IT’s latest survival skill: Embracing risk

In today’s digital business world, IT has to stop playing it safe, as you can’t innovate without taking some risks. Still most IT professionals remain deeply risk-averse.

If you’ve spent your career in IT, you’ve probably gotten really good at making sure nothing goes wrong. Outages are unacceptable, even if they’re only a few seconds long. Cybersecurity is a constant worry. Success is measured in reliability and availability. Your most important skill is anticipating issues and fixing them before they occur.

There’s just one problem. In this time of rapidly changing technology and upstart industry disruptors, making risk avoidance your top priority will only help you get left behind. You can’t play it safe, because there’s no such thing as safe. In today’s digital business world, IT leaders must accept and even embrace a certain amount of uncertainty and risk. Even more challenging, they must help the people who work for them embrace it as well.

“Risk is always relative,” says Scott Buchholz, CTO of Deloitte Consulting’s government practice. “Getting out of bed in the morning and taking a shower is taking a risk. But when we talk about risk in IT, what we sometimes mean is doing things that have a higher than normal chance of failure. And the reason that’s important is that technology is changing very quickly and there are fewer and fewer people who understand all the implications. Being able to handle risk becomes increasingly important.”

Read more here

Contract Backup Administrator Opportunity in Dallas, TX

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 email to them.

Contract Backup Administrator Opportunity in Dallas, TX

POSITION SCOPE: We are seeking an experienced Backup Administrator to define, design and implement ITIL-Compliant Processes for regular backup and recovery of Windows/Intel Servers. Manage execution, monitoring, and reporting of regular backup jobs and works with systems administrators to ensure reliability and integrity of installed equipment.

Experience:

5+ years as Backup Administrator or Systems Administrator in a Windows environment

3 years experience with VMware

3 years experience with Symantec Net Backup or Tivoli Storage Manager or Commvault

Education:

BS Degree or Equivalent Experience

If you have this experience, feel you are a fit for this position, and are interested, please answer the questions below:

1) Do you have an updated Word copy of your resume?

2) What is your availability to start?

3) Are you open to a contract position?

4) What is your current salary or pay rate?

5) Are you currently eligible to work for any employer in the US?

6) When is the best time to contact you and what # can you be reached at for this opportunity?

If this opportunity is not a good match for your skills or you are not available but know someone who is, please forward this email to them as we pay referral fees for anyone you refer that we place with a client.

Regards,

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Jobs That Need Filling

Even with thousands upon thousands of experienced IT pros looking for work, many information technology executives say they are finding it difficult to find talented workers in several key areas of their organizations. Maybe they’re not trying hard enough, or maybe they’re just looking in the wrong places or maybe there exists a mismatch between available workers and the specific jobs open in today’s marketplace. IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology recently asked the following question of 1,400 IT leaders, from companies with more than 100 employees: “In which functional area is it most challenging to find skilled IT professionals?” The answer was something of a mixed bag and one that leaves many questions about the state of IT hiring.  The execs mentioned a number of specific tasks that are going begging, with spots in networking, security and help desk support taking the top spots. Only a relatively small fraction said they could find all the talent they need. Where are you experiencing problems in the job market?

View the slideshow here

See also IT Skills in Demand Now

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Management: How Your Salary Stacks Up Against Other IT Pros’

How does your current salary compare with national averages for technology occupations? It’s no secret that where you live in the country may have a big impact on what you make, but so can benefits and the cost of living in a given region. Salaries tend to be higher in the Northeast and West Coast cities, while cost of living tends to be lower in the South and Midwest. The following gallery is a clean look at 13 of the most common technology job titles and the national averages of those job titles based on years of experience from one year to 10 years and beyond. Job titles include Data Analyst, Database Administrator, Hardware Engineer, IT Analyst, Network Administrator, Network Engineer, Product Manager, Project Manager, Software Engineer, Systems Administrator, Systems Analyst, Systems Engineer and Technical Support Engineer. The data was provided by Glassdoor.com  based on a wealth of information shared anonymously by employees of major U.S. companies through Sept. 16. Glassdoor is unique in that its information on salary, benefits and views of company executives come directly from employee resources without the filter of gatekeepers.

View the slide presentation here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

Direct-hire Sr Desktop Engineer Opportunity with a Great Company in Grapevine, TX

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 as we pay referral fees for anyone you refer that we place with a client.

Location: Grapevine, TX

Sr Desktop Engineer

Required Experience

· Intimately knows the insides of Windows client platforms (XP, Win7)

· Must at least know how to script with VBScript

· Experience with a variety of client management tools in order to make educated recommendations (Ie, Antivirus, Patch Management, etc)

· Experience with OS deployment methods such as sysprep, ghosting, unattended install, etc

· Must be able to work with IT architects, support staff, server & network engineering, DBAs and developers in order to solve complex problems that span multiple disciplines as well as lead projects or architect client solutions that require support from multiple teams.

· Must know how to do basic SQL queries

Preferred Experience

· Programming experience such as with VB.NET, C#, etc

· Intermediate to Advanced SQL query experience

· Experience with MDT imaging technologies

· Experience working with locked down end points such as public facing systems (kiosks, library systems, digital signage, etc)

· Experience designing and implementing client solutions that meet regulatory requirements such as SOX, PCI, etc.

· Administration experience in products that GameStop employs today (Remoteware, BigFix, MDT, EPO/AntiVirus, Service Desk Express)

· MCSE with at least an educational knowledge of Server technologies if not working experience

If you have this experience, feel you are a fit for this position, and are interested, please answer the questions below:

1) Do you have an updated Word copy of your resume?

2) What is your availability to start?

3) Are you open to a direct-hire position?

4) What is your current salary or pay rate?

5) Are you currently eligible to work for any employer in the US?

6) When is the best time to contact you and what # can you be reached at for this opportunity?

Regards,

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

Retain Your IT Staff Through Job Rotations

As the economy slowly shows signs of improvement, an IT Job Rotation Program can help you retain your top performers.

As the economy slowly shows signs of improvement, your IT staff members will inevitably question whether they should explore new opportunities. The management challenge that we face is that IT professionals possess skills that are relatively transferrable from one industry to another, so if you’re in a hard hit industry, you have more risk in retaining your top talent as other industries improve faster. So, how do you retain your IT staff in today’s unpredictable economy?

Build a Job Rotation Program

Job rotation programs are designed to move employees from job to job within a company as a vehicle to attract, retain and motivate staff. Rotation programs give employees an opportunity to explore other careers, prevent job boredom, develop competencies, foster career growth, and improve talent in an organization. A well designed job rotation program can have a very favorable impact on job satisfaction, productivity and retention. Rotations are different from normal job openings because the job opening is created by two employees interested in moving into each other’s jobs.

Where Do You Start?

First, assemble a small, cross-functional team of individual contributors and managers to define the program. The team can help you study the topic, define specific objectives, establish the process, and make sure that whatever you eventually put in place will be an effective program. There is a lot of free information available on the internet and even consultants that specialize in the topic.

Defining Objectives

While the name of the program clearly implies its intention, it does not convey the reasons why such a program is necessary for your company. It is important that you clearly emphasize why the program is needed. Organizations put rotation programs in place to solve different objectives. The team that you assemble to build the program can help you identify and communicate the objectives of the program. Merely saying that the program will be designed to help retain employees is not sufficient because no one will understand how such a program will help retain employees. And retaining employees is a goal or an outcome, not an objective. An example of an objective of a job rotation program may be to broaden an individual’s knowledge of other functions in the IT department, which in turn will help become more valuable to the organization. In this age of doing more with less, this is a worthy objective.

Establishing a Process

After you have sufficiently studied rotation programs and are ready to design your own, carefully consider the type of process that you will need. Some companies have very informal rotation programs. In these companies, the culture itself encourages employees to move from one job to another. There may be enough natural movement that a highly structured program is not necessary – too much structure may even be viewed as an impediment in this type culture. Although, it is arguable that some amount of structure is necessary in any type of culture so that employees understand how to make a move into a different role that is right for them – and for the company.

