Steps towards that new job
Posted on | May 5, 2013 | Comments Off
Where do I start?
I get asked this question quite a bit and there are some obvious answers and not so obvious answers you need to consider. Sometimes people get a little confused with the new world of technology and social media in their job search. Social media is important to getting to where you want to land. It is important to brand yourself and take the right steps to get to where you want to be.
1. Ask yourself the question: do I enjoy large or small companies? There are pros and cons to both and you need to figure out what is best for you. This is important in that you want to determine if you want to be part of an organization that does things on a large scale and you may have to deal with more politics. In a small organization, decisions might be made quicker but you also might have more responsibility. In terms of programming, this might include gathering requirements, testing/QA, maintenance along with new development.
2. What kind of stability is important? Does the company have a good track record? Any layoffs in the past 5 years? These days some organizations will cut workforce without hardly any notice, perhaps a week and sometimes none at all.
3. Determine what else is really important to you? (salary, commute, stability, benefits?) There is a lot to consider when considering a new position. Work on large or small teams? Individual or team contributor?
4. The obvious: Are you networking? Are you staying on top of your competition? It is very important to stay in touch with your old co-workers. Where are they working, do they like where they work – do they have any openings? Stay on top of user groups or meetups in your field. There are also a lot of job search outreach programs everywhere, especially in the DFW area. Nowadays, there are plenty of opportunities to connect with peers and learn from them. If you are an expert in a certain area, consider blogging or speaking at local or national conferences to help others.
5. Personal Branding/Social Media: Do you have a blog or website? It is very important to brand yourself in several areas. Have you kept up with your LinkedIn account and is it up to date with skills, awards, recommendations? Do you have an Aboutme page? This is a free service that you can use to brand yourself and list places you can be found on the internet. If you do have a website, make sure you list your resume and any relevant information on your projects. Twitter is great to follow those in your field and find out what they are up to (Latest trends).
6. Update that resume – make sure you have your skills numerous places on the resume. Recruiters and Applicant tracking systems use tag words and key words to find you. Without the keywords and skills, you are not going to be found among the numerous applicants. Take out the header with your name/address and put it in the main section of Microsoft Word. Make sure to use Microsoft Word rather than PDF. PDF looks nice but it sometimes doesn’t get parsed in the applicant systems.
7. Keep track of the places you have applied or have interest in applying. This is very important! Make a spreadsheet on Google Docs or Excel with the apply date, name of company, title of position, and the recruiter you talked to if that occurs.
8. Follow up after you interview. Send a thank you email to the recruiter and the hiring manager. Make it brief and to the point mentioning the skills you can bring to the position. Persistence is key if you feel like you are a match for a certain position but try not to be a pest, that can be a turnoff. See if you know anyone on LinkedIn that is connected to the company of interest. As many people refer to a black hole when applying, unfortunately the internal recruiting staff usually has bad systems or are too busy to even get to the applicants. The managers are very busy behind the scenes. It’s a catch 22, they really need to fill the position but are sometimes too busy traveling or in meetings all day to make time to interview.
9. Landing: make sure you do your due diligence on the company. That might include Glasdoor.com, or finding people you know that work at the company. Are they listed on any Best Places to Work lists? What are the pros and cons? How is the industry itself doing? – are they stable, upward trending? good revenues? Make sure the benefits are in line with your needs (vacation, medical, 401K, work from home?, etc). Agree on a start date and you are ready to go!
Best of luck in your search!
Google Plus
Posted on | April 9, 2013 | Comments Off
Find People on Google-Plus
March 21, 2013 By booleanstrings
I’ve always felt that Google-Plus has a great future, since it was announced. Adding Communities was a big and positive change. A recent shift in its User Interface tells me that Google-Plus continues moving in the right direction.
Did you notice the “new” Find People function?
When selected, it provides the ability to:
Check your gmail address book against your circles
Search “for coworkers” and “for classmates”, that, in fact, offers to look for people from any workplace and from any school. This is faceted search
Import contacts from an address book (a CSV file)
Did you know that all of this people searching functionality has been there a while? The only new (visual) add-on I have noticed is graphically pointing to the number of (sort-of) friends in common; I’ve highlighted on the screenshot above.
The user interface shift doesn’t affect the explained concepts in my recorded Google-Plus presentation available at the Training Library. This people search functionality was previously buried under “finding people to include in your circles”; we explored it in-depth at the webinar. When I present the Google-Plus again, for now, I will only have to re-do the screenshots. What a fast moving target it is, Social Networks and People Search!
I am glad that this better People Search is now clearly visible. Check it out if you haven’t.
Compare this with the “old” search that has been easily visible all along:
The “old” search only offers using keywords and narrowing down to “people and pages”. (The location facet is there, but I haven’t seen it working properly.) The search weakness is a shame, since Google-Plus has well structured information about its members in the About pages, including employment, skills, places, education, and valuable for the People Sourcers links to other social profiles and sites. That, and given that the amount of information in Google-Plus is tiny, compared with the whole surface web that Google search indexes, should let Google-Plus Engineers easily provide us with multi-faceted people search. (Why has it been taking it so long?) The third party site that implemented multi-faceted search early on, FindPeopleOnPlus, it seems, ran out of steam over a year ago, and now covers only a small % of the total network population. Hopefully, the described shift in the User Interface is a sign that Google-Plus is working on solid people search functionality. Let’s keep an eye on it.
Unfortunately, selecting several people and “rolling” them to a circle is no longer available on the new page, while it’s still available on the “old” circles page. Hopefully this inconsistency in the user interface will be cleaned up soon. I prefer the way it used to be.
That’s really minor though. Google-Plus has a big and bright future.
- Irina
AgileDotNet 2013
Posted on | February 6, 2013 | Comments Off
AgileDotNet 2013 – Dallas “The Ascension” is here! Improving Enterprises in conjunction with Microsoft will, once again, bring together the world of .NET development with the world of Agile methods for an exciting experience of discovery, learning, and exchange.
We have all new tracks and fresh content for you and will also have trendy food trucks for lunch to complete the experience!
Don’t miss this 1-day packed full of fresh Agile and Microsoft technology and tools information. REGISTER NOW! At just $99.00 per person – which includes breakfast and lunch – it will sell out very fast!
Where: Addison Convention Center
When: Friday, March 1st, 2013
Time: 7:30am – 5:30pm
Register Now: http://www.agiledotnet.com
Beckoning of Lovely – 2012
Posted on | December 8, 2012 | Comments Off
Nice video for the Holidays – amy krouse rosenthal
For 2012, the Beckoning of Lovely up to Dec 21, 2012
TEDX SMU Video (in full)
Posted on | December 5, 2012 | Comments Off
Typically I will attend TEDX SMU every year (this is the 4th) but couldn’t make it this year.
Luckily, you can watch the entire day of talks right here. I am halfway through and have been inspired, great talks and great stuff to absorb in your daily life.
http://new.livestream.com/tedx/TEDxSMU2012reTHiNK
a few good ones:
Pay it Forward Foundation
Need Holiday Cash? $$ Make a referral
Posted on | November 21, 2012 | Comments Off
A few openings in .NET, Java, SCCM/Windows, UX right now…
Ask me about our new referral program. We will pay out $500 for any referrals who get placed for at least 60 days.
Referral Guidelines:
1. Referral does not already exist in our internal database.
2. Referral has not applied to one of our current open positions in the last 60 days.
3. If the candidate you refer is hired for Improving or an external client through our Networked Recruiting, you will receive a referral award of $500 (gift card) after the employee has worked for 60 days.
4. *Anyone who is not a salaried Improving Enterprises employee or relative is eligible.
5. Referral program is effective between 7/15/12 and 12/31/13 and may be extended at the discretion of Improving Enterprises.
Contract Email Administrator – (2-3 months)
Posted on | November 7, 2012 | Comments Off
Contract Email Administrators
2-3 month project for migration
Plano, Tx, onsite 40 hours per week
Start – 1st part of December
- 5+ years of experience with Enterprise Messaging Systems
- Configuring, deploying, administering and optimizing a variety of IT Servers such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Microsoft Lync.
- Very knowledgeable with Public Folders
- Has worked with Lync and migrating from OCS.
- Has integrated various other company email systems (i.e. acquisitions).
- Has worked with Archive recovery tools.
- Has extensive experience with Exchange 2010
- Knowledge for Blackberry Enterprise Server ver 5.0
- Knowledge of Active Sync devices and Mobile device management policies
- Has worked with Query based distribution lists
Q4 Hiring (article)
Posted on | September 21, 2012 | Comments Off
RECENT ARTICLE FROM NETWORLD
IT headcount expected to rise in Q4, CIOs say
Business confidence on the rise, and 9% of CIOs expect to expand IT departments in Q4
More CIOs are planning to expand their IT departments in the coming quarter than were three months ago. But compared to other professions, projected IT hiring in Q4 lags behind fields such as legal, sales and marketing, according to new data from Robert Half Technology.
In the staffing firm’s latest IT Hiring Index and Skills Report, 9% of CIOs said they plan to expand their IT departments in Q4, and 6% anticipate cutbacks. The net 3% increase in anticipated IT hiring is up two percentage points from last quarter’s survey. For Q4, the remaining 83% of CIOs polled said they’ll maintain current staffing levels.
More CIOs are planning to expand their IT departments in the coming quarter than were three months ago. But compared to other professions, projected IT hiring in Q4 lags behind fields such as legal, sales and marketing, according to new data from Robert Half Technology.
In the staffing firm’s latest IT Hiring Index and Skills Report, 9% of CIOs said they plan to expand their IT departments in Q4, and 6% anticipate cutbacks. The net 3% increase in anticipated IT hiring is up two percentage points from last quarter’s survey. For Q4, the remaining 83% of CIOs polled said they’ll maintain current staffing levels.
By industry, CIOs in the transportation sector anticipate the most hiring, with a net 15% planning to expand their IT departments.
Meanwhile, nearly all CIOs surveyed are bullish about business in the next three months: 91% expressed confidence in their companies’ prospects for growth, compared to 76% who were confident in the third quarter.
“While CIOs project a modest hiring increase in the fourth quarter, IT professionals in certain specialties, such as network administration and database management, will continue to be in strong demand,” said John Reed, senior executive director of Robert Half Technology, in a statement. “The vast majority of CIOs are confident in their firms’ growth prospects for the next quarter.”
In the bigger picture, IT lags behind in hiring expectations compared to other professional areas. The strongest field, according to Robert Half International, is sales and business development, where a net 33% of executives plan to hire talent in the upcoming quarter. Executives in the legal profession (net 29%) and advertising and marketing field (net 13%) also anticipate strong Q4 hiring.
In its larger cross-profession survey of 4,000 C-level executives and senior managers, 57% said they expect to encounter recruiting challenges in upcoming quarter.
Ann Bednarz covers IT careers, outsourcing and Internet culture for Network World. Follow Ann on Twitter at @annbednarz and check out her blog, Occupational Hazards. Her email address is abednarz@nww.com.
Local User Groups
Posted on | July 26, 2012 | Comments Off
This is a good site put together by Chris Koenig with Microsoft – Regional User Groups
Sign up for New Job Openings Email List
Posted on | July 15, 2012 | Comments Off
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Improving Enterprises
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