Work background

Gearing Up for Annual Reviews

While not all companies’ review cycles follow the calendar closely, there’s something about saying goodbye to an old year, while getting ready for a new one that leads people to think about where they’ve been and what they’ve done on the job, as well as where they’re going (or would like to go) and what kinds of work lies ahead (or they would like to see in their futures). Whether sooner or later, if you work for a company of any size, there’s probably an annual review on your calendar some time in 2009. Here are some tips to help you get ready for that often angst-inducing periodic ritual:

1. Think carefully about your last review, then answer these questions.

• How does your recent performance compare to the period before that encounter?
• What kinds of objectives were set for the current review cycle? How have you done in meeting or exceeding them?
• What about stretch objectives? Have you made any progress there?
• What kinds of learning experiences, problem-solving adventures, or professional development have you been through since your last review that may not fit into your goals or objectives? How can you speak to these in your next review?
• What about remedial goals or objectives? If you were given areas or tasks in need of improvement, how can you demonstrate progress or more positive results, attitudes, and so forth?

2. Think about your company’s or organization’s review process, then answer these questions:

• Have you received any accolades or recognition from your manager or others within your company or organization since that last review?
• Any significant accomplishments or completions to report?
• What have you done to add, enhance, or create value for your employer?

The best way to get a positive review is to prepare for that encounter as often and as obviously as you can in the review cycle interval that precedes it. Particularly when you have areas in need of improvement or remediation, you should speak regularly with your manager about such things on your own initiative, if your manager doesn’t do so with you. Even if you don’t have problems in need of fixing, or areas where improvement is required or desirable, regular contact and conversation about review related goals, objectives, progress and accomplish is a really smart way to gear up. You should also document such encounters via e-mail, and save them in a folder, so when your review comes you can print them out and bring them with you to the review situation. It’s also a good idea to document any kinds of recognition you get for your work, and to follow up with emails on those as well (same reason: creates a compact, portable record you can use during the review process to add substance to your side of the story).

In general, preparation will really help you get more comfortable with the review process. It will also give you a better sense of how you’re doing on the job, and help you identify areas where improvement will help you and those you work with. Also, if you can show substantial signs of development, progress, and a growing skills and knowledge base, if only to yourself, you’ll have a much better indicator of when it’s time to think about moving on when you fail to get the recognition or raises you deserve.

–Ed–

PS: Having exceeded my monthly blog quota with this item (the thirteenth for December) I’m going on hiatus until after New Year’s. Happy holidays to all, and my best wishes for a safe and prosperous 2009.

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–

Check Out GoCertify.com

My colleague and long-time certification industry expert, Anne Martinez, runs a very nice Web site called GoCertify.com. There’s lots of interesting content there, not least of which is the information available through its Certifications database, as depicted in this partial screencap from that page:

I’ve used this tool myself many times over the years to slice and dice certification offerings available to the market in all kinds of ways. Ms. Martinez keeps this database reasonably current, making it an unusually good place from which to start looking for information about certifications by topic, expertise level, type (vendor-neutral vs. vendor-specfiic) and a whole lot more.

As an added bonus, check out this interesting story entitled “Five Certification Mistakes You Don’t Have to Make.” You’ll find some interesting thoughts and observations here, good enough for me to repeat the primary points by way of illustration (the ideas are hers, but the pithy paraphrases are mine):

• Don’t choose a certification just because it’s hot or in high demand.
• Don’t choose a certification because it’s easy to earn.
• Don’t assume your employer won’t help with cert costs.
• Shop around for the best certification deals
• Be sure to set–and stick to–your own certification deadlines

This is definitely one of those cases where I’m happy to let a fellow expert speak for herself, because there’s a lot of material in here I couldn’t have said better myself. Check it out!

