Your first Job/ biggest screw-up

coldbug

Hello
I have been looking for entry level job for almost 2 years. I had 2 interviews, and screwed up on both. First one was at Blizzard to work as Helpdesk..wanna know how i screwed it up? IT Mgr asked me if i ever played World of Warcraft, and i said nope..i told him i play Guildwars..that was one of them..and i had to take a IT test for interview..missed some questions.
2nd interview was for Tech Support..i cant believe what i told that IT Mgr..she asked me if i like to work in a team or alone..i told her i'd rather work alone...OMG!! stupid me..she said there is nothing in this world that can be work alone (actually i wanted to correct her, but i didnt..Thomas Edison worked alone while inventing the light bulb)..but i know what she meant..i thought she was trying to see if i will need help from others all the time which most employers dont like...
i had a few phone calls from Recruiters, and they never called back...once i was offered a PC Technician position, but two months after hire, i blew up a customer's power supply. She bought it from Europe, and it had 220 v..after i have upgraded her memory..totally forgot to switch back from 110V to 220, i plugged the cord in, and BOOM! then i got fired!
later that month, i was offered as Helpdesk position at LockHeed Martin, but too bad i am not a US citizen yet...it required a US Citizenship.
Giving up is not an option for me. So, i have kept trying. Recently i am depressed, because i havnt had any interviews for over 6 months now.
I need some inspiration from you guys and girls.
So, please tell me share me your stories.
Tell me what was your first IT job..and what was it like.. how long did you have to look for your first IT job? what is the biggest screw up you have done in your IT career?
were you ever depressed for not finding a job?
Please tell me as i look forward to your all replies, and thank you so much for sharing.

Thanks.
take care

sagewalkinthere

First job: freelance web design. Basically made my own job, paid my way through college with it and bought my first car. Not bad.

Second job: Web Administrator. Learned a lot, but that wasn't the direction I wanted to go, so I started studying for some certs.

Third (current) job: Jr. IT Specialist. Lots of sysadmin stuff, dealing with PCs, servers, etc. Cool stuff, working on certs now and moving up.

Biggest mistake ever: Sending out the wrong e-mail to 8,000 people... with the wrong title too. Almost lost my job over that one, but I recovered from that mistake, and forced myself to work harder and pay more attention.

Sounds like you just need to buckle down and make yourself double check stuff and think before you speak... it's hard to do, but I've come a long way since I started making myself pay more attention and work harder. You can get out of this career rut, and get an awesome job. Good luck.

msteinhilber

First Job: Working for a ~20 store computer chain in Wisconsin. Worked up from basic part-time sales guy while in High School to branch manager.

Second (current) Job: Working for a real estate company as a jack of all trades with two other co-workers (including my boss). Get to deal with all aspects of our IT needs here (voice, data, servers, helpdesk, etc) since we are such a small shop with over 20 offices and over 1500 users.

Biggest Mistake: I haven't really had any of the potentially job threatening mistakes, just the typical duh moments here and there. I consider my biggest mistakes to be the following. First was when I started college right out of high school, and decided I could learn more on the job working my first job as a full-time person than remaining part-time and finishing my degree then. I still learned a tremendous amount, especially after I became branch manager and was able to run the store(s) I managed how I wanted and focused heavy on business to business so it was more IT related rather than the consumer stuff.

Second mistake would have been when I let the allure of making a ton of cash as branch manager keep me hanging around at that first job too long. I wasn't very happy working insanely long hours nor with the work I was doing (the retail and consumer side I didn't care for). But I finally decided the money wasn't worth it (money really can't buy happiness) and went back to school to finish up my degree and left for my second job shortly thereafter.

Mistakes happen to all of us regardless of how big or small. Sometimes, very bad consequences can occur as a direct or indirect result of the mistakes that we make. As long as you have the capacity to look at what went wrong, how it happened, and are able to come away from it with what to do or not to do the next time you face a similar situation then you are in good shape. You clearly know what happened with the examples you listed and it sounds like you have learned from them so don't let it bring you down - it happens to us all. The fact that you had been getting interviews and offers is great, it means people are interested. Just keep at it, you'll eventually get some interest - the past 6 months have been a little harder for a lot of companies so I wouldn't bring yourself down over it. Maybe post your resume here for others to look at and see if there is any advice people can offer to help make sure you stand out from the other applicants as much as possible - there are a lot more applicants these days than there probably were when you were getting some interest so that is more important.

