geek+rolling

I just sent this to a journalist who’s doing a story on recently laid off IT workers.

I’m surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing really. However, that could also be a circumstance of my employment conditions. First I feel it’s important to designate what area of expertise I focus my efforts on. I’m primarily a Systems Administrator for Windows, Mac and Unix derived systems. I deal with preliminary networking, approximating it to a CCNA, would be good policy. I also deal with end user desktop support, however, am not central to that role. I do know a fair amount of varied languages for web development and when it comes to databases, MySQL is my favor. All of these things are important because IT workers always want to know where they stand. The industry I was currently involved with was non-profit education. A music school specifically. I live in a major city (Los Angeles) which provides thousands of jobs for IT workers every year.

Because I’ve been diligent, I’ve had an opportunity to directly influence decisions related to IT in my organization. I’ve grown professionally since the dot com days. Which should be evident, if any of you study trends in enterprise technology. With the rise in Apple related hardware and software, alongside virtualization, I’ve adapted my existing foundation of knowledge, and applied it to two new kinds of system/services.

Needless to say, things have changed dramatically since 1999 and 2000. The IT industry as a whole may be getting smaller, but the reasons this time around are all too different. I definitely didn’t lose my job from a lack of projects! Technology is pervasive and an essential tool for today’s work and play. Everyone needs a  publishing scheme to give information, or a data gathering plan to take information. I won’t bore you with the pyramid economics that got companies into and surprised by this mess. But what I can tell you is to never stop learning. It’s almost like beating a dead horse, but if you’re not adapting, your not in the right line of work. That also may be what attracted me to IT in the first place. It reinvents itself more than any other industry I know. When was the last time you used a ZIP disk?

My advice to anyone recently laid off is to first update your resume. Make sure whatever proprietary hardware/software is listed by name in your resume alongside your achievements. I treat them as a keywords for searches. Next, find educational materials and study. This can be anything from books on the subject to something like lynda.com. For many of you, this should also include refreshers on subjects you think you already know. Then use simplyhired.com and dice to search the boards for keywords that can be found in your resume. Also, don’t be afraid to doctor your resume for a specific job. NEVER lie, but support your strengths in whatever areas they desire. Whatever you do, if you value your talent, don’t spam your resume everywhere. An example of this would be sending out more than 5 resumes a day. You’ll end up with tons of recruiters for staffing agency’s and unless your hard up for work you shouldn’t give precedence to. It’s better to take your time and find a great fit, if you can afford to do so. Last but not least, experiment. Now is the perfect time to find solutions for problems that suffer from a lack of innovation. Empower people to help them selfs and you’ll end up helping yourself much more.