Qualifications for IT.

Umm, who exactly has an MBA and is still doing technical work??

That wasn't the question that was asked, was it? The question that was asked was how could someone in IT make their CV more attractive.

And there are MBAs and MBAs. Anyone with an MBA from Cranfield or LSE is unlikely to be in IT at all, but I know several people in IT (especially SAP reseller staff) who have MBAs from places like Sheffield Hallam and Birmingham.

There are huge areas of IT where the ability to do it technically is almost worthless (£15-£20K/year) but couple that ability with a smattering of business skills and you have the makings of a very good living in Technical Sales and Support. Knowing how to do something isn't the key - it's knowing how the customer needs it done that's the smart thing. So being able to ask the customer the right questions and analyse the problem are key skills, as are being able to train the customer to operate the system afterwards. The actual coding can be done by a keyboard monkey in India or the Ukraine, as long as the specification is written correctly.

Anyone wondering what IT skills to brush up on is not going to even make the short-list. For example if I need a specialist Pascal/Cobol/Fortran programmer, that's what I'll advertise for, and only suitable CVs will make the list. Likewise CCNA/MCSE jobs.

Selection of candidates for interview then comes down to reading between the lines - I can take a businessman and make him IT literate. It's far easier to do that than to make an IT guy into a businessman. But my ideal is all my people to have MBAs on top of their degrees or HNDs.
 
The problem you would have trying to get a 'business man' to be technical is that it is harder to teach them techinically than sales.

We had a company who came out to demo a product and instead of sending a techy they sent a sales guy. The only problem with this is that the demonstration went horribly wrong and he had no idea how to remedy it. His job title was Technical Sales and he had been using the product for over two years. Needless to say we weren't impressed and he won't be coming back for a second try.

Again when you ring up a company to buy IT equipment / software there are times you just want to speak to a techy rather than sales. I may want to know what it needs to run on, how it integrates into pre-existing environments, what we need to backup, etc. I just think its stupid to have sales people trying to be technical unless they've done the techy job for several years.



M.
 
The problem you would have trying to get a 'business man' to be technical is that it is harder to teach them techinically than sales.

That's just not true I'm afraid. You can't teach someone business instinct, but you can teach them the technical stuff. Most techies are carp salesmen. They tend to be blunt (tending on downright rude) and semi-incapable of playing nicely with others.

We had a company who came out to demo a product and instead of sending a techy they sent a sales guy. The only problem with this is that the demonstration went horribly wrong and he had no idea how to remedy it. His job title was Technical Sales and he had been using the product for over two years. Needless to say we weren't impressed and he won't be coming back for a second try.

Well, you can hardly use one bad experience of a 'technical' saleman who probably wasn't technical at all. And he hadn't been using the product at all - he'd been selling it for 2 years, which isn't *** same thing at all. That's exactly what I'm talking about - that guy's job was to fit in with you and impress you - if his demonstration went terribly wrong then he obviously went off-track somewhere, as a demonstration should show the pre-qualified customer exactly what the customer wants to see. Nothing more. He was probably trying to show off or bodge it to make it 'sort of' do something it wasn't supposed to. I've been in meetings where we all agreed beforehand that we didn't want that product (usually the one the IT Director wanted, or the MD as it was cheap) and we basically gang-raped the salesman with stupid queries and pointless feature requests that we didn't need anyway.

Again when you ring up a company to buy IT equipment / software there are times you just want to speak to a techy rather than sales. I may want to know what it needs to run on, how it integrates into pre-existing environments, what we need to backup, etc. I just think its stupid to have sales people trying to be technical unless they've done the techy job for several years.

Different market - With my products if you start of with me and my partners, you always get me or my partners on the telephone. We have 2 teams of three people - A very technical one (who wrote the product), a fairly technical one (business analyst) who links the business and technical together and an out and out salesman - the closer. In order to keep the answers as short as possible, the technical guy speaks as little as possible:D The salesman does the opening and closing spiels, the business analyst does the main proposal and technical guy adds gravitas and puts down hecklers.

