Direct-hire Network Administrator I Opportunity in Carrollton, TX
Our client is a trusted partner in technology that focuses on Business, Architectural and Organizational outcomes by aligning People, Process, Technology and Data. In addition, we provide the strategic vision and expertise needed to keep your technology investments relative and agile across 5 key tenants; Multicloud, Cyber Security, Network Modernization, Collaboration, and Enterprise Visibility. We guarantee lower operating expenses with a higher level of integration that transforms the user experience.
We are energetic, success-driven, and a team-oriented environment; focused on driving positive customer outcomes. The right candidate will be customer centric and thrive in a fast-paced, detail oriented, technology-driven environment. The role of Network Administrator I will be a technical resource focused on the implementation, maintenance, and support of our networking services. The candidate will have a general working knowledge of networks and will be expected to complete both formal and informal training sessions to continue to expand their knowledge in this field. This role will be customer facing and will require awareness and acumen when dealing with our clients since this role will include working both onsite with our customers and in our office.
Key Responsibilities:
- Participate in selection, design, and maintenance of all customer management network topologies, trouble ticketing, switch port bandwidth utilization, network/WiFi monitoring, and firewall/VPN configuration management/versioning systems
- On-call for all infrastructure support and incident resolution. Provide guidance and solutions to solve and report on any recurring issues within client and in house infrastructure
- Experience with networking and configuration of virtualized network elements such as FWs, virtual switches, etc
- Monitor and trend traffic loads on all networks across the LAN and WAN. Monitor the status of key network equipment to ensure network resource availability
- Experience with Juniper, Mist, and Palo Alto network hardware is preferred
- Attend Change Advisory Board (CAB) meeting on a weekly basis for awareness of system and infrastructure changes
- Support the Field network systems and terminal network equipment
- Work with outsourced vendors on network operations requirements
- Experience with telephony network technologies such as UCCE, are highly desired, as well as VOIP, IVR, SIP, PRI implementation and support
- Ability to work simultaneously & autonomously on several high-profile project and deliver expected outcomes is expected
- Configure, install, optimize, and support wireless networks
- Assists with Incident, Change, and Capacity management as it relates to network infrastructure
- Adhere to all company corporate guiding principles, processes, policies, standards and procedures
- Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with a sense of urgency while tracking/reporting progress with complete follow-through
- Update/produce documentation when it is found outdated/missing or required for a project
Requirements
- High School diploma or equivalent required
- Bachelors Degree in MIS, Computer Science or equivalent work experience strongly preferred
- Juniper certifications or related certification preferred
- 2-5 years networking design, installation, maintenance and documentation experience
- Previous work with wireless environment, VPN design / configuration, routers and switches
- Knowledge of protocols such as IPSEC, OSPF, BGP, DHCP, TCP/IP 802.11/WPA and MPLS
- QOS, Cisco Radius/TACACS/Okta(MFA), SNMP
- Experience managing/setup of VLANs
- Ability to lift 50 lbs.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills desired
- ITIL experience a plus
If you have this experience, feel you are a fit for this position, and are interested, please answer the questions below:
We pay for referrals, so if this opportunity is not a good match for your skills or you are not available but know someone who is, please forward this link to them.
Regards,
Gartner: IT skills shortage hobbles cloud, edge, automation growth
IT executives have plans to invest in emerging technologies despite the challenge of finding IT pros with the right training.
Gartner says the current paucity of skilled IT workers is foiling the adoption of cloud, edge computing, and automation technologies.
In its “2021-2023 Emerging Technology Roadmap” based on surveying 437 global firms, Gartner found that IT executives see the talent shortage as the most significant barrier to deploying emerging technologies, including compute infrastructure and platform services, network security, digital workplace, IT automation, and storage.
IT executives surveyed cited talent availability as the main challenge for adopting IT automation (75%) and a significant amount of digital workplace technologies (41%). Lack of talent was cited far more often than other barriers, such as implementation cost (29%) or security risk (7%), according to a statement from Yinuo Geng, research vice president at Gartner.
“The ongoing push toward remote work and the acceleration of hiring plans in 2021 has exacerbated IT-talent scarcity, especially for sourcing skills that enable cloud and edge, automation and continuous delivery,” Geng stated. “As one example, of all the IT automation technologies profiled in the survey, only 20% of them have moved ahead in the adoption cycle since 2020. The issue of talent is to blame here.”
Interest in emerging tech still strong
Even with the skills challenges, IT leaders have increased the adoption of emerging technologies to drive innovation as organizations begin to recover from the pandemic,Gartner says. Across all technology domains, 58% of respondents reported either an increase or a plan to increase emerging technology investment in 2021, compared with 29% in 2020, Gartner stated.
According to the survey,
Read more HERE
7 business skills every IT leader needs to succeed
Today’s CIO needs more than technology mastery. Long-term career success also demands a commitment to developing a set of core business skills.
The days when CIOs could glide into a long-term career based solely on their technical abilities are rapidly fading.
“It’s no longer enough for IT leaders to be tech experts,” warns Bob Hersch, a principal at Deloitte Consulting. The best-in-class CIOs of today are also business savvy, using their knowledge to embed IT as a service capability.
“This business-centric approach integrates IT into an overall business strategy,” he adds.
The best way any IT leader can augment his or her current technical knowledge — and strengthen their long-term career prospects — is by committing to acquiring the following seven essential business skills.
1. An entrepreneurial mindset
CIOs, regardless of their organization’s size, have to act like entrepreneurs, operating with speed, agility, and ever higher levels of passion, empathy, and creativity, advises Ram Nagappan, CIO at global investment firm BNY Mellon Pershing.
Disruption is the new constant. “Competition is coming from all corners of the market, with fintechs and startups moving at light speed,” Nagappan says. To meet competition head on, CIOs must think like entrepreneurs and act as agents of change. “They need to constantly think about how their business could be disrupted at any point in time and how they can creatively deploy technology to get ahead of potential disruptors and future-proof the business,” he suggests.
2. Strong leadership skills
Leadership is a core competency that paves the way to successful technology transformation. “To truly lead, you must have business acumen in addition to technical understanding,” explains Richard Cox, CIO at media conglomerate Cox Enterprises. “Our jobs are really to leverage technology to unleash the potential of the business, and you simply have to have an understanding of the business landscape in order to exploit these opportunities.”[ Looking to upgrade your career in tech? This comprehensive online course teaches you how. ]
Leadership is a combination of internal and external engagement. The problems CIOs face today are growing increasingly complex. The future is ambiguous, and answers are often not clear or simple. “The only way to navigate in … these uncharted waters, is to build an environment that allows people to bring ideas, perspectives, and input to solve problems,” Cox says. “Building teams that create aligned empowerment is more important today than ever.”
Poor IT leaders often make the mistake of setting project plans, gate reviews, and delivery dates without educating the IT team on the who, what, when, and why of how the effort will help the enterprise, says Harley Bledsoe, CIO at BBB National Programs, a nonprofit organization that oversees more than a dozen industry self-regulation programs that sets standards for business advertising and privacy practices.
“Bringing the team along on the journey as they execute on their deliverables is critical to developing an effective solution,” he explains.
Read more HERE
7 IT leadership lessons learned from COVID-19
IT leaders from HP, McAfee, Johnson Controls, and other enterprises reflect on what they learned after leading teams through a full year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, and soon after IT leaders rushed to mitigate the impact on their businesses, marshaling teams to work remotely.
CIOs boosted infrastructure capacity, shipped laptops to residences, and migrated applications small and large to software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and cloud software. Eighty-two percent of CIOs surveyed say they have implemented new technologies and IT strategies during the pandemic, according to IDG’s 2021 State of the CIO survey.
Beyond implementing new technologies at scale, CIOs embraced the mental-health hurdles associated with managing remote teams whose work-life balance has been disrupted.
“Like most organizations, the pandemic took us by surprise,” says Paul Herring, global chief innovation officer of accounting firm RSM International. “We had to adjust quickly.”
Here IT leaders reflect on what they learned from a year of leading teams during the pandemic, as well as how work will likely change going forward.
1. The way we work changed overnight
2. Collaboration evolved — but left spontaneity a little lacking
3. Product expedition became a priority
4. Automation curbed uncertainty
5. IT leaders learned to lead with empathy
6. The customer meeting flight may now be canceled
7. It may no longer matter where employees reside
Read more details HERE
7 interview mistakes that cost you key IT hires
A subpar interview process is a chief reason why IT pros turn down job offers. Here’s how your hiring team may be sabotaging its chances of landing top talent in a tight market.
