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.

Get into the Top Ten Percent

When you start applying for jobs, and face competition from other candidates, who do you think gets the interview? Is it the middle 50%? The bottom 20%?

I bet you're thinking the top 5-10 candidates are granted interviews, which in today's world of electronic resumes, could be the top 1% based on some of the numbers I've seen from hiring managers. It's not uncommon for a single position to get 300-500 submissions.

How do you position yourself to be in the top ten percent? I have on easy way that will help you along.

Blog.

In my research over the last year, and in giving a presentation on the Modern Resume to hundreds of people, it's been fairly consistent in my audiences that about 10% of the people out there that come to these events blog as a part of their career.

And that's the 10% of people that care about their careers and are willing to work on them.

Just by doing a blog you can separate yourself from many other people. You give every potential interviewer or HR person more information, and more reasons to consider you as the top candidate instead of others.

Would you rather interview someone that has a large profile and you have an idea of how they think from forums and blogs, or someone that just sends you a two page resume summary? I've always believed that more information is better, and it helps you make better decisions.

HR people, along with managers, are getting smarter. They don't just hire based on MCSE credentials, or any others. They look beyond that, and the more comfortable they are with you as a candidate, the better image (read "brand") you present, the more likely you'll get the call back.

Now you need to write good blogs. Be simple, tackle things you know well, and have someone proofread your entries. You are showcasing communication skills, as well as knowledge, and keep that in mind.

I'm Certified, Now What?

I saw an article from Certification Magazine recently (via Trainsignal on twitter) with that title. It compared the completion of certification to that of a marathon runner. You've completed a marathon, after all the training, and now what?

I'm not sure that's a great comparison, but it does beg the question of what to do when you've completed your MCITPro, MCSE, or any other certification.

Surprisingly, I found quite a few other articles with that same title, and I thought this one from the MD Dept of Transportation was great. It talks about what companies that get certified to do business with the state should do, and it really lets you know that certification is the first step, not the last one.

Their advice?

• aggressively market
• identify possible employers
• contact them
• keep inquiring about new opportunities
• research opportunities
• network
• use resources

Is it any different for individual workers? I'd argue that it's not, and you should view a certification as the base step for moving your career forward. Whether you are coming out of college, or a twenty year veteran in your industry, the certification can add to your credentials, but it's just an addition, it isn't the ultimate goal or measure of your value.

I think certifications can help. They force you to learn something, and they help you to focus in certain areas. I'm sure there are plenty of people that just try to memorize topics and answers, but that should still help them. Whether they'll be able to apply those skills in the real world is a separate question, but they still have improved skills.

And that's what you also need to do. In addition to just marketing yourself, and showing off your certification, you also want to show that you've learned a few things. Blog and relate your studying back to your job, or to something in that area. I'd argue you should have been doing this all along, but it's never too late.

Pick up a project of some sort, even if you just duplicate some work of someone else. Show that you have picked up skills and can start to apply them. Make a point of communicating that you can apply your skills.

And if you can't do that, perhaps that's the next step for you. Learn to apply those skills and don't assume that certification will carry you along.

Public Speaking

I saw Ed McMahon's book "The Art of Public Speaking" recommended by someone recently. I forget who it was, but it was someone I respected and they were writing after his passing. So I immediately jumped over to Amazon and purchased a used copy.

It arrived recently and I'm just starting to dig in to see what I can learn. Between my own speaking efforts and being a merit badge counselor for the Boy Scouts, I think I ought to learn more about it. I'm tempted to hit a local Toastmasters meeting, though I'm not sure where I'll find the time.

You are building an online brand

With everything you do online. At least according to this blog post at ZDNet, which somewhat validates my presentation: The Modern Resume - Building Your Brand Online.

There's not a lot in the blog, other than mentioning there are some new tools that give you the ability to leverage your social profile with business cards, the Facebook vanity URLs, and more, but also new privacy controls on your Facebook account.

There are pretty good controls already on LinkedIn, and I think they're good, though I would like to see a little more granularity for sharing with co-workers/friends and a separate level for recruiters or potential interviewers.

I mention it in the talk, but it's worth repeating. Anything you post online is a part of your profile. None of them will make or break your reputation or your brand, but they add up. You don't want a lot of items that present you in a poor light. You want more things that make you look good, or at least professional for your career.

Manage your brand. It's always been something you should do, and that continues in the digital world. I'm not sure if it's more or less important, but I think you can better manage your impressions in the digital world.

Behind on Blogging

One of the things I recommend to people that are looking to get into blogging is that they write 10 posts before they publish one. That way they can see if they like writing, but also have a pipeline of content to publish. They can schedule these out, 1 a week, or 1 every 2 weeks, and then continue writing each week. This way they'll never run out of content, even if they don't have time to blog one week.

I set a goal of blogging every day at SQLServerCentral, and so far I've done a good job of blogging this year, only missing a couple days, even only a couple vacation ones!

However last week, being on vacation, I hadn't scheduled any posts, though I managed to do a few anyway. In leading up to vacation, I'd neglected to push forward, and as a result, I only had one post scheduled for this week.

So I've been working from notes, trying to turn a few of the ideas and notes I've had into posts for the rest of this week. I've gotten two scheduled, but I need to knock out 2 a day for a week or so to get caught up.

The Lowest Bar

In my Modern Resume presentation, I tried to structure it to go from easy to hard things to do in terms of branding yourself. So the order has been:

• Profiles (social networking)
• Blogging
• Authoring
• Speaking
• Volunteering
• Leadership
• Research

Actually I added research later, so that is at the end when it really is the easiest (I think) for people to do. Or maybe not. It requires some confidence in yourself to admit mistakes and ignorance, so maybe it’s not easy.

At a recent presentation I was discussing this with Andy Warren and he disagreed. He said blogging was hard for most people, that they can’t maintain it and my bias as a writer has me spending too much time on it.

I think I agree after some thought on the matter. Writing is hard for many people, and even though they recognize that it’s a skill they need to IT (writing, communicating), most people won’t do it any more than they have to.

So what is the correct order? How should I focus on them in my presentation? I think for the average guy/gal, the easiest things are likely :

Profiles (social networking)

Research

Volunteering

Leadership

Blogging

Authoring

Speaking

I’ll play with the order, but I am interested to see what others think. My view is that speaking and authoring, trying to put out a message, is still hard, but volunteering your time and knowledge, either in IT or outside, is probably easier than blogging. Even leadership, being a team lead or project lead, is probably easier for most IT people.