We all know what platform it runs on, we always have a recommended vendor (Dell) and suggested system specification for both client and server, our product is fully compliant with all Microsoft standards back to Server 2000 (we have a Linux system too, but we don't sell many) and our standard configuration is a fully mirrored set of servers, and we don't get involved in how the customer does or doesn't back up their systems - we do our bit, and the customer does theirs.
 
That's just not true I'm afraid. You can't teach someone business instinct, but you can teach them the technical stuff. Most techies are carp salesmen. They tend to be blunt (tending on downright rude) and semi-incapable of playing nicely with others.
I disagree with that.
It maybe possible to teach a business person the lingo and a few bits and bobs, but if they arnt of the right mind set by nature, then no way are they gonna match a 'techie'. To highlight, not saying they CANT.
And your second point there is making one heck of a sweeping generalisation too.


Plus, i think that conversation is a little off track as its got nout to do with qualifications and whatnot unless im missing the point?



Whats the concencus on ITIL, CompTIA & the new MS stuff?
 
Whats the concencus on ITIL, CompTIA & the new MS stuff?

Well the CompTIA and MS stuff is obviously techy based when the ITIL is more management/process based, really does depend on what you want to do. Personally I'd see more value in the ITIL stuff. I wouldn't get hung up on the fact the MS stuff is 'new', it still basically stands for the same thing which is a cert in one of their products at the end of the day.

As I've said, I've just cancelled my MCSE course as I really see no benefit from it. I'm past the stage where having one or not having one would cost me a job imho (infact my current job 'required' one yet I do not have one) and it won't teach me anything that I need to know for this role. Plus moving away from primarily techy based roles having that will make no odds. However I do plan to go and take a couple of the MS exams that do relate to my area as it will help tie in with the ISEB stuff I want to do albeit very loosely.

ITIL and ISEB etc stuff would be worth it moving more into the management/less hands on roles.

So really what do you want to do, techy stuff or other? What you want to do should govern what you go and take.

All imho and from personal experiences of course, some people might disagree :)
 
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I disagree with that.
It maybe possible to teach a business person the lingo and a few bits and bobs, but if they arnt of the right mind set by nature, then no way are they gonna match a 'techie'. To highlight, not saying they CANT.

There is nothing hard about computers. You tell the computer what to do and it does it. As long as you know the right syntax, structure, whatever. You tell it to do it and it does it. You get books. All the books you get pretty much say the same things. Do this and the computer/switch/OS/Application will do that.

Try that with people. It doesn't work so well in a customer/supplier relationship. People have to be persuaded to do what you want them to.

And your second point there is making one heck of a sweeping generalisation too.

I have no idea how old you are, but I suspect I have about 20 years on you. I know a lot of IT people. An awful lot of IT people. Many of them have moved on from having a shirt pocket full of plastic pens in a plastic protector pouch, but a couple haven't, and in terms of who you want to go out limbo dancing with on a Friday evening, after work, very few of them make my 'must invite' list. Whereas most of the Sales and Marketing guys are trading on their looks and personalities 60 hours a week. If people don't like them, they get sacked and starve.

Plus, i think that conversation is a little off track as its got nout to do with qualifications and whatnot unless im missing the point?

It is and it's not. If you're at the bottom end of the feeding chain you're probably trying to differentiate yourself from all the other people who "work in IT". At some point you'll realise that all the guys making the big money are specialists if they are technical, or they have moved into man management. Have you noticed how many people in charge of IT departments aren't IT people? Or they used to be IT people, but they've lost touch with the technology? You may be at that point where you have to make a critical path decision - Project Management or plugging things in at the behest of a project manager.


Whats the concencus on ITIL, CompTIA & the new MS stuff?

ITIL is fine if you want to be a manager, less useful if you want to handle hardware, but I stand by my earlier point that all training is good. CompTIA is very much for the hardware/software handlers and everyone I know is just confused by why Microsoft feels the need to change the qualification structure when they had firmly established MCSE as a real, proper qualification. Everyonme knows that someone with an MCSE can run a Microsoft system, but who knows with the new structure. You really need all of it, as very few jobs allow you to specialise just in ISA or SQLServer administration - usually they want one person who can do the lot.

If you really like the project stuff, do ITIL or PrinceII. And realistically, it's self-study time I'm afraid. Lifelong learning is the only way forward in IT.
 
There is nothing hard about computers. You tell the computer what to do and it does it. As long as you know the right syntax, structure, whatever. You tell it to do it and it does it. You get books. All the books you get pretty much say the same things. Do this and the computer/switch/OS/Application will do that.
You really think its as simple as that?
What if its not in a book? What if it says exactely how it says in the book and youve put in exactely whats needed to get it working and it still doesnt do what its supposed to do. What then?;)

I know a lot of IT people. An awful lot of IT people.
Same here, and bar perhaps 5-10% of them, the rest of them you wouldnt think we're in IT unless you knew their jobs.
I still maintain that your making a big generalisation.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that point.

ITIL is fine if you want to be a manager, less useful if you want to handle hardware, but I stand by my earlier point that all training is good. CompTIA is very much for the hardware/software handlers and everyone I know is just confused by why Microsoft feels the need to change the qualification structure when they had firmly established MCSE as a real, proper qualification. Everyonme knows that someone with an MCSE can run a Microsoft system, but who knows with the new structure. You really need all of it, as very few jobs allow you to specialise just in ISA or SQLServer administration - usually they want one person who can do the lot.

If you really like the project stuff, do ITIL or PrinceII. And realistically, it's self-study time I'm afraid. Lifelong learning is the only way forward in IT.
So basically, all summed up:
Project Management/Management: Prince & ITIL.
Software: Microsoft & CompTIA
Hardware(infrastructure): Cisco.

Basically?
 
You really think its as simple as that?
What if its not in a book? What if it says exactely how it says in the book and youve put in exactely whats needed to get it working and it still doesnt do what its supposed to do. What then?;)

OK - you're still trying to argue logic, when I was arguing abstracts. The whole point is that for every person you meet;

1. There is no manual
2. Even if there was a manual, the persons disposition changes by the moment, so the contents of the manual would be largely useless anyway.

The way you read people is a skill, and it can be taught, but it's much harder than giving someone a text and asking them to get the basics of Codds Laws or Functional Decomposition, never mind literal stuff like what to press in what order to get something to do what you want.

Same here, and bar perhaps 5-10% of them, the rest of them you wouldnt think we're in IT unless you knew their jobs.
I still maintain that your making a big generalisation.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that point.

Indeed. I don't know how many companies you have worked in, but the people who work there tend to be similar. They hire people like themselves. So maybe you've been lucky so far.

So basically, all summed up:
Project Management/Management: Prince & ITIL.
Software: Microsoft & CompTIA
Hardware(infrastructure): Cisco.

Basically?

Basically. Because you're desperately trying to get this back to specifics. To get someone to tell you what to do. The world isn't digital: black or white. It's very, very grey indeed. The people who will succeed are the ones who are adaptable and flexible. None of those qualifications will do you a whit of good if you come over as an ass. That's why, from the very beginning I (and at least two others) were pushing soft skills.
 
I'm not sure if you're aware of this (I'd like to think your PC would tell you), but the last link on your signature [wii>all] attempts to download a trojan on opening. Possibly worth knowing.

trojan.jpg
 
OK - you're still trying to argue logic, when I was arguing abstracts. The whole point is that for every person you meet;

1. There is no manual
2. Even if there was a manual, the persons disposition changes by the moment, so the contents of the manual would be largely useless anyway.

The way you read people is a skill, and it can be taught, but it's much harder than giving someone a text and asking them to get the basics of Codds Laws or Functional Decomposition, never mind literal stuff like what to press in what order to get something to do what you want.
You appear to have, correct me if im wrong, the impression that IT is easy compared to everything else, specifically business.
I disagree with that for multiple reasons.
The same way you think that business cant be taught but IT can because business is a mindset/skill/instinct, i think about IT.
Its possible to know about IT without being good at it. I know plenty who have learnt IT but cant do much because they dont have that 'mindset' to problem solve for example.

Lets just agree to disagree on that point, again. :p.

That's why, from the very beginning I (and at least two others) were pushing soft skills.
Soft skills? Software?

