Experience, Degrees, Certifications and more
Mishra
Member Posts: 2,468 ■■■■□□□□□□
I would like to give my opinion on experience, degrees, and certifications and tell you what I really think that scores you the job. This is by all an OPINION and I know it doesn't really apply to some people but I think is important information for most. Also be aware I'm just posting quick opinions about the 3 things listed in the title of this topic.
So what should you really be focusing on no matter what position you are in the field. How do I get that job? How do I increase my salary and feel good about my job hunts?
Well I believe experience is always a key thing. However, I don't differ in opinion against most of the people on this board. Experience gets you noticed by HR and usually determines your salary price in the range of the job that is posted. Experience is most important between the degree and certifications.
Degrees are there to give you another card above the other candidate they might interview. I think degrees gets your foot in the door and also lands your management job. There are always small things that degrees get you here and there. Sometimes helps with promotions, hiring, salary, and so on. Not as important as experience.
Certifications allow you to be more respected in your skills department. Certifications are a lot like degrees in terms of their positive output on the job. I think they help your real IT skills a lot more than degrees do but when it comes to management opinion, they fare about the same.
Now on to the 3 things that I really feel are very important to job building that are not mentioned as much as they should. Interviewing skills, resume building, social networking/attitude. These are just as, if not more important, than the 3 I just went over. I just don't think this is harped enough on this board so hopefully it will help.
Interviewing skills It takes a lot of skill to be good at interviewing and it is something that every person in IT should research and study just as much as you do for a certification. First impressions count! And that is what you are giving them in an interview. However, throughout the interview the employer is going to be judging every move you make and thing you say. Some are more relaxed, some are more ****. I think the most important quote you can take to the interview is, sell yourself.
You NEED to do nothing but sell yourself in the entire interview. Before you say anything, ask yourself is this something that you should say if you wanted to sell a product. You need to be a sales guy, not an IT guy. What do sales guys do to sell a product? Well they go on and on about how good the product is and company is, they bring live demonstrations and documentation for their products, and they have many questions and huge drive to push themselves on to you. (Dont be THAT extreme, just be smart about it). You should take after that model, bring in a positive attitude and one that is ready to talk great about your skills, bring portfolios filled with things you have done, IT documents you have created, letters of recommendation, etc... Ask many questions to make it feel like you are trying to get a good feel for the company so it looks like you are trying to make it look like you are already sitting in their cubicles. Be the sales guy, I know you hate them.
Resume building Resume building is pretty tough because there are so many opinions and they differ some person to person. So the best thing to do is make it simple and very structured. It is hard to be good at writing a resume. I will not go on about how to write one, there are many topics on this board that have critiqued resumes, go read those topics and tailor your resume to the suggestions. However I don't think resume building is something that people think is very important. Most people think that they can get buy with just simply putting 10 years of experience and 15 certifications on paper. I think this is completely wrong.
HR is the one who has to go through all kinds of papers in order to find your resume (this probably isn't that true anymore
. You need to be levels above everyone else in order to get the interview. But what people don't really think about, is that people start their first impressions simply off your resume. Lets say an employer picks 5 people out of the stack of 100 to interview. He usually picks an immediate favorite simply based off of the resumes that he has seen. So maybe 1-2 is his favorite, and 3-5 are his so/so choices. The point is to be the favorite because that follows right into the interview and makes the interview go a lot smoother, especially if you are selling yourself. So make sure you have all those resume skills down and you will be in a lot better shape!
Social Networking/Attitude Although networking hasn't showed up very much in my career (I landed 1 job because of it) I really think that it will be a big factor in my future job decisions. Starting early is the key to building your network and expanding your name. If you decided to go into a mangement job and you already knew someone at the company, then you have a much better chance at the job. Everytime that I leave a job I send out a thank you email and suggest everyone go to linkedin.com and create a profile that way I can keep in touch and they will remember my name. I collect business cards and try to get any contractors to use linkedin to expand their profiles. I really believe this will pay off in the future but I don't have a huge amount of experience with it yet.
I think attitude wraps into social networking as you don't want to make yourself known that you are a evil co-worker/boss. So please read online about tips to control those bad feelings like anger and gossip. Don't ever leave a job telling everyone "suckers" or showing up late for your last 2 weeks. Most of these things are common sense but most people don't really pay attention to it and it is VERY important. Get your name out there as a hard working, dedicated individual so you will be more respected in the future!
I hope this helps.
I'm not reviewing this so please ignore any mistakes.
So what should you really be focusing on no matter what position you are in the field. How do I get that job? How do I increase my salary and feel good about my job hunts?
Well I believe experience is always a key thing. However, I don't differ in opinion against most of the people on this board. Experience gets you noticed by HR and usually determines your salary price in the range of the job that is posted. Experience is most important between the degree and certifications.
Degrees are there to give you another card above the other candidate they might interview. I think degrees gets your foot in the door and also lands your management job. There are always small things that degrees get you here and there. Sometimes helps with promotions, hiring, salary, and so on. Not as important as experience.
Certifications allow you to be more respected in your skills department. Certifications are a lot like degrees in terms of their positive output on the job. I think they help your real IT skills a lot more than degrees do but when it comes to management opinion, they fare about the same.
Now on to the 3 things that I really feel are very important to job building that are not mentioned as much as they should. Interviewing skills, resume building, social networking/attitude. These are just as, if not more important, than the 3 I just went over. I just don't think this is harped enough on this board so hopefully it will help.
Interviewing skills It takes a lot of skill to be good at interviewing and it is something that every person in IT should research and study just as much as you do for a certification. First impressions count! And that is what you are giving them in an interview. However, throughout the interview the employer is going to be judging every move you make and thing you say. Some are more relaxed, some are more ****. I think the most important quote you can take to the interview is, sell yourself.
You NEED to do nothing but sell yourself in the entire interview. Before you say anything, ask yourself is this something that you should say if you wanted to sell a product. You need to be a sales guy, not an IT guy. What do sales guys do to sell a product? Well they go on and on about how good the product is and company is, they bring live demonstrations and documentation for their products, and they have many questions and huge drive to push themselves on to you. (Dont be THAT extreme, just be smart about it). You should take after that model, bring in a positive attitude and one that is ready to talk great about your skills, bring portfolios filled with things you have done, IT documents you have created, letters of recommendation, etc... Ask many questions to make it feel like you are trying to get a good feel for the company so it looks like you are trying to make it look like you are already sitting in their cubicles. Be the sales guy, I know you hate them.
Resume building Resume building is pretty tough because there are so many opinions and they differ some person to person. So the best thing to do is make it simple and very structured. It is hard to be good at writing a resume. I will not go on about how to write one, there are many topics on this board that have critiqued resumes, go read those topics and tailor your resume to the suggestions. However I don't think resume building is something that people think is very important. Most people think that they can get buy with just simply putting 10 years of experience and 15 certifications on paper. I think this is completely wrong.
HR is the one who has to go through all kinds of papers in order to find your resume (this probably isn't that true anymore
. You need to be levels above everyone else in order to get the interview. But what people don't really think about, is that people start their first impressions simply off your resume. Lets say an employer picks 5 people out of the stack of 100 to interview. He usually picks an immediate favorite simply based off of the resumes that he has seen. So maybe 1-2 is his favorite, and 3-5 are his so/so choices. The point is to be the favorite because that follows right into the interview and makes the interview go a lot smoother, especially if you are selling yourself. So make sure you have all those resume skills down and you will be in a lot better shape!Social Networking/Attitude Although networking hasn't showed up very much in my career (I landed 1 job because of it) I really think that it will be a big factor in my future job decisions. Starting early is the key to building your network and expanding your name. If you decided to go into a mangement job and you already knew someone at the company, then you have a much better chance at the job. Everytime that I leave a job I send out a thank you email and suggest everyone go to linkedin.com and create a profile that way I can keep in touch and they will remember my name. I collect business cards and try to get any contractors to use linkedin to expand their profiles. I really believe this will pay off in the future but I don't have a huge amount of experience with it yet.
I think attitude wraps into social networking as you don't want to make yourself known that you are a evil co-worker/boss. So please read online about tips to control those bad feelings like anger and gossip. Don't ever leave a job telling everyone "suckers" or showing up late for your last 2 weeks. Most of these things are common sense but most people don't really pay attention to it and it is VERY important. Get your name out there as a hard working, dedicated individual so you will be more respected in the future!
I hope this helps.
I'm not reviewing this so please ignore any mistakes.
Comments
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garv221
Member Posts: 1,914
I agree. Social networking is HUGE and key to a lot of jobs that do not make it to monster or advertising. A good majority of IT jobs are filled before anyone even knows about them. -
Kasor
Member Posts: 934 ■■■■□□□□□□
The education in today college didn't mean the requirement on the IT job levels. The "Supply and Demand" is not working for IT world.
We got a lot of high level programming, IT project management, Datamining, CRM/WAN positions haven't been filled. The salary is great, but just don't have people with such experience because most IT guys not train for those type of role. The Govn't IT guys with over 7 years gap on from one generation to another.Kill All Suffer T "o" ReBorn