Above Technical

I’ve been involved with managing parts of projects at my current job. When development is done by an outside vendor the ability to effectively go through the project management cycle. One of the key competencies that I have is really understanding the business opportunities and risks. This helps with project initiation, where my team decides how do we solve a business problem. Actual project planning and executed by the developers, but it’s my job to monitor the project to make sure that milestones are met on time and on budget. I love project management because it really puts you in the middle of the business. You get to work with other business units and ultimately solve a business problem.

I think there will be an increase of organizations looking to 3rd party companies to handle important parts of their business. Application development is an example that has been going on for years now. If you work in the public sector, you may be dealing with subcontractors. When you deal with outside parties that have a critical role in your company’s success, you need to be able to execute projects timely and in budget. Cloud computing will also further push the need for good project managers, but that is a whole different discussion.

An interesting blog post written by Space Rogue (@spacerog) caught my eye. He provides some great insight that can definitely be useful for individuals like myself. The position that was open was not an entry level position, however a lot of the information is relevant. I will highlight some things to consider based on Space Rogue’s post.

1. Location of formal education.
2. Resume formatting
3. Application Instructions
4. Editing typos and grammar errors
5. “Applying down” – former CTO applying for a lower position

I would recommend reading Space Rogue’s post.  Give it a read, it’s definitely will be worth your time.

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive is an excellent book for anyone in any industry. This book was written by Noah  J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini. I picked up this book because of a recommendation by my mentor.

One of my favorite things about this book is the ability for them to actually quantify persuasion. If someone asks you, “How do you measure persuasion?” you would most likely shrug.

Many people would agree that persuasion is an art but this book proves that it can be a science. The book discusses 50 scientific ways to be persuasive. In other words, there are actual experiments that are done that qualify the level of persuasion for certain methodologies. Some of these tips are really subtle but make a big difference.

You’ll learn putting a post it note that says “Please read” on a document will increase readership. You will read about how mood can affect your negotiation skills. There are tons of other persuasion techniques you will attain from this book that will help you career wise. These persuasion tips may be able to get you project sponsorship for a cool project. Perhaps these techniques can convince management to give you a 10% raise.

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

men·tor [noun]

1. a wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
2. an influential senior sponsor or supporter.

A year ago I joined the InfoSec Mentors project as a mentee. The program matches mentors with mentees that are involved with information security. I was paired up with my mentor Hadi who lives in Paris. There is a 6 hour time difference between New Jersey and Paris. We meet weekly on Skype for an hour or more to discuss many different topics.

Hadi had given me advice on various topics such as, disaster recovery planning, security strategies, management persuasion and general career advice. We would also spend time discussing the latest security events and news. In the last year, I’ve been able to develop professionally and more importantly learn how to work in harmony with the business. A theme that sticks out in my head with our discussions is the idea of working across different silos and becoming in sync with the business. As technical people, we need to make sure we can resolve business problems not just technical ones.

My mentor truly acts the role as a mentor. Hadi challenges me and coaches me as any mentor should. This natural framework for our mentorship is highly effective. I’m challenged and guided to come up with answers as oppose to having the answers given to me. I think the success of this mentorship is based on three reasons

1. Hadi’s passion for coaching (sometimes he’s up past midnight to meet)
2. My desire to learn about InfoSec topics
3. Our consistency of meetings

I want to publicly thank InfoSecMentors and Hadi for giving me personal development that cannot be learned from books or in a class.

It’s been 6 months since my First Toastmasters Meeting and I wanted to just give an update. Since my first meetings I’ve given three speeches.

• Ice Breaker – a speech about my MMA fighting and my career
• Organized Speech -  a speech about crime on the internet
• Getting to the point – a speech on blogging and making money doing it

The most valuable aspect of Toastmasters is having a person evaluate and provide feedback for you. When you are giving a presentation or speaking publicly you only receive feedback on the content rather than the delivery. In TM, you get feedback on both. I was able to quickly make changes on my speaking. Here are some problems I have that I need to work on.

• Volume – I need to speak louder
• Better Eye Contact – which I’m improving
• Filler words – example: uh, um, like, so (I used so 19 times in my last speech)

Those are only some of the things I’m aware of, I know there are a lot of other aspects I need to improve on. I’ve already been able to talk more effectively in meetings and even in casual conversation. I don’t have much time between my graduate studies and work but I’ve been making time for TM and it has been the best “investment” yet.