–Ed–

How about Networking Certs? Try this survey…

The very nice folks at SearchNetworking.com get my partner, Kim Lindros, and I to update a list of network certification for them on an an annual basis. The latest incarnation is called the “Networking Certification Guide,” and was posted on August 19, 2008. Even though that’s over three months ago as I write this blog, the content you’ll find in this survey of networking related certifications remains over 95% accurate and correct. I’m not sure if that means the survey is especially good, but I can see some relationship between the uncertain state of our current economy and a relatively static IT certification landscape for as long as these “cloudy conditions” persist.

That said, IT professionals interested in taking a look at their certification options in the networking arena are bound to find this collection of items pretty interesting. Here’s what you’ll find as you take a closer look at these three alphabetized lists (by vendor or sponsor organization) of credentials:

• Cisco Certification Guide: this was assembled by the crack editing team at SearchNetworking.com, and larded liberally with quotes from Ed and other networking nabobs, but we nevertheless don’t want to take credit for somebody else’s work). You’ll find all of Cisco’s certs covered in this piece.
• Basic certifications: You’ll find 35 offerings from companies ranging from 3Com to Planet3 Wireless/CWNP here.
• Intermediate Certifications: 24 credentials from outfits such as Aruba to Sun Microsystems.
• Advanced/Expert certifications: 10 credentials from organizations ranging from Alcatel to Network General.

All in all, there are lots of good pointers and information to programs in all kinds of networking related tools and technologies here, where the notion of “something for everyone” (as least for those who work in IT) isn’t terribly far off the mark. Please check it out and use it to help with your career planning and development.

–Ed–

Looking for IT Work Over the Holidays

Given the state of the economy and a rising unemployment level, I’m sure there are plenty of IT professionals out of work and looking, as well as those who are working and just thinking about making a change. I can’t do anything to address the urgency of the search for those currently unemployed, but to those folks and prospective job-seekers I have to observe that even in the best of economic times–which we are most assuredly not enjoying at the moment–the period from Thanksgiving through the first week of January is never a truly great time to look for IT work.

To a large extent,this phenomenon is a function of the way life’s focus tends to back off from work to other things during this time of year. To some extent, it reflects a disinterest in hiring new people and then having to give them several days of mandatory vacation time more or less right away. Then, too, many budget cycles end along with the calendar year, and IT departments have either used up their headcount or are saving it for next year’s budget. No matter how you decide to explain things to yourself, the odds of landing a good new job during this time of year are rather slimmer than usual.

For those who aren’t currently work but need some cash in hand, seasonal Christmas work may offer some temporary work and income. Although you may not relish the prospect of selling computer and electronics gear, a background in IT will make you better qualified to man a station at Best Buy, Circuit City, Office Depot, department stores, and so forth where they sell computers–and often, lots of them–over the holiday season. Though traditional IT jobs may not be jumping out of the woodwork, temporary IT jobs at companies that do lots of holiday business–such as ecommerce outfits, online retailers, seasonal food or drink providers, and so forth–can often provide work through the middle of January to those with both interest and the right qualifications. Try searching for “part-time IT” in your local job boards and newspapers (CraigsList can be a great source of information on such opportunities). With a little ingenuity, you can find something to do and keep the wolf from the door while whiling your way through the holiday season.

For all parties, working or not, I also recommend using this relative downtime to work your various social networks–friends, family, school chums, former and current job colleagues, professional groups and associations to which you belong, and so on–to get the word out. Let people know you’re looking, tell them what you’re looking for, and either give them or point them to a current resume and some kind of “statement of interest” and “statement of capabilities.” Let the former tell people what you’re interested in doing, and the latter tell them what you can do, what education and certifications you hold, and what kinds of professional accomplishments you can claim.

You can also use this time of year to search out companies and organizations for which you’d like to work. Spend some time on the Web and learn as much about them as you can, and try to get a sense of what kind of position(s) you might be ready, willing, and able to fill. The more you learn about your prospective targets, the better you’ll be able to present yourself when the time comes to make your pitch and apply for a position.