If you were to call Sherlock Holmes to help you discover why top tech talent who you’ve interviewed declined your reasonable offer, he might call your mystery common. But the killer is not — as you might believe — the mercurial nature of candidates, a failure of education, or anything outside the room where the interviews happen. It’s more likely that your process or team are inadvertently undermining your own efforts.
“People blame the candidates, but the interview process is the main reason people turn down jobs,” says Barbara Bruno, author of High-Tech High-Touch Recruiting: How to Attract and Retain the Best Talent by Improving the Candidate Experience.
It could be the questions you ask, the people asking the questions, or a host of other missteps that telegraph a subtle message to candidates to move along.
I asked hiring managers, recruiters, and directors of talent what — specifically — hiring teams are doing to cost them those key hires they so desperately want.
You’re fishing with the wrong bait
Candidates end up in your interview room because they responded to your job description. That’s your bait. As with actual fishing, the bait you use has a lot to do with what you catch. You might want to check that you are targeting the right people and expectations.
“There seems to be a huge disconnect right now between traditional job requisitions — that are a laundry list of skills — and how candidates will be evaluated on the job,” Bruno says.
Bruno suggests ditching the laundry list and instead taking a hard look at what your team needs in this role. “I always ask employers, ‘Can you give me five performance objectives?’ or ‘How will the candidate be evaluated in six months?’” Bruno says.
Once they are forced to answer those questions, she finds hiring teams discover that much of their “must have” list won’t be needed in the position. Even worse? There are many more skills — like the ability to prioritize, problem solve, communicate, and ask for help — that aren’t in the job description but that anyone who hopes to succeed in the role will need to possess.
Step back from your shopping list and think instead about what success in the role would look like. Then come up with skills and experiences that would genuinely help.
Read more HERE
Measuring IT project success post-COVID—and 4 leadership lessons learned
Despite challenges, the pandemic has unearthed opportunities from both a technology and strategic standpoint and has introduced new ways to measure the business value of digitization projects.
The pandemic has had a dramatic and adverse impact on companies of all sizes and geographic locations over the course of the past several months, including lost revenue, reduction of staff and cuts in IT budgets and spending. However, as we look back, there were some positive aspects as well, and more to come as plans are put in place for a post-COVID recovery.
Most companies, for example, were able to quickly pivot to a work-from-home structure to support employee safety, sustain and even increase productivity, and for the most part keep business activities on track. The transition has been so successful that many organizations plan to keep a portion of their workforce remote for the foreseeable future, in part to provide resiliency in the face of uncertainties. Weaknesses in IT infrastructure, process, and resources also became very apparent during the pandemic, pushing many companies to reduce or eliminate legacy debt, improve security, and increase investments in cloud services.
One additional upshot of the COVID crisis is a significant increase in the pace of digital transformation activities that are rapidly changing business models and user behavior. The pandemic has not only accelerated digitization but has exponentially increased the adoption of a digital process. What we anticipated to happen in the next five years is happening now, and what we thought wouldn’t have worked in the past is now possible because of the pandemic.
Digitization becomes a must-have
The life insurance business, for example, often relies on face-to-face sales interactions. But the pandemic turned that business model on its head. While we were already working on digitizing the sales process, there were pieces that needed to be accelerated or there soon wouldn’t be a business model. For us, digitization activities moved from nice-to-have to must-have in a matter of weeks. If we can’t get data electronically, underwrite automatically, or deliver policies digitally we can’t do business in today’s world.
Since March, we have delivered in less than 30 days two key initiatives that would have taken months, if not a year, to deliver under normal circumstances. The first is an automated underwriting process that uses data to manage risk up to $3MM without requiring the invasive process of going to a client’s house to take and test blood samples. The second project allowed us to electronically deliver policies to our customers since we had a limited in-office staff who did not want to rely on ‘snail mail,’ and agents could not meet the client to deliver the policy themselves. We are now working on the third transformational initiative that was originally projected to span multiple years but will now be done in 18 months.
Read more HERE