One of the biggest problems I struggled with during job hunting was meeting the experience criteria for jobs. I’ve talked to many HR and recruiters who want many years of experience that I didn’t have (formally).

This is my opinion but I think what you do outside of work is more relevant. It shows that you’re passionate, driven and a self-starter. Think about this scenario: an interviewer asks two different individuals about their experience with enterprise networks.

1. Interviewee 1: I have 6 months of experience doing desktop support and active directory maintenance for a large organization.
2. Interviewee 2: I created a enterprise network from scratch with VMWare. I configured multiple Windows Server 2008 VMs to act as Domain Controller, DNS, IIS, MSSQL Server. I added several “client” VMs running windows XP and 7.

If I were the interviewer, I would be more impressed with the second interviewee. My thoughts would be: “Wow, here is a guy who spent hours of his own time to learn configuration and design of a Windows Environment.” I’m no hiring manager, but I’d want a self starter that’s passionate on my team.

My Hobbies & Their Relevance?

I’ve always had some sort of website project (scheme) hoping to make some profit. I once had a site that provided MIDIs for download, which was getting ~100 hits a day. I was only 13 when I created this site. That was a fun project until I quickly learned about copyright laws. A few years ago I co-founded a .com start-up, a classified website for racing parts. After a lot of money invested, it just failed due to bad market conditions. I learned many things from this failure: writing a business plan, becoming a LLC, having a business credit card made you automatically cool, managing outsourced development and market research.

This is very relevant experience if I wanted to work at a web development shop. I think it’s still relevant in any business because it shows that I’m more than just a technical person. I’ll say it a million times on this blog, knowing business is just as important.

The best social network is MySpace. It’s the only one you need to be on. It allows you to put glittery gif’s on your friend’s Wall and totally customize your page with CSS!

Okay maybe not, MySpace is on the way out which leaves the market open for many other social networks. Twitter being one of my favorite social networks.

Twitter is Awesome!

A few years ago I signed up for Twitter with the intent of following a bunch of people and spamming them with one of my blogs. I quickly figured out that doesn’t work for marketing. I figured out quickly that I could brand myself using twitter. I slowly built my Twitter empire by following people that shared similar interests. The key to Twitter success is interaction. I was able to talk to industry experts and built a reputation.

What Not To Do

• Just retweet a bunch of tweets
• Just post links
• Be annoying
• Don’t use auto-responders

Note: Be aware that everything you say on a Twitter is viewable by public.
Follow me at @JimmyVo

To follow up on my previous post, Forbes has posted a wonderful article title, “5 Things To Consider When Applying For Unpaid Internships.” It’s an excellent read! Please check it out.

During my undergraduate studies I had a nice job working for Apple Retail. I worked for Apple, it made me automatically cool right? For a part-time job it paid pretty well. The best part was telling customers I liked Windows 7.

Money or Experience?

I found an internship with a local company that was actually paid. The job was a typical IT support internship that had a wide variety of responsibilities. I actually went as far as sending in my resume and filling out an application. It seemed that this company was very interested.

A Bad Decision

In the end, I stuck with Apple because they paid me more. At that current time, I was only concerned with making money and not laying a foundation for my career. I learned a lot from Apple but being able to sell iMacs doesn’t help when trying to find an IT job.

How Did This Affect Me?

• It hurt me during salary negotiation because my lack of experience
• Didn’t qualify for some jobs because I didn’t have enough experience
• Missed the opportunity of learning many career related lessons

Now looking back on it, it’s one of the dumbest decisions I’ve made. If you’re able to get experience do it, unless you have financial constraints of course.

It’s about giving students Microsoft professional tools at no charge.

DreamSpark is a great initiative by Microsoft that gives away a lot software and other perks to college students. It doesn’t have quite the extensive software library that MSDN has but it’s more available.

In order to access MSDN, your school or professor has to enroll you into it. However with DreamSpark all you need is a .edu email address to verify that you’re a college student.

DO IT NOW

1. Go to DreamSpark.com
2. Register and sign in
3. Click Microsoft Certification Exam
4. You’ll be able to get a code that waives your exam fee

Students must redeem and take exams by June 30, 2011