working in the IT career you are considering and request informational interviews with them. This will help you to find out more about their professions and the types of skills they had to develop.” [For those already employed and for full-or part time students]
• “Talk to counselors, teachers, or instructors in your school’s computer department about your career goals, and the training required to reach them.” [For full- or part-time students]

The funniest items on this page have to be:

• “Talk to your manager and human resources department about your career goals and the training opportunities available to you. In addition to internal training, your organization may provide support for you to pursue external training.” [For those already employed] What? You’re not grateful just to have a job in this economy? Begone! Begone!
• “Review employment ads in newspapers and online, to learn more about available positions in IT and the skills required to get them.” [For those already employed and for full- or part-time students] Newspapers!? We don’t read/need no stinkin’ newspapers! And alas, every blasted one of the online job sites is completely awash in resumes.

Chuckles aside, this page is worth a gander, and probably worth recommending to your favorite underemployed or soon-to-be employed offspring, relatives, friends, offspring of friends, and so forth. All I can say to Microsoft is “Thanks!”

The New Year Is Here, So Be It Resolved That…

A list of New Year’s resolutions for those who work in IT, and are seeking to improve upon or build their careers might include the following:

• Identify at least two new tools or technologies relevant to your job, and start to learn more about them. If you can obtain trial versions or choose Open Source or other free stuff, so much the better–learning works best hands-on.
• Find at least one online or local forum or user’s group where you can interact with other IT professionals who share a common platform, tool, or other interest. Please consider this a “hard (technical) skills” element, so that joining ToastMasters to practice public speaking skills doesn’t count (see the soft skills item that follows). Examples include the Windows User Groups Network, the Cisco Press User Groups Program, Adobe User Groups, and so forth (your favorite search engine will help you find those that match your platform and tools interests, pronto).
• Inventory your soft skills: people skills, project management skills, writing and speaking skills, and so forth. Identify one or two areas where you’d like to improve, and plan to spend some time, reading, studying, and practicing to make some headway in meeting those improvement goals. This is where joining ToastMasters comes into play.
• Think about your certification interests and status. Is it time to refresh an existing credential? Time to go after something new? Here again, take an inventory, check renewal or continuing education requirements, and plan to bring yourself up-to-date before the year gets too far along. Haul out a calendar (or use an electronic calendar) to schedule related tasks and milestones for yourself. Often, maintaining certification status requires meeting continuing education requirements at a minimum, so you’ll want to dig into those requirements, to figure out what  you must do, and then how best to get things done.
• Repeat the preceding item for your continuing academic education. Perhaps you might benefit from finishing an as-yet unfinished degree program, or you may be ready to pursue a graduate degree program of some kind. Examine your possibilities and decide if you want to add some time in academia to your activities for this year. If so, use the same calendar and milestone approach to help keep yourself on track that I recommended in the previous bullet item.

The important thing here is to set some goals for yourself, and then to put those goals–or better yet, incremental steps toward those goals–on a timetable. Then, you can monitor your progress over time and stay on track to meet those goals. I find that regular reminders in my Outlook calendar work to help me stay on top of such things–heck, I even use them to remind me when it’s time to get my hair cut or beard trimmed–without letting too much time slip away. Hopefully, the same (or a similar) approach will work for you. If you not only resolve to improve yourself in 2009, but also take definite and positive steps to realize your goals, it can’t help but be a better year, no matter what happens.

–Ed–

And now, a word from/for my sponsors…

It’s too easy to get caught up in the working side of life, and to let it overpower other equally important parts. Perhaps because I have tendencies in that direction, I often find myself thinking about how all the different parts of life fit together, particularly work and family life, as the holidays are upon us. That’s why today’s blog is a rumination on the virtues of balance and perspective where people strive to better themselves by seeking the former, and trying to maintain the latter where the former is concerned!

At any rate, as I found myself assembling various more-or-less-challenging children’s toys yesterday in the wake of a frenzied gift exchange and marathon unwrapping session, I also found myself pondering the work/life balance. I have a nearly-five-year-old son, who “needed” his slot car race set, a couple of cool but poorly documented Hot Wheels stunt sets, a modular set of marble raceway blocks, and a 125-piece parking garage set-up put together yesterday. Some of these tasks were pretty straightforward and just required mechanical assembly; others required visual analysis of operation, so that vital adjustments could be applied (one of his Hot Wheels stunts involved a battery powered race cage, triggered by a car arriving from a another stunt; it took me about half an hour to figure out that rocking the car launch forward in its mounts was the only way for the car release trigger to work properly).

As I chugged through these exercises, sometimes solo, and sometimes with the welcome participation of my sharper-eyed wife, Dina, I couldn’t help but think about this kind of work (the kind that helps families bond, creates good memories, and turns boxes of parts into precious playthings) versus the other kind of work I’d probably have been doing on just about any other Wednesday during the year (the kind that pays the bills, requires thinking about career and personal/professional development, and planning for continued employability and viability).

My ruminations led me to some interesting realizations:

• It’s far too easy to devote too much time, energy, and effort to working life, without always recognizing that “the other life” (family, leisure, personal and spiritual growth, or whathaveyou) has to suffer in that exchange.
• It’s also far too easy to believe that effort on “work work,” especially for those who work very hard and seek to better themselves, their families, and their life circumstances, provides some kind of exemption for the “life work” side of the equation. Alas, it doesn’t, and far too often getting ahead professionally or materially also means falling behind in other areas.
• Building and improving quality of life involves much more than what we do for a living. Stressing work over the other parts is sometimes inevitable, but can’t become an exclusive focus or even a partial obsession.

As we plan and plot out our working lives, and seek to climb the next rung, master new subject matters, and better ourselves and our situations, it’s important to remember this means expending thought, energy, and effort outside the work domain as well as inside its boundaries. Today, I’m thankful for my family, for the crazy and energetic paroxysms of competing goals and objectives, and for the love that suffuses the interactions and play that family life with small kids involves. Going forward, I want to protect and nurture those things as much as I want to keep the work and cash flowing into the working part of my life. That’s what represents balance to me: I hope you’ll think about what it represents to you, and seek to strike a better equilibrium in the year ahead.

–Ed–

More on Entry-Level Certs from the Trenches

I play pool two nights a week on leagues that belong to the American Poolplayers Association (APA). My Thursday night 9-ball team is composed primarily of people who work in IT. Of the seven people on the team, one is a paralegal, another a hairdresser, and the other five work for Dell (1), IBM/Tivoli (1), NetQoS (1), Megapath (a network management subsidiary of T-Mobile), and me/himself (self-employed technology writer).

One of our number has recently earned his CCNA, by finally completing the second of the two exam sequence for that credential (640-822 ICND1 and 640-816 ICND2), about 9 months after completing the first exam. The second time around it took him three tries to pass, primarily because of the many draws on his time away from studying and toward other things in life: family, leisure, plus a baby on the way. He’s 32 and has worked for the same high-tech company for the past 5 years.

When I asked my friend–let’s call him Joe–whether or not his newly-earned credential would provide him a salary bump, he thought about it for a minute and then said “No. Probably not. I’ll see when my next annual review comes around.” When I asked him why he thought that was the case, he observed that his employer is notoriously attentive to the bottom line and that employees tend to come late into their calculations and distributions even when times are good, more so when times are not so good. Right now, 2% raises are about as much as anybody is getting, under any circumstances.

He’s getting ready to start on the CCNP for Routing and Switching next, with a goal of earning that credential by the end of 2009 or early in 2010. At that point, he plans to start down the CCIE path for both Routing and Switching and Security, and also plans to start looking around for another job. I’ve seen this young man grow significantly in skills, knowledge, professional stature, and maturity in obtaining his CCNA and expect him to continue further down that path in pursuing and obtaining his CCNP, and ultimately, his CCIE.

But this story is entirely typical for many early to mid-career IT professionals (Joe has 7 years of full-time IT experience now, and has worked his way up from help desk, to technical support, to infrastructure support along the way). He’s also got a bachelor’s in Computer Science from a middle tier Texas University and now, of course, the CCNA. When I ask him how he feels about his progress and prospects he’s brutally realistic about his situation: “I had hoped to be doing better by now, but with the economy so shaky, I could definitely be doing worse.” This only appears to strengthen his resolve to do better in the future, and to turn his advancing certifications into more earnings and improved job security.

So do we all, Joe; so do we all. As we make the transition from a crazy 2008 to an uncertain 2009, I hope all of us can appreciate what’s good about our current situations, and resolve to improve them as best we can in the times ahead. What else can we do? You tell me…