career

SAP interview preparation

As discussed, the future of SAP jobs lies in more certification and business-centric training and credentials. However, regardless of whether you’re a technical or functional SAP consultant, it isn’t enough to accumulate credentials and certifications. You also need to interview well to break into SAP job, or to move into another SAP module.

To that end, here are some helpful resources to help you ace SAP interviews:

General preparation strategy for an SAP interview. There’s an important point here about what you say in your resume versus what happens in an actual interview that could save you from major interview blunders.

How to prepare for an SAP BI interview, including a list of the fundamental aspects of BI with which you need to be familiar.

How to prepare for an SAP Basis interview, including the name of a popular SAP guide that can help you prepare.

How to prepare for an SAP BW interview. Learn the one question that gets asked most frequently in SAP BW interviews.

How to prepare for an SAP CRM interview. This tip offers six sample questions, including a combination of technical and functional questions.

How to contact an SAP hiring manager after an interview. Getting the etiquette right can make the difference between getting a callback and being forgotten.

The information in these tips is designed to prepare you not only for the technical components of SAP interviews in particular modules, but to give you more general pointers for interviewing well, and for following the right etiquette when interacting with a hiring manager.

Be warned: Memorizing answers to common questions, or attempting to substitute glib responses for actual expertise, may get you an SAP job, but it won’t build your career. Instead, take the long view and build your SAP intelligence. It may take longer, but you’ll lay the foundation for a long SAP career.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

The future of SAP jobs

SAP, long the gold standard of IT employment, is feeling the global economic crisis. SAP’s growth has slowed, the company is taking cost-cutting measures and there are many frustrated SAP job seekers out in the marketplace.

On the assumption that the global economy will not recover for at least 18 months, what should SAPers — whether currently employed, or seeking a job — do? Here are some ideas culled from SearchSAP experts over the past several months:

1. Build your functional skills. In the future, low-level technical activities such as configuration will be increasingly automated, and there will be greater demand for people who understand both SAP application logic and business processes. Look into getting the BPX certification to learn more about business processes from SAP’s perspective.
2. Build your industry credentials. Getting a one-week tech certification isn’t the same as passing something like the APP test offered by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). A techie who possesses industry credentials will tend to be more employable, all else being equal.
3. Build your academic credentials. How about getting a one- or two-year MBA? For non-U.S. residents, there are plenty of credible one-year MBA programs in Europe and India, and you can always apply for a scholarship.
4. Keep building your SAP intelligence. SAP technology is constantly shifting, and you need to keep up with current trends even if you take time off to build another aspect of your professional portfolio.

These tips can help you position yourself for an SAP job, or a better SAP job, after the downturn ends.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

What to do when you can’t get an SAP job

The SAP skills shortage has been conclusively documented by research from Foote Partners and AMR Research as well as by independent consultants such as Jon Reed and Justin Burmeister. However, it is also true that a number of people who would like to work in SAP are unable to do so. One such reader wrote a particularly strong message to us that included what amounted to a death threat.. Here is an excerpt:”You are spreading lies and wrong information.

This is very serious crime, you are commiting[sic]. I know a number of my friends[sic] are SAP Ceritified[sic] and experienced in BI, Nwtweaver and Web Dynpro etc. But they are struggling. They can’t find a job. Even job agencies are surprised.”

This letter demonstrates the intensity of feeling generated by those still having trouble finding work in SAP, but it is also helpful for demonstrating how to respond to your personal SAP career search in times of adversity. Ask yourself the following five questions:

1. Have I honestly evaluated my skills? You, your friends and recruiters may not be the most objective judges of either your talent or your prospects in the workplace. Are you active on SDN and, if so, how do you compare to your peers there? If you attend SAP events on your specialties, do you feel left behind in the technical workshops? It’s painful to say, but SAP certification is not a one-time process like getting a medical degree — your skills have to be continually honed, expanded and practiced to be valuable.

2. Am I in the wrong location? The reader above writes from Sydney, Australia. Could it be that the local economy is slumping, thus impacting all IT projects? In IT, you have to be willing to follow the money, which is why so many non-native techies and business people have relocated to places like Bangalore and Shanghai over the past decade. Your home town may not always be the best place in which to find SAP work, or be recruited for SAP work, given your local economic conditions.

3. Am I in the wrong line of business? Ed Tittel, a contributor to the IT Knowledge Exchange, began his career as an anthropologist and later became an IT person specializing in writing books. IT in general, and SAP in particular, isn’t for everyone. If you aren’t enjoying your career and find yourself deeply frustrated by the feast-or-famine conditions of some kinds of IT, you might be temperamentally suited for a more stable job, such as teaching.

4. Am I networking? Some job leads don’t come from recruiters — they come from friends or acquaintances. IT can be an asocial profession, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying to expand the number and quality of your contacts. They could give you your next job.

5. Am I properly utilizing negative emotions? When Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, his reaction wasn’t to issue his coach a death threat. It was to use his failure as motivation to work harder. Later, Jordan actually thanked his high school coach for providing that motivation, without which Jordan may have remained a mediocre player rather than become an all-time great. Joblessness and underemployment can wreak havoc with your morale but, taking Jordan’s example, you should do something positive with those emotions.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

SAP introduces BPX certification: Bridging IT and business

SAP’s upcoming TechEd event in Las Vegas will see the debut of an official BPX certification. BPX, SAP’s shorthand for Business Process Expert, will officially take its place alongside SAP’s technical certifications in areas such as NetWeaver, ERP and SOA.

What does this mean for working SAP consultants and for those interested in breaking into SAP? If you’re a technical SAP expert with extensive background in a specific industry or module — such as HR or manufacturing — then getting the BPX certification will be a way to let SAP hiring managers know that you pack a double punch: All-important industry expertise as well as IT chops. Meanwhile, if you’re trying to break into SAP with a strong background in a specific industry’s business processes, your certification may open the door to future SAP consulting opportunities (although it won’t replace solid IT education or experience.

SearchSAP expert Jon Reed recently conducted a podcast (listen to it here) with SAP’s Mario Herger, who has an extensive wiki defining business process skills in the SAP context. Jon learned that, in SAP’s estimation, “Certified BPXers can be the ‘marriage counselors’ between IT and business users and help to ensure the success of IT projects.” Given the high rate of failure of IT projects, BPXers are very much needed to ensure that SAP projects go well.

For those of you who are particularly interested in business processes and SAP, be sure to look through this master list of business process workshops at TechEd, and don’t be shy about asking SAP how the BPX role can help to build out your career as an SAP consultant.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

SAP implementation/upgrade tips

Implementing or upgrading SAP can make or break not only a CIO’s career but also impact the financial position of a company. This is a major issue going into TechEd 2008, where plenty of discussion will be devoted to the finer points of ensuring a successful SAP implementation or upgrade. We looked back through the SearchSAP archive to find five particularly helpful pointers on this topic. Whether you’re a CIO, an SAP consultant, or a member of an SAP project team, studying this content will give you a leg up on understanding — and avoiding — the pitfalls while executing on the best practices.

Important points for planning an R/3 upgrade project: These 10 tips, ranging from the big picture (understanding your system landscape) to important details (dealing obsolete ABAP statements) offer a conceptual foundation for SAP R/3 upgrades.

Ten critical steps when undertaking an SAP upgrade: This high-level overview of the SAP upgrade process gives you tips on everything from how to prepare your organization to how to handle the SAP graphical user interface front-end.

SAP consulting versus SAP support for upgrades: Partners are one of the most important success factors in an SAP upgrade or implementation. This article will clue you in to the distinct services you can expect from SAP consulting and SAP support.

SAP implementation challenges, potential pitfalls: SAP end user Rosenthal USA achieved a successful SAP implementation by avoiding common pitfalls and adopting best practices. As a smaller company, Rosenthal USA offers helpful tips for negotiating with VARs and other strategies for driving down the price of an SAP implementation or upgrade.

Podcast: Run SAP and Solution Manager. Implementing or upgrading SAP is only half the battle. In order to keep your business running, and to optimize your SAP ROI, you have to learn how to run your SAP solutions in the most efficient possible. Fortunately, SAP can help you do this with the Run SAP methodology and the Solution Manager tool.

If you have follow-up questions generated by this content, don’t hesitate to leave your comments below.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

Learn SAP without spending all your money

Editor’s Note: Last month, SearchSAP Expert Axel Angeli offered his take on how to get into SAP Basis. A reader responded by asking Axel how, when SAP prices for individual Basis access start at 2,000 euros, aspiring SAP functional consultants and technology consultants in Central and Eastern Europe could afford to get into Basis. This blog post is Axel’s response, which contains valuable information for anyone who wants to learn SAP without spending too much money.

Axel Angeli: In my earlier response, I just pointed out what the official SAP price is to get the software in your hands. Of course, there are many commercial training offers out there in the market, delivered by companies who have SAP licenses and can set prices at their own discretion. [Online SAP training is also available--Editor]

Regarding pricing, you have to understand that even the consultants from Eastern countries (such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania) stream into Western Europe (mainly Germany) and work there for rates that are between 500-800 euros per day. Educated Basis consultants do not really compete with low-wage workers in Poland but offer themselves as cheaper alternatives to the local German, French and British consultants. Even in Poland, an SAP consultant gets paid 400 euros per day and more, so we have to think in price ranges of a week’s freelance tariff.

Remember that you are free to share the SAP training investment with other students. In Germany, for example, there is the DSAK (Deutsche SAP Arbeitskreis), in which over 100 members share a single SAP instance. So the individual cost for acquiring SAP licenses is negligible. Your logical path here is to find as many peers as possible, start a union that wants to learn SAP — like an “Association of Polish SAP Consultants” — and share the costs of the SAP license, hardware and administration of the system.

For a low-budget quick start, you can also try out the essentials of Basis admin by using the SAP Miniwas ABAP Trial. This is free to download and use on a single PC by a single user. It has all Basis components installed, but lacks configuration features such as choosing a database and defining your own variations of creating an instance. But, generally, it has all features built in. Check out SAP SDN’s download section to find it.

Axel Angeli, SearchSAP Expert

How to get started in SAP

The demand for SAP technology and functional consultants is near an all-time high. However, if you don’t already have an SAP job, building an SAP career remains a difficult undertaking.

SAP certification and training is one way to prepare yourself for an SAP job, but recently readers are asking us how to choose between the various options available. One way to begin is by taking two classes directly from SAP:

SAP NetWeaver is SAP’s technological foundation and the core of all SAP foundations. As such, it’s a good investment to take SAPNW and SAPTEC classes directly from SAP. SAPNW is a three-day course, offered in dozens of countries, that will introduce you not only to the NetWeaver interface and fundamentals, but also to SAP’s service-oriented architecture, exchange infrastructure (XI), portal infrastructure (PI), enterprise portal, application server, Run SAP and business intelligence (BI). Aspiring SAP consultants who take this course might find that their classmates are actual SAP end users, so there is an opportunity to network.

After taking SAPNW, sign up for SAPTEC, a three-day course that digs more deeply into the SAP NetWeaver Application Server (SAP NetWeaverAS). Perhaps the most valuable part of this course is it overview of the SAP development process, an indispensable skill in the SAP world.

Together, these courses are comparable in cost to the money third-party SAP certification providers are charging for certificates in countries such as India, and add more value to an SAP job seeker’s resume.

Once you’ve caught up on NetWeaver, whether on the basis of SAP training or self-study, don’t forget to ask us your more targeted questions about developing an SAP NetWeaver career in particular or an SAP career in general.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

Web Dynpro: A surging SAP career opportunity

SAP’s resident NetWeaver expert, Axel Angeli, has answered a flurry of reader questions lately, and one of the emerging themes is the strength of Web Dynpro as an SAP career skill. Web Dynpro lies within NetWeaver and is the programming model for Web-based business applications. Axel sees a strong market for it, even though some readers have the mistaken impression that SAP’s Business Server Pages (BSP) is going to replace Web Dynpro. However, Axel points out that learning Web Dynpro can be essential to SAP job success in NetWeaver (click on the link to see what he has to say about BSP).

There are two flavors of Web Dynpro: Web Dynpro Java and Web Dynpro ABAP. Axel has a strong preference for one of these two based on what he sees in the market, and what he considers the strategic direction of SAP. While you should read Axel’s tip to learn more, we won’t be giving anything away by reminding you that Axel was happy to see Java supporter Shai Agassi leave SAP.