Don’t just sit around twiddling your thumbs, though. With a bit of down time at your disposal, the key is to use it to make yourself a better candidate when a valid opportunity does come along. Good luck, and happy holidays!

–Ed–

Black Friday Could Be “the Bomb” for Home/Personal Computing

Hey Readers!

If you’ve been putting off a purchase of a new notebook or desktop PC, or other computing gear for home or personal use, TODAY might be the day to raid the exchequer and plunk down some of that hard-earned cash on gizmos, gadgets, or gear. In researching and contributing to an article for Tom’s Guide entitled “Shopping Guide: Black Friday and Beyond” I was forcibly reminded that the day after Thanksgiving is a great day to shop for technology (and anything else you can think of)–and seriously tempted to part with some of my own valuta on my own personal quest for faster, more productive home computing.

As I write this blog, it’s already too late to cash in on the doorbuster sales items designed to lure people into stores, often at horrific hours (midnight Thursday, 5 AM Friday, and so forth). Because most such items are on allocation and only the first handful of people who line up outside the door can cash in on such bargains, these kinds of items are mostly teasers designed to attract people’s interest and steer them toward other purchases, which may be marked down but not necessarily to the point of incredulity. Two examples: Circuit City offered a Compaq Presario C717NR notebook PC that normally costs $500-600 for $300, and Amazon.com essentially set-up an online lottery to let people bid for chances to buy items like an Asus Eee PC 900a netbook PC for $129 (normally costs $300-400). For ordinary mortals with average luck and insufficient patience to break out their sleeping bags and camp out in a parking lot for twelve or more hours before the doors open, more ordinary deals will have to do.

A surprising number of such deals are available online from well-known purveyors of goods, gear, and technology. As a holder of a Dell Preferred Account I got their “Black Friday” e-mail bright and early this morning: Inspiron Mini 9 for $300, 19″ wide screen LCD monitor for $129, and so forth and so on. Likewise, stalwart PC/component vendors such as Newegg. SuperBiiz.com, Provantage, and others, also have killer deals on systems and components, with no need to leave your comfy chair and fight for a parking place.

If you’re in the market for some high-tech computing equipment, today may be a very good day to scratch that itch, and come away with some of the best prices you’ll see this year. Check it out, and happy shopping, whether virtual or real!

The Human Side of IT: Softly Practice the Softest of Skills

As I try to broaden my personal horizons and learn how to be a better IT worker myself–so as to be better equipped to dispense advice to others–I’ve learned that this means I need to work on my people skills as and when opportunities present. Luckily for me, I’ve got a nearly five-year-old son, and am in a cross-cultural marriage (East meets West, non-tech traditional meets whacky hi-tech Pop culture and philosophy, and native speaker of English attempts to bridge the gap to a non-native speaker). That means I get lots of opportunities to work on such things, and to see how those near and dear to me occasionally struggle with their people skills as well.

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll recognize the lines “Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death…” as a clip straight from the Bene Gesserit canon (Frank Herbert’s Dune for those unfamiliar with this cant). I think this is very true, but in watching myself and my family as objectively as I can (MMV, for sure) I think that frustration could substitute for fear in that litany without altering its impact or significance, as could anger. Not surprisingly, this triumvirate often travels en masse, so that as you encounter (or feel) one of them, the others are often not far behind.

So how to deal with fear, anger and frustration? In the workplace, as in life, the secret is to do for and with others what you would like others to do with and for you. Project Management Coach Margaret Meloni, who writes a pretty useful blog on interpersonal skills for ITToolBox.com recommends that modeling good behavior is an excellent way to elicit the same kind of behavior from others. (Interestingly, in Latin “Bene Gesserit” roughly translates as “(s)he shall have behaved well”–gotta love that past perfect subjunctive–so there’s more relevance in my wild sci-fi citation than might immediately meet the eye or ear).

In her 10/14/2008 blog, “Diffuse Anger, Strengthen Relationships,” Ms. Meloni goes on further to suggest the following (I don’t usually quote at this length but it’s great advice, so here goes):

Try this recipe next time anger appears on the menu.

Take these ingredients: An open stance that shows interest; direct eye contact that builds trust; a soft and measured tone of voice and a non-threatening posture (sitting down is good). Combine all ingredients by modeling the behavior you want the angry person to exhibit.

Prevent participants from reaching the boiling point by avoiding pointing, raised voices or sarcasm.

Maintain a consistent level of respect while all ingredients are mixed and measured. Don’t give up, sometimes this recipe can be prepared quickly and other days it needs to simmer more slowly.

Serve with generous helpings of patience and enjoy a healthy professional relationship.

Exactly what she said, plus do the same when fear or frustration trot across the stage as well. Seems to work pretty well with personal/family relationships, too.

–Ed–

Write a Better Resume

I’ve gottne lots of email in response to two recent postings: Pros and Cons of Resume Posting Sites and Looking for Job Search Info: Try These “Ace IT” Books (which makes mention of Paula Moreira’s excellent ACE the IT Resume title). Most of it has been positive, thank goodness, but much of it has also reminded me that there are countless great sources of resume writing help available online and in both virtual and real classrooms as well.

In fact, those looking for input, ideas, examples, and instruction on crafting a quality resume could do a lot worse in starting such a quest than searching Google on “resume writing workshop.” Lots of useful information pops up in response to this query, including:

• lots of college sites that offer instruction, information, examples, and more. For example, try this resume workshop page at Perdue University.
• Susan Ireland Resumes free Resume Guide (a teaser for her commercial services); ditto for the Top 12 Workshops from ProvenResumeS.com.
• A Federal Résumé Guide (PDF file), designed to help applicants for technical government positions with the National Guard, turns out to be a pretty good set of guidelines and advice.
• Numerous online course offerings on resume writing, including companies such as Ed2Go, Universal Class, Cosmic Coaching, and more.
• Oodles of free resume builders, including offerings from e-resume.us, resumeimproved.com, pongoresume.com, BuildaResumeToday.com, and many others.

In short, there is no reason for me not to mention the vast array of resources available to would-be resume writers online, or to short-change the many other excellent information and service providers who ply this virtual space with quality wares and information. Dig as deeply as you like in fact, and you’ll never run out of new sites to visit or learn from.

Pros and Cons of Resume Posting Sites

If you’ve looked for a job, or even just thought about looking for a job recently, you’ve probably visited one or more of the resume posting sites on the Web. A large number of such operations exist, at the same time that more and more companies are using similar technology to field direct applications from interested parties as well. In today’s blog, I want to explore the pros and cons of using those sites that serve multiple employers (as for those that belong to a specific employer, pros and cons don’t matter: they’re now a fact of working life for anybody who wants to apply for a job nowadays).

Promising All Kinds of Pros, Delivering How Many
If you check out the hype or hyperbole that so many sites surround themselves with, there aren’t many stones that go unturned in their breathless and relentless quest to persuade you to post with them. These range from broad exposure to numerous employers, search capability by geography, job description, pay range, automatic e-mail alerts when new jobs post, plus access to job hunting advice, information, and resources to name just a few. There are even meta-sites (for example, ResumeRabbit.com) where you can upload your resume and broadcast it to over 80 different job search/resume posting Web sites.

Despite all of the aforementioned benefits, the biggest draw for these sites is that they’re convenient, relatively easy to use, and help you get the word out about your availability to a broad and geographically dispersed audience. Even with all their promises of rapid and voluminous response, be warned that your own personal results may vary as and when you use these services, and the quality of your experience will depend on how well you match the target audience and demographic that these sites seek to service.

Considerable Cons Can Pose Problems, or Cause Frustration
If you look closely at the kinds of positions that get filled through these resume posting sites, you’ll observe some interesting phenomena:

• The real action is clustered “down-market,” very much on the entry-level to mid-career side. Once you’ve put 8-10 years or more of service into IT (or whatever trade or industry you work in), opportunities become more scare and responses more sparse whether you use a resume posting site or not
• Flexibility remains the key to success: the more kinds of positions, the wider your acceptable salary range, the greater the geographic area in which you’re willing to accept a job, and so forth, the more likely it is that you’re going to generate a response. Flexibility is another quality that is relatively easier for younger, less encumbered (and experienced) workers to manifest than for older, more encumbered (and experienced) ones.
• Quantity is no substitute for quantity: just because you cover a lot of possible positions you might occupy doesn’t mean you can cut back on the quality of the materials you use to sell yourself through introduction, interview, and selection phases. You still need a strong, well-crafted resume and cover letter, and you need to be able to communicate clearly and effectively about what you can do, why you want to do it, and what appeals to you about any particular position under discussion. A foot in the door is not the same as an offer: that first foot must be followed by lots of quality information and materials to make a worthwhile offer materialize.
• Protect yourself against unwanted disclosure: If you’re currently employed, but also looking for something else, make sure you read and understand the disclosure terms for any information you share with a job site. You may not want to get too public with your resume and other information if your current employer’s recruiters or HR staff can then find you on the Web. They may do so entirely innocently in seeking to fill other positions, but you can rest assured they’ll share this news with your management once they learn about your intentions. Unless you’re ready to go public you may want to keep your postings private, and only make them available on a case-by-case basis when a particularly good match appears through your own online job search efforts.

If you keep these pros and cons in mind, you can make these sites work for you, without wasting too much of your own time, or that of prospective employers you really don’t want to hear from right now. Your consideration will not only pay off with better, more focused results, it may also pay off in the future when your situation changes and you are ready to talk to those employers.

Prepping for Cert Exams

You know that old saying: “You can never be too rich, or too thin?” Well, I think a variation on that theme applies to preparing for certification exams: “You can never be too prepared, or too ready!” To that end, I’ve compiled a bunch of advice on preparing for exams that readers may find interesting. Here’s an annotated list of some stuff to help you review the process, and make yourself as ready as possible for a certification exam when one is coming your way:

• Emmett Dulaney, another incredliby experienced and knowledgeable certification guy, has put together a nice compilation of tips at CertCities. Scroll down in this article until you get to the heading that reads “Pre-Pre-Exam Study.” There, he talks about improving basic test-taking skills, and discusses some common-sense and logic you can use to separate obvious bad/wrong answers from those worth further consideration when digging into multiple-choice (aka “multiple-guess”) questions.
• Thanks to my good buddy Will Harper at HyperLearn.com, you can get a peek at my immortal classic, “25 Tips to Pass Your Certification Exam,” whcih I first put together for CramSession.com in 2002, I think. This advice has withstood the test of time better than I expected it to when I first wrote it, and remains surprisingly relevant today. If you visit the HyperLearn page, you’ll find an addition 5-tip bonus I wrote for them to add some value to this offering.
• Back in the Coriolis era of Exam Cram, I wrote a book called IT Certification Success that went through three editions there. Que later picked it up and it went through numerous reprints there, too, though the edition never changed. You can pick this book up used for a song and although its exam details are way out of date, its basic study and test taking strategy info remains on target.
• Visit Certification Magazine and search on “tittel exam prep” there. You’ll find oodles and scads of information that includes pointers and tips on Microsoft, Sun, Linux, CompTIA, Cisco, Citrix, CheckPoint, PMI/PMP, and HP exams, among others.

The real problem with exam prep is making sure to give yourself enough time to do it right. Don’t forget to look over these various resources as you start down the preparation trail, but be sure and make yourself entirely familiar with exam content and questions before your scheduled rendezvous pops up at your friendly neighborhood testing center!

–Ed–