LarryDaMan

First job: I had a few jobs as a teenager, but my first real job was when I joined the Army at almost 19.

Biggest mistake: We had two encrypted satellite WAN links and after a scheduled maintenance outage I accidentally loaded the crypto from the Eastern Pacific link into the equipment for the Western Atlantic link. Needless to say, the link stayed down. Being the stubborn person I was/am, I waited 45 minutes to check and reload the crypto because I thought I grabbed the right key. I figured it out and did not get in trouble, but 45 minutes is an eternity!!

jamesleecoleman

To be honest, I only made one mistake that could have gotten me fired because I wasn't paying attention. The forklift driver was loading onto the back of a 53' trailer while I was talking to the truck driver. She was from England and so talking with her was really interesting because she was telling me about her and her kids and the experience's that they had when they got to the United States. So while talking with her I would loose track of what went on the truck once in a while. So this ment I would have to look into the trailer to make sure I marked what was on the truck. This truck costed serious money. I'm talking about atleast 20K. After the truck, I had to an inventory of how many of this and that was on the truck. Well the truck left and after a week or two, waiting for something to be said to me, nothing happened
Other than that, I was barely at work to get in trouble for anything because I was at school. I would goto work almost everyother day and when someone asked me who did this and that, I would get to tell them "I don't know" because I wasn't there

Another mistake was me not speaking up for myself when the opportunity came because I coulda been in the computer repair shop more instead of being in the warehouse just about all the time. I did get to do some customer service and computer repair though.

Neeko

When applying for my first IT job (an internship as part of my degree), my CV made me look more knowledgable than I actually was and I was painfully sussed out at the Interview.

I had attented a CCNA 1 and 2 short course in between Uni semesters by that point but my knowledge was built up of factual snipets without any real understanding of networking concepts. I hadn't done any proper self study, nor had I taken any exams so I really didn't have the knowledge to back up 'CCNA 1 & 2 ' which I had on my CV. For example when asked why we subnet, I failed to mention to reduce broadcast domains. I just didn't have a solid understanding.

This wasn't helped by me never bothering to build a PC, or even know much about PC's because when asked what BIOS was, I froze. We had covered it at uni but being told something and then never thinking about it again is no way to retain information. Failing to answer that really looked bad. Had I bothered to do an OS install at some point in my life I would have known. Definitely the major downside of not being much of a geek. Made me question why I was even doing this if I wasn't interetsed enough to do any technical stuff away from the classroom.

This was about a 18 months ago, I was in my 2nd year at Uni and was flopping on basic questions. An eye opener and motivation to say the least. The job was for a company near the top end of the fortune 500 list, I was one of 3 being interviewed out of dozens of applicants so was gutted but it made me realise pretending I was knowledgable wasn't going to get me very far.

In terms of actual on the job mistakes, I'm still an intern and have only made one big mistake. Some servers had been set up behind some network gear for testing. Our systems guy called me to check some links on the devices and when checking I hit the power switch on the extension and turned the whole lot off. He had to travel in and rebuild the servers lol. The extension shouldn't have been exposed like it was, and the equipment shouldn't have been where it was but was still careless of me.

TXOgre

Neeko wrote: »

The extension shouldn't have been exposed like it was, and the equipment shouldn't have been where it was but was still careless of me.

You may be surprised to learn how often this is the case. It's actually novel to walk into a meticulously organized server room. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, it's just not as prevalent as it should be.

My biggest mistake was waaay back in the mid nineties when I first started in telecom as a cable monkey. I was wiring out 10,000 circuits and somehow had all of the 100 pair cables shifted over by 1 position. I didn't catch it until I got to the last cable. I fessed up immediately and spent 3 days fixing it. Fortunately everything needed to move closer to the source, so there was plenty of slack to fix the mistake without using any extra cable. Taking immediate responsibility probably saved my job. Everybody makes mistakes, it's how you deal with those mistakes that will determine your fate. I actually ended up moving up in the company pretty quick after that.

Mmartin_47

First job (current)- Working at Hewlett-Packard as a hardware depot technician and backup desktop support. No screw ups so far, been about 4 months now.

eMeS

First job - Operating various mainframe-attached IBM peripherals such as 3800 and 4245 printers, bursters and decollaters, and AIMS inserting machines in a very high-volume mainframe data center in the late 1980's.

Biggest Screw-up - Waiting too long to start my own company.

MS

Mrock4

First job- repairing PC's at 16 yrs old for a home-based PC repair biz...summer job..

Biggest screw up: Not paying attention to the config mode I was in on a foundry, thinking I was in interface but was in global config. As a result I enabled port-sec across all ports (including the trunk). I got in the work van immediately when I lost my SSH session, and power cycled the switch to restore services. That caused an entire building to lose services for a short while (was a foundry 96 port if I recall correctly..and it was full of users).

Not quite my fault, but I was working on our gear in Iraq, which consisted of a couple of APC UPS's, couple of 2600 routers, two 2950's, netscreens', etc..all into ONE plug on the wall (that was not wired to support those kind of amps). The generators powering the building shut down..when they came back on a flame shot out of the wall and left a large black mark on the wall...after warning the personnel in the building that they should have the wiring checked out because it was a fire hazard..they ignored......

....a month later a building next door to them burned down due to faulty wiring. They got their wiring checked out shortly after. You can't make this stuff up.

coldbug

I like to thank you guys for sharing the stories...please keep them coming..!!they are very interesting...and wow you guys have screwed up the big ones...i feel better now...lol

Jordus

First Job - current one, sortve. I started out a few years back as Tier 2 Desktop support (though I did a slightly more Desktop Admin type role)

A while ago I was promoted to a Systems Administrator.

Not my gaff, but a fellow employee today (with supposedly 20 years experience but he thinks Certs are worthless) bricked a brand new 3500$ switch in less than 10 minutes.

Essendon

Here's my story, I'll keep it short though. The boss at a former workplace asked me to wheel some old CPU's out from the server room (I wondered what they were doing in the server room in the first place). I took the trolley in and was loading the crap on the trolley when I saw a device hanging just by its power cord behind the machines. I didnt see it was turned on and of course I didnt know what it was and continued with what I was doing. Its power cord somehow got entangled in the last machine I lifted and it come off. I didnt worry about it at all. I wheeled out the crap to where it was supposed to go. The boss called me up some 10 minutes later and said there had been an outage. We went into the server room to see what had happened. That unplugged device turned out to be a core router. When I asked the boss if a critical device was supposed to hang behind old crap like it was, he wouldnt answer. Needless to say, I lost the job over that incident.

TravR1

Essendon wrote: »

When I asked the boss if a critical device was supposed to hang behind old crap like it was, he wouldnt answer. Needless to say, I lost the job over that incident.

I see critical devices dangling by wires all the time, that run the whole network... wait a minute, no I don't.

As for me, I'm a talking disaster. I'm really good at what I do, and work really hard but I have a problem saying things that are offensive or taken the wrong way. I don't mean to, and I have to think hard about everything I say before I say it. I just don't think the way normal people do would be my guess. It has never costed me an IT job so far, but HR people know me pretty well. It's pretty frustrating, and everyone hassles me for being so quiet all the time at work.

And to the original poster, I think everyone prefers to be left alone to do there, in IT anyway. You just need to learn to tell them kinda what they want to hear. Then we get in to the job and deal with the people aspects the best we can. Sometimes it's fun and people are pretty cool, other times I just wanna launch someone out of my cube. But in an interview you are always a people loving person and you love to deal with every single person and all of their problems no matter how ridiculous

murdatapes

I can't remember a time I messed up that bad at my first job, but the one I am at now..yes. Customer wanted a drive added to his server as a stand alone drive. So I figured I would throw the drive in and leave (which I did). Next thing you know, the server shows up on monitoring as being down. Well to make a long story short, that drive I added, the server ended up rebooting and the RAID controller thought that new drive was the boot drive. Of course it wasn't and it took out the customers data. I was supposed to add it as a separate raid 0 array to make it see it as a stand alone. Talk about nervous. Everybody does it once in a while, or maybe just a big screw up once. Don't sweat it. Just make sure you become a very detail person. It helps.

Hallucinate

I have had numerous jobs from the time I was 13 up until I joined the US Navy, but I consider the Navy my first real job. Anyways, I ended up on an aircraft carrier, and we were underway during a deployment. My job responsibilities consisted of being a sysadmin for all of our intelligence systems. The space I worked at on the ship was all classified. Numerous people on the ship would need to come into our workspace for various different reasons. When they would, it was necessary for us to "sanitize" the space by turning off the monitors of our server racks.

Well, someone buzzed our door I flicked the switch on the server rack. Whoever it was came in, did what they had to do, and left. Well, I got to turn the monitor back on and notice that it's not coming back on. I looked at it for a second and it occured to me that I actually flicked the UPS switch instead of the monitor switch.

I was young so they didn't mess with me too much, but of course I was told I'd have to be more careful. My punishment was to end up designing a cover thing for the monitor so that we can drop it over the screen instead of flicking any switches. I used a navy rack curtain + some velcro.

Naturally, I didnt get fired (it's the Navy), but I certainly learned to pay attention to detail. I havent had any other slipups since

tiersten

Hallucinate wrote: »

I looked at it for a second and it occured to me that I actually flicked the UPS switch instead of the monitor switch.

Getting images of an aircraft carrier just dead in the water with no lights because you flicked the switch and turned the whole ship off. Obviously that didn't happen but still funny to me...

Hallucinate

tiersten wrote: »

Getting images of an aircraft carrier just dead in the water with no lights because you flicked the switch and turned the whole ship off. Obviously that didn't happen but still funny to me...

Haha, it wasn't quite that bad, but I can tell you that me flicking that switch didn't go unnoticed. Our phone was ringing off the hook. I think what made it me feel even more embarassed was explaining to everyone who called why they had lost connectivity to the server. A simple "someone accidently shut it off" wasn't sufficient; everyone wanted to know who

unsupported

First job: 3rd party out sourced service desk support.

Biggest screw-up: At my first job I had been supporting Windows NT 4.0 Workstation for Dell and our team was slowly being dissolved. During the transition we also took on the Windows 95 Dell support. A woman called with a problem, I knew what I was doing, but kept running into a snag. I was running over my call time and just wanted the issue resolved, so I asked the "tech lead" (aka 16 year old kid) for help. He told me it was an easy fix, delete the C:\windows and reboot. It will automatically restore itself. To my better judgment I did what I was told (documenting the whole process). Needless to say I spent the next few hours restoring the poor woman's entire system the exact way she had it.

That place was full of morons, another tech told a woman to "check" the power supply lead to the CD-ROM by touching it to her tongue... needless to say she was shocked at the results.

Funniest story: A crazy guy called in because he needed to get the schematics for a microchip implanted into his head. The entire day we passed him around to the different call centers, the DSL/Cable support line, the video graphic support line, the pay for support software line, the networking support line... it was funny.

rsutton

My biggest screw up was accidently rebooting a file server during the middle of a business day for a fortune 500 company. I literally had people coming at me from multiple directions screaming obscenetieis.

Aldur

My biggest screw up was at my last job.

The site manager was walking around talking to engineers on the floor. We all knew her really well and she was a fun person to joke around with. Well she was letting everybody know that they increased tuition reimbursement for engineers and I made the following comment....

"Well good to hear, looks like I won't need to burn down the building"

She immediately stopped her joking and looked at me with a dead serious look and said "Tell me you were just joking because I am supposed to report something like that".

I turned bright red with embarrassment and let her know that it was only a joke and a bad one at that. She was kind enough to let it slide and nothing more then my co-workers giving me a hard time happened.

Lesson learned, there's some things you can and cannot joke around about at work....

paintb4707

coldbug: Don't take this the wrong way but I'd suggest picking up a book to help with your interviewing skills. It's a great thing for even experienced professionals to own, just to freshen up. I always read through mine before an interview. Something that lists typical interview questions and the kind of response that they'd expect to hear. Of course the idea isn't to copy the responses word for word but to teach you HOW to properly answer the questions.

Like if someone were to ask you to list your weaknesses. The objective is to be truthful when mentioning something but also show how you've turned that negative trait into a positive one. But try not to say something that would get you kicked out either, like tardiness!

You probably realized this by now but it's not to smart to say you'd prefer to work alone when you're applying for a position in a team environment! Even though I do disagree with her statement. I personally work alone as the single IT department as do many other people on here.

coldbug

paintb4707 wrote: »

You probably realized this by now but it's not to smart to say you'd prefer to work alone when you're applying for a position in a team environment! Even though I do disagree with her statement. I personally work alone as the single IT department as do many other people on here.

i agree 100% with you..there are times when you cant work with a team, and there are times when you need help from others. i totally understand that employers want a team player rather than a loner, but at the end, i will be the one who will take the blame or credit for things i do.

coldbug

unsupported wrote: »

First job: 3rd party out sourced service desk support.

Funniest story: A crazy guy called in because he needed to get the schematics for a microchip implanted into his head. The entire day we passed him around to the different call centers, the DSL/Cable support line, the video graphic support line, the pay for support software line, the networking support line... it was funny.

It is funny..dude..he might had been watching Terminator movies lately..lol..actually, implanting mircochips into his head is not something to do with IT. i think, it is for Bio-engineering profession. i know this, because there is a kid who is only 21 yrs old with 2 masters degree, 1 in Bio-Engineering and 1 in Computer Science had mentioned about it while interviewed during his PhD progress in MIT(wow..21 yrs old pursuing a PhD..i felt like a useless Windows 95 OS...lol) He is from S.Korea. i didnt know there was a major such for Bio-Engineering till this kid came to MIT.

itdaddy

funny you should ask about mistakes?

Mistake 1:
Got married at 22 and divorved at 29. Got a great son out of it..


Mistake 2:
When I was in the USAF, I wrote a fake virus program that I put on my boss's computer because he promoted an airman over me a sergeant
and the airman took all my credit for my work. The virus was just a program on bootup that circled the dos screen like a worm and got bigger and bigger and said "This machine will blow up in 30 seconds...30, 29, 28.....2..1 BOOM! hahaahhah and my boss blamed me cause I was sort of a guru back then hee hee..but I said no way must have been a virus? huh? I was on his sh it list for ever ..I left the USAF.

Mistake 3:
at 35 I got a job as a programmer in Visual basic..it sucked..after a week I
told the owner this. I was drinking coffee in their break room that was under contruction. and she was cutting down contruction workers and carpenters..well being the senstive guy that I am, I was pissed and defending my grandpa's honor who was a carpenter..then a week later
I was fired...

Bad break 4:
I am working currently for a IT manager who knows nothing about computers except how to use a mouse and how to repeat verbatim what techs and engineers say. But when you ask him details he gets pissed because he is a parot and only can repeat things but doesnt know. He is not like us who love IT like we all do..and well he makes my life hell, he is jealous all the time and well I hate my job and love my career..The more eductation I get the less I do at work.

He knows I want to work on things.more and more..when he is on vacation I get to work on and fix the equipment at work; it is great and he lets me do all the programming I want since it gives hime less work. I have built many programs that we don't have to monitor many things at work due to my programs...I am keeping them in my portfolio. I have learned a lot working there even though I am limited by him..
the outcomes of my boss limiting me are the results of me building a killer home lab. I have and am building a sweeet and spectacular home lab. It is going to and is on its way to being huge I have 20 server running and various virtual machines. I learn so much at home it is fanatstic..my next project is setting up clusterd servers (exhange/sql/IIS types) at home...I haven't had to mess with this much but I am doing it soon..and my home is a fullly function multidomain lan. And my next project is a full voip lab as well..so by my boss being a jerk, this has made me work extra hard on building a full home lab. so when I get to work I have already done it at home and perfected many things and scripts and my boss is amazed..haah I tell him it comes natuarlly; never studied..it kills him ahahaha haahaha;)

dude hang in there oh yeah one last funny blunder..you wil love this one.
mistake#?

I had 4 job interviews this last year I turned down this one job sort of..
I had 2 interviews from this company. They gave me the typical panel..
The second panel of people I ask this question of them at the end ooops!!!

" I said forgive me for asking but do any of you reallly know anything about IT other than your email program?" they didnt like that question...
I didnt get the job..but the good thing was I was right..they have not hired anyone yet. they vendor tech it out...the job they created was an impossible job I can assure you for any one person..but it was funny to see their faces when I asked that...and I could tell they were clueless. I had a job so I wasnt scared but I probably wouldnt of asked that if I was jobless. I even asked if they could bring in an IT consultant and have him ask me questions.(I was very serious) I would feel much better if they did? they didnt like that statement either..oh well.

I am still employed and almost done with my 4 year degree in computer science, and I am 42 years old. I am doing it backwards but needless to say. I have never given up. so you dont either...my friend..

I have waited 8 month and 8 interviews later before I landed the right job for the time being even though I hate my job..the job has provided me wth opportunities to solved some big problems..out of 400 credit unions, I am the only IT guy who did perfect and installation program of our financial software deploying it to all PCs (software installation will not work with this program) so I made my own working out all bugs in 2 weeks time....10 years later this big company with sotfware engineers couldnt figure it out..I can tell you they were looking to deep when it was right under their nose.all the time... but anyway...the job I hate allowed me great opportunity...life has a way of doing that...dude never give up regroup and rethink your actions and hit it again and life is a challenge to better yourself just by you asking for help says that you are a fighter! just do it man do it! Compete against yourself...that is my deal...but you are not alone not at all..
-
Robert

Forsaken_GA

I've never had a really big mistake. I've had a few small ones like jostling switch uplinks when doing cable work on the distro switches, but the monitoring alerts going off through the data center let me correct that pretty darn quick. Typo's with DNS. Little things of that sort. The biggest cardinal sin at my job is loss of data, and I'm absolutely meticulous about backing up before I make any major changes (like deleting directories, or mucking around in a database with the CLI). That's served me very well for the few times I have made mistakes, I've been able to revert any chances immediately.

Of course now that I've mentioned this, I've probably just caught Murphy's attention.

coldbug

itdaddy wrote: »

funny you should ask about mistakes?

Mistake 1:
Got married at 22 and divorved at 29. Got a great son out of it..

lol..i will never get married unless she is Jessica Alba.

M.saqib

Hi coldbug im sorry for writting irrelevant message but as im a new user so my personal messages are blocked. I want to ask you about microsoft MCP. As I read in one of your post that you are preparing for that. I wanna know that how much time is required to prepare for MCP and will it help me financially if yes then how? + will it help me in getting job after my sofyware engineering? Currently im an intermadiate student.
Thanks

edwilliamsky

1st job (after USN): C programmer for an engineering/mapping firm. Was a great entry into the industry and stayed with that company 6 years, going from programmer to project manager to systems manager to IS Director. Ended up leaving for a significant salary boost.

Biggest career mistake: Marriage. Mistake rectified by divorce.

BlackBeret

Well since someone else resurrected this thread and I found it very amusing...

First IT-ish job was installing satellite systems. First mistake was falling through the ceiling. Second mistake was drilling into the wall in someone's "add-on" office that wasn't wired properly. Whoever ran the electrical wiring didn't secure it to the base or studs, left it dangling in the wall, right where I happened to drill. The odds of that happening had to be 10000:1 but it did. Ever drill in to a hot residential wire when running cabling?

twodogs62

My biggest screw ups that I can think of now involved Water.
i did it twice.
Both involved flower vases.
1st time I did not know that I had flipped flower vase, I had crawled under desk to plug in cables.
The phone started squealing and I'm like what is that?
Then it seemed a electric socket on cubicle started smoking!!!!

My second time happened when I tossed RJ45 cable over cubicle and it almost made it, but it caught on flowers in huge vase. The next thing the vase dumped on top of a $10,000 Mac. The Mac went into a strange repeated reboot. I quickly unplugged keyboard and power. Keyboard full of water. Opened case and there was only tiny drop right on the power button. So power button was easy to dry. Then they got new keyboard and water for it to dry out. Dodged a big one there as Mac was okay.