Wednesday, August 5, 2009

SQL Saturday #17 – Baton Rouge Wrapup

My presentation went well at the Baton Rouge SQL Saturday with about 30 people attending. It was the early morning session, and a few people afterward told me they thought it was a good session with advice they could use.

The poll numbers were interesting, though this was a slightly different group. Only about half of the people were SQL professionals, with a number of DBAs and project managers in there along with the SQL people. Very few people knew the authors, and that’s what I expected, and I had 4 of 30 blogging, just slightly above the 10% mark I’ve seen.

In the profile poll, it was very different. I saw:

  • Myspace: 18% ( a few people used this to check on kids)
  • Facebook: 50%
  • Twitter: 35%
  • Plaxo: 8%
  • Linked In: 33%

That’s a shift, with Facebook beating out LinkedIn for the first time. Also a lot of Twitter people, though given the hurricane issues still on people’s minds, perhaps not.

I had a few questions and decided to repeat some good answers here:

Q: I have a a personal Facebook profile, what do I do about business contact friend requests?

A: My thoughts here are that you should consider a separate business Facebook profile if you get invitations from business colleagues.

Q: What about having a personal blog?

A: Definitely keep your personal life separate on a different blog. There are so many easy to use blog services for free that it makes sense to have a separate one for your non-career related beliefs, thoughts, etc. I have updated my slides to note this.

Q: Do you update your status when looking for a new job if your boss can see it.

A: It depends. I have never had issues letting my boss know that I’m not happy, and giving them specific reasons. I’ve also told them when I’m looking for a job. However I did have one senior manager that I could never have told since he would have fired me on the spot, or I think he would have.

My feeling is that you want to be open, but if you cannot, then use a recruiter and be sure that you let them know this is your issue. Let them submit your resume, maybe without a name, and have them look for you.

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