When designing a job rotation program, consider steps such as the request process, eligibility, matching participants to opportunities, terms of rotation, timing, transition plan, and monitoring the rotation. It is best to have the program clearly documented and made available on the company’s intranet.

Measuring the Success of the Program

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut

It’s getting tough out there for IT employees facing long workdays, short tempers and limited career options.

Computerworld — The Jet Blue flight attendant’s dramatic de-planing last week says a lot about workplace frustration, a problem that may be increasing in IT.

A few days before flight attendant Steven Slater released a rear chute and exited his career with a couple of cans of beer in hand, an organization of IBM users meeting at the Share conference in Boston held an informal discussion entitled “The Mythical 40-Hour Week.”

It wasn’t a gripe session as much as a chance to share notes about what’s going in IT workplaces since the Great Recession. What emerged was an insider’s view of the frustrations building among tech workers as work days lengthen, pay remains stagnant and career growth appears thwarted.

Those taking part in the discussion asked that their names not be used so they could speak frankly.

“You don’t know how many hours you work – it’s all about getting the job done,” said one IT worker. “There are lots, lots of people in IT who are expected to work far more than a 40-hour week,” said another. Sixty hour weeks are common.

Yet another worker described bosses who expect their employees to work late into the night if need be to fix problems and then be on the job the next day at the usual time. Even vacation time is no longer sacrosanct: one person said he expects to be contacted “more than a half dozen times” during his time off.

Even if companies are getting more unpaid hours from their workers in today’s climate, the companies themselves may be getting hurt in other ways, according to the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) in Washington, D.C. The CEB conducts ongoing behavioral surveys of employee attitudes, and many of its clients are Fortune 500 firms.

The willingness of employees to “exert high levels of discretionary effort” — or put in the extra effort to get a job done — remains at low levels, the CEB found in its most recent survey, completed in the second quarter.

This willingness to put in extra effort fell from about 12% of workers in 2007 to about 4% last year. It was the lowest level in 10 years. The latest CEB survey of nearly 20,000 IT workers said that percentage had changed little and is now at 4.6%.

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171

IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Departments: Bridging the IT Generation Gap

Older generations learned tech. The younger generation lives it. Organizations that want to succeed need the skills of both.

InfoWorld — IT pros who grew up in the Baby Boom are dinosaurs who just don’t get it. Generation Y is full of Facebook-happy slackers with an exaggerated sense of entitlement. But beyond these broad generalizations lie some real differences between the generations of geeks who do tech for a living, from Boomers to Generations X, Y, and the Millennials.

“Today’s generation was born into a world where technology is about interaction, whether it’s playing video games or using social media,” says Larry Johnson, age 62, co-author with daughter Meagan (age 40) of “Generations, Inc.: From Boomers to Linksters — Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work” (Amacom, 2010). “They spent hours at it, the way I spent hours watching ‘Rin Tin Tin.’ So their brains are structured to interact with technology in an entirely different way.”

[ Looking to get the most out of your IT investments, see InfoWorld’s “20 more IT mistakes to avoid” and “16 ways IT can do less with less” | Find out which of InfoWorld’s IT personality types best fits your tech temperament. ]

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

Software Engineers Vs. Programmers

In the US, there is no universally-recognized, formal certification process required to be a programmer. Some programmers are graduates of CIS (Computer and Information Science) programs, some are engineers and many are neither.Novell and Microsoft have tried to create proprietary certification with their CNE (Certified Network Engineer) and MCSE (Microsoft Certified System Engineer) training.

Many states have made using such titles illegal because they mislead the public on who is really an engineer.  Graduates of CNE & MCSE training are not required to have an ABET-accredited engineering degree or a PE (Professional Engineer) license so they cannot be called engineers.

This effort is in the public interest because software impacts public safety. By way of information, Ohio has rendered the MCSE and CNE titles unusable unless you are an actual engineer. Nevada also has strict engineer title laws.

The “science” of computer science has a long way to go. Few truly useful software development paradigms exist and the graduates are not adequately trained in their use or are even aware of their existence.

The professors themselves are ignorant of current software development practices and have little to offer their students in the way of helpful suggestions.

Having been a Computer Engineering professor at a large university, I can personally attest to the appalling lack of understanding of software engineering issues on the part of a few of my former colleagues.  Scary, really.

Some organizations, such as Carnegie-Mellon’s SEI (Software Engineering Institute) are combating this widespread ignorance. Local SPIN groups (Software Process Improvement Network), an outgrowth of CMU’s SEI, are also assisting in this effort.

However, as long as time-to-market issues dominate software development (rather than safety or correctness), there will be little incentive to change.

Software engineers, on the other hand, have a lot more science and technology background than do programmers or computer science majors. Because they are degreed engineers, they have the ABET-approved engineering core which includes physics, chemistry, math, thermodynamics, material science, engineering design, etc. Software engineers, at the graduate level, also learn project management and other business aspects of the software design and production process.

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

CIO’s Guide to Great IT Budgets

Some CIOs always seem to be plush with funds and have great IT Budgets. This article looks at some critical factors which influence IT Budgets.

Year on year most CIOs are facing a downward pressure on their IT spends. IT surveys in last year and year before have shown that IT spends either remained the same or increased only marginally. Even the marginal increase mainly is attributed to increasing man power costs and costs of maintenance. However some CIOs always seem to be plush with funds and have great IT Budgets. Most others who do not fall in this category attribute it to organisation’s culture (IT savy), or great boards, amazing sponsors and many other things – other than the CIOs ability to obtain the budgets. However obtaining Great IT Budgets is a skill. This article presents a few principles on how to get approvals for great budgets. (Here we take into consideration only budgets approved during normal operations of the company. In special cases such during Fund Raising, IPO, M&A – getting budgets is a different ball game).

I do not like to oversimplify things. However two important principles which lead to great IT budgets are great projects and great selling.
Great Projects

Ask any CIO and he would have at least 3 to 4 large IT projects running in parallel (and possibly on miserably low budgets). The primary reason for the low budgets is that most projects which are selected and presented to the board (or committee etc.) don’t fit the requirements of strategic projects. If you look at the IT project classification grid – where does most of your IT Budget go? Most CIOs spenGrid2d maximum amount of budgets on “support” projects (mainly because these are critical for sustaining present operations), and on “factory” projects – projects which improve efficiencies. While these two types of projects are important – these will continually face a downward pressure on budgets as these are seen as ‘necessary evil’ rather than value adding activities. Great projects are the ones which fall in the category of “Turn around” and “Strategic”. These projects hold a promise of improvement in revenue – top line and bottom lines and becoming a great differentiator spiralling companies growth.

Indentifying Strategic Projects involves number of techniques – including innovation techniques such as Systematic Inventive Thinking (which I am great admirer of), brain storming, Deep Diving, strategic workshops, etc. I will dwell into some of these topics in some of my other posts. However one thing is sure that strategic projects can rarely be identified by looking at what competition is doing.

For any CIO, it is essential to first assess where his projects lie in the above strategic grid. Once he is sure that he has a great new project which is a strategic or a turnaround project, it’s time to move on to the next step – selling the project.
Great Selling
Most CIOs / CTOs require the approval of some committee, board, or sometimes a person for their IT Budgets. It is not enough to have a great project (or line up of projects) to obtain budgets. Many times the most promising projects are shelved because lack of budgets. What the CIOs generally ignore is that however great the idea – it needs to be sold. Here I give four simple rules by which you can sell your project effectively to your board.

1. TALK BUSINESS: Start with how the project is going to improve revenues and efficiencies. Present NUMBERS. Do not go through the usual rant of business requirements, approach, specifications approach etc. No one is interested in these. Talk MONEY, talk about CUSTOMER, talk DIFFERNTIATION. Do not talk specifications.

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous