So, for the past month or so, I've been job searching and looking for positions that either expanded my current skill set as a systems administrator or have me specialize in the business intelligence field. I've been leaning towards specialization and am happy to say that my job search has ended. I've recently accepted a position with a local BI company as a Senior Support Engineer where I'll be providing support and consulting services for their product suite which includes data mining, ETL, BI Server, OLAP, and reporting tools. In my current role I do a great deal of ETL development which helped me land the job.
A few months ago I asked for resume advice here:
http://www.techexams.net/forums/jobs-degrees/61464-not-getting-any-hits-maybe-its-my-resume.html and received a great deal of feedback that helped me tremendously in my job search. I've taken most advice from these forums very seriously and with the help of you guys, I've propelled my IT career forward and beyond what I've thought I'm capable of. Examples of this would be:
1. Because of the advice given here, I was able to finish my BS degree in IT at WGU at a much lower cost and a much faster pace than other universities.
2. I've received so much help studying for the certifications I hold, which in turn helped me land my current position (and soon to be old position) as a systems administrator.
3. I feel that I'm a much better interviewer and resume writer which has also helped in job searching.
4. I've taken advice from you guys regarding salary negotiations and have had positive results in my current position. Fortunately for the new position I didn't need to negotiate anything.
I'm now taking the advice that I've received from people such as Turgon that have stated the importance of getting into a design/consulting role and specializing your skills. Already I'm seeing the truth in this statement. As I look at all the posts from our new members, I notice that a lot of people trying to get into IT are aspiring to become one of three things: Network Administrator, Systems Administrator, or Programmer/Developer. Since most people can't hack it as a developer a majority of people getting into this industry are eying the Network/Systems admin path. Add to that the people who have been already working in those roles for many years and you basically have an over saturation of people fighting for any open positions. There also gets to be a point where I stopped caring to be a jack of all trades. I'm one of those people who wants to learn everything about anything IT related, but I realized that I'm just running in circles trying to master everything in the industry.
As much as I love babysitting servers, I'm tired of putting out fires. I find a much greater satisfaction in designing solutions for business units and watching users actually use the processes that I've developed and integrate it into their job. The pay for the new gig isn't bad either. I'm starting at 18k more than what I'm currently making which makes the transition into this specialization much easier.
In closing, I again want to thank everyone here. My advice to those reading this is to listen to the seniors on this forum. They're where they're at for a reason. Keep plugging away at those certs and gaining experience. Always be thirsty for knowledge and the rewards will come. There will be those that disagree with me, but I think that one of the keys to success is specialization.
Now I'm asking for advice from those of you in the Business Intelligence field. Anything you can tell me about this concentration that would be beneficial (or not) is much appreciated. Thanks!