If your interest is piqued in Web Dynpro, there are further actions you should take. Begin by discovering what is Web Dynpro, according to SAP itself, and learn how and where you can get training in Web Dynpro if you are interested in taking the next step. If you want to know why Axel argues that Web Dynpro for ABAP is a superior career path, read the ABAP versus Java white paper and also get the Java perspective from consultant Lynton Grice.

Finally, bear in mind that SAP’s commitment to service-oriented architecture (SOA) is further transforming the career skills required to excel in NetWeaver. Stay ahead of the curve by learning more about SAP and SOA.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

Want an SAP job? Build your SAP intelligence

The most popular SAP-related question we see is, “How do I get into SAP?” The promise of a rewarding career with the world’s largest enterprise applications company attracts a lot of interest from university graduates, IT professionals seeking to switch fields and consultants eager for recurring engagements.

There is no single answer to the question of how to get into SAP. However, if you want a long-term SAP job, one thing is for certain: you have to educate yourself about the various business and technical contexts in which SAP operates. The more you learn, the more you’ll learn which part of SAP appeals to you, or even whether SAP is right for you in the first place.

Thus, instead of being guided solely by reports of how much money you can make, build your SAP intelligence. It’s an investment that may not only get you into the SAP door but also keep paying off, as you will acquire the habit of staying up to date with SAP developments even after you get an SAP job.

An excellent resource to help you build your SAP intelligence is our back catalog of podcasts. Many of these podcasts contain valuable information, advice and direction for SAP job seekers. If you don’t have the time to listen to them immediately, download them and listen to them on a commute to work or on a plane. Podcasts offer detail and context that often can’t be provided in a short article, and will easily repay the time you put into listening to them.

Here are notable recent podcasts for SAP job seekers:

SAP and SOA: Want to know how SOA is changing the SAP careers field? Listen to SAP expert Rabi Jay explain how SOA is changing SAP’s product set and rewarding particular skills over others.

The SAP skills shortage: What it means for you. The good news for SAP job seekers is that SAP demand is higher than qualified supply. Some areas of SAP are more open than others. In this podcast, David Foote explains which SAP areas are paying the most and which areas are not as hot.

SAP explains its certification program: SAP offers three levels of certification. Learn what the levels are, why SAP thinks certification is important for hiring managers and why getting certified by SAP partners instead of by SAP may be pointless.

How can ABAP developers survive in a NetWeaver era?: ABAP is SAP’s proprietary development language, but recent moves towards SOA (particularly in NetWeaver) have offset the once-unchallengeable status of ABAP. Developers should listen to this podcast to learn how to polish their skills for the SAP jobs of tomorrow.

We hope these podcasts build your SAP intelligence! If there’s any topic you’d like to see covered in our upcoming podcasts, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

The end of IT

Everyone knows about the bottom-up pressure on in-house IT — namely, that IT outsourcing has made it cheaper and more efficient to move basic functions such as maintenance and testing outside the four walls of the enterprise. After ten years, this can’t be called a trend anymore; for enterprises, it’s now a best practice to move tactical in-house IT employees elsewhere, whether to an IT outsourcing partner or to a captive center offshore. After all, most enterprises are not in the IT business, and especially not in the tactical IT business.

There are plenty of signs that there is top-down pressure on in-house IT as well. In three separate conversations — with consultancy Sapient, and with SAP executives Zia Yusuf and Richard Probst — we’ve heard that the top tier of IT discipline is going to be changing is well. This isn’t just an abstract notion; SAP and its partners are engineering real products in such a way as to change the discipline.

The change afoot is that higher-level IT people will have to gain increasing knowledge of business processes. To put it another way, t he business-IT war is over and business won. From now on, IT will have to speak the language of business.

SAP’s products are taking on a process-centric hue, with workflows, continuous refinement, drag-and-drop modeling, and other aspects of business process management. No matter how abstruse the technology at the core of these products, they speak business language and are designed to be usable by process experts, not coders.

As cyberpunk author William Gibson famously said, the future is already here, but it isn’t widely distributed yet. When we talk to people who used to refer to ‘IT departments,’ we are beginning to hear about ‘centers of business enablement,’ ‘process competence,’ and the like instead.

To IT people: learn your code, but remember that you have to learn the language of business processes. The old-style IT department is dead.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor