Lessons Learned
In light of my recent job search, I have formulated the following lessons learned for surviving in the engineering/IT world...
I was caught with my pants down, but I quickly regrouped and got my crap together. Here is what I learned... your mileage may vary...
1) Keep your resume up to date... Check out sites like Resume Doctor for tips on how to write a resume. Alledgedly, the people whose job it is to review resumes look at your resume for no more than 10 seconds before it hits the trash can or recycle bin (if it's in electronic form) or the pile reserved for further consideration. So you have 10 seconds to sell yourself. Also, I lost my resume, and had to rewrite it from scratch. Not a good position to be in. Finally, everybody seems to want a resume in a Microsoft Word document these days.
2) Keep your pole in the water and always baited... I have now adopted the mindset that I an loose my job ANYDAY. I got too fat, dumb, and unhappy at IBM. It's a different IBM than the one my dad retired from. You need to be ready to jump ship at a moment's notice. It's no longer a bad thing to have lots of jobs on your resume. Companies understand that this is a more dynamic workplace than it used to be. So keep your resume out their on sites like Monster.com. I did get a few bites, and I got my new gig through Monster.com. I htink you also must adopt the mindset of being a mercenary, a gun for hire if you will.
3) Constantly be honing your skills... If you want to live and work in a certain geographical location, set up a seach agent on a site like Monster, and see what skills are in demand in that area. In the Albany/Hudson Valley/New York Tri-state area, the current hot skils tend to be database admin (especially SQL Server), Java EE, .NET, VB, C#, XML. I do see the occasional UNIX job. It seems that companies want somebody who can design a system quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. Systems level progamming skills, like I have, do not seem to be in hot demand. So I am going to work on my Java certification, and .NET skills. If I wanto just go home and swill beer, then I need to get a management gig at the mall and get out of computers.
4) Avoid Jobs in "Niche Technologies". This sort of goes along with 3. IF you become an expert in something within a company like IBM, and the skill is not used outside of IBM, you are digging a hole for yourself. I currently am in supercomputing for IBM. A few months from now, our big customers could decide that they had enough with IBM, and that they want to buy 1000 Dell computers, install Linux on them, and set them up in a cluster or grid. Now a whole bunch of systems programmers are out of work.
5) Protect Yourself From Offshoring... Our wEDnsday night dinner group discussed this. We think the jobs that will be offshored will be the coding gruntwork jobs. The people who design software systems will always be in demand here in the states. But we also think that offshoring can only work if designs are bulletproof. IF designs are poor, it will just make offshoring more inefficent. There is still something to be said aboot working face to face with people. So the real key to survival form offshoring is being a person who can go into a business, streamlines their processes and make them more efficient by the system(s) they can design.
6) Don't shy away from contracting work... Yes it's a little scary knowing that you can be let go at a moment's notice. But Yahoo finance ran a story last week, aboot how each business cycle, companies hire and keep more contractors. Rising health care costs drive this, and companies can hire contractors and not pay their benefits. I also think that you are more fluid as a contractor. You work on one job with a certain set of skills, then you can go to another job and hone another set of skills. It's much harder to do that in a company like IBM, were you are expected to climb a career ladder.
7) Be fiscally fit... You need to be able to ride out 8 months to a year of being unemployed. So put money away in an IRA or mutual fund before you upgrade your stereo. You need to be able to eat and pay rent for 6 months or more. This action point is waht hurt me the most. I am morbidly obese in terms of my fiscal fitness, but I am changing that. And knowing that you have a roof over your head and that you can eat removes mre than half the stress of being out of work. This action point is what *** I *** need to work on the most.
I was caught with my pants down, but I quickly regrouped and got my crap together. Here is what I learned... your mileage may vary...
1) Keep your resume up to date... Check out sites like Resume Doctor for tips on how to write a resume. Alledgedly, the people whose job it is to review resumes look at your resume for no more than 10 seconds before it hits the trash can or recycle bin (if it's in electronic form) or the pile reserved for further consideration. So you have 10 seconds to sell yourself. Also, I lost my resume, and had to rewrite it from scratch. Not a good position to be in. Finally, everybody seems to want a resume in a Microsoft Word document these days.
2) Keep your pole in the water and always baited... I have now adopted the mindset that I an loose my job ANYDAY. I got too fat, dumb, and unhappy at IBM. It's a different IBM than the one my dad retired from. You need to be ready to jump ship at a moment's notice. It's no longer a bad thing to have lots of jobs on your resume. Companies understand that this is a more dynamic workplace than it used to be. So keep your resume out their on sites like Monster.com. I did get a few bites, and I got my new gig through Monster.com. I htink you also must adopt the mindset of being a mercenary, a gun for hire if you will.
3) Constantly be honing your skills... If you want to live and work in a certain geographical location, set up a seach agent on a site like Monster, and see what skills are in demand in that area. In the Albany/Hudson Valley/New York Tri-state area, the current hot skils tend to be database admin (especially SQL Server), Java EE, .NET, VB, C#, XML. I do see the occasional UNIX job. It seems that companies want somebody who can design a system quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. Systems level progamming skills, like I have, do not seem to be in hot demand. So I am going to work on my Java certification, and .NET skills. If I wanto just go home and swill beer, then I need to get a management gig at the mall and get out of computers.
4) Avoid Jobs in "Niche Technologies". This sort of goes along with 3. IF you become an expert in something within a company like IBM, and the skill is not used outside of IBM, you are digging a hole for yourself. I currently am in supercomputing for IBM. A few months from now, our big customers could decide that they had enough with IBM, and that they want to buy 1000 Dell computers, install Linux on them, and set them up in a cluster or grid. Now a whole bunch of systems programmers are out of work.
5) Protect Yourself From Offshoring... Our wEDnsday night dinner group discussed this. We think the jobs that will be offshored will be the coding gruntwork jobs. The people who design software systems will always be in demand here in the states. But we also think that offshoring can only work if designs are bulletproof. IF designs are poor, it will just make offshoring more inefficent. There is still something to be said aboot working face to face with people. So the real key to survival form offshoring is being a person who can go into a business, streamlines their processes and make them more efficient by the system(s) they can design.
6) Don't shy away from contracting work... Yes it's a little scary knowing that you can be let go at a moment's notice. But Yahoo finance ran a story last week, aboot how each business cycle, companies hire and keep more contractors. Rising health care costs drive this, and companies can hire contractors and not pay their benefits. I also think that you are more fluid as a contractor. You work on one job with a certain set of skills, then you can go to another job and hone another set of skills. It's much harder to do that in a company like IBM, were you are expected to climb a career ladder.
7) Be fiscally fit... You need to be able to ride out 8 months to a year of being unemployed. So put money away in an IRA or mutual fund before you upgrade your stereo. You need to be able to eat and pay rent for 6 months or more. This action point is waht hurt me the most. I am morbidly obese in terms of my fiscal fitness, but I am changing that. And knowing that you have a roof over your head and that you can eat removes mre than half the stress of being out of work. This action point is what *** I *** need to work on the most.