I'm not sure if you're aware of this (I'd like to think your PC would tell you), but the last link on your signature [wii>all] attempts to download a trojan on opening. Possibly worth knowing.

http://www.walteranderson.com/Images/trojan.jpg
NOD32 doesnt complain?
Avast is over-protective and labels everything bad though. :p.
 
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You appear to have, correct me if im wrong, the impression that IT is easy compared to everything else, specifically business.
I disagree with that for multiple reasons.
The same way you think that business cant be taught but IT can because business is a mindset/skill/instinct, i think about IT.
Its possible to know about IT without being good at it. I know plenty who have learnt IT but cant do much because they dont have that 'mindset' to problem solve for example.

Lets just agree to disagree on that point, again. :p.

The fact that IT is a complete piece of urine is the best kept secret ever. IT is incredibly straightforward, assuming you are prepared to take the time to learn how to do whatever you want to do. If it was really hard, the starting salaries would be higher, because significantly fewer people would be able to do it. I'm quite happy to yield to your superior knowledge of the IT workplace, given that you appear to have taken no qualifications since you left full-time education (so your employers must be quite happy to dead-end you) and 4 years experience in 2 different roles.

When you had your last evaluation, did your employer give you any targets to aim for? Do you have an ultimate goal in life - why do you want to open a few doors? Are most of the doors you're trying shut? Oddly enough if people try to help and you resist then they tend to stop helping.

Soft skills? Software?

Soft skills are about handling people, not hardware.

NOD32 doesn't complain?
Avast is over-protective and labels everything bad though. :p.

That's why I use Avast - I'd rather have the choice of downloading a trojan or not. If NOD32 doesn't give you that choice then it's possibly not the tool for me.
 
The fact that IT is a complete piece of urine is the best kept secret ever. IT is incredibly straightforward, assuming you are prepared to take the time to learn how to do whatever you want to do. If it was really hard, the starting salaries would be higher, because significantly fewer people would be able to do it. .

Erm, perhaps if your a support/helpdesk monkey. What I do falls into the realms of IT but you got be good at programming (finding bugs in other peoples code), have a very in depth understanding of how computers/operating systems work and also understand networking/protocols in great deals. On top of that I have to publish research and speak at conferences. Client comes along and says right you got a week to try to test our codebase/systems and in that week you have to gain as much understanding about their architecture as possible. So not only do you need very good technical skills you also need good soft skills. If we fail and they get compromised then it reflects badly on the team. Starting salary in this is high as well compared to other jobs. I find it funny you tar the whole IT industry with the same brush.

I have friends who work as games programmers or doing operating system development, they work ridiculously long hours and put a hell of a lot of work in. Saying IT is easy is a disservice to the people who work the harder jobs in IT.

- Saying all that. I don't think I would go back into IT again if I could live my life again. Harsh reality is all my skills are in that area so there's not a lot of choice.
 
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The fact that IT is a complete piece of urine is the best kept secret ever. IT is incredibly straightforward, assuming you are prepared to take the time to learn how to do whatever you want to do. If it was really hard, the starting salaries would be higher, because significantly fewer people would be able to do it. I'm quite happy to yield to your superior knowledge of the IT workplace, given that you appear to have taken no qualifications since you left full-time education (so your employers must be quite happy to dead-end you) and 4 years experience in 2 different roles.
So your resorting to personal digs now? Is this part of the soft skills you go on about? ;).

As mentioned by another poster, helpdesk IT is a joke and strait forward. But generalising IT like that really does show ignorence on your part on what IT really is.

That's why I use Avast - I'd rather have the choice of downloading a trojan or not. If NOD32 doesn't give you that choice then it's possibly not the tool for me.
Why are you suddenly defensive?
Your free to pick your choice of AV, but critisising NOD32 for no aparent reason is a little daft. Considering it statistically picks up more virii than Avast, and the fact that if you knew more about IT then you'd know that not everything an AV warns about is a virus. ;)
 
Not sure if I've missed it in all the other talk, but what is it you actually want to achieve/do? Ultimately this will lead you down a particular cert path. I.e. no point doing the MS Exchange track if you're not going to or don't want to touch exchange (that's jsut an example to illustrate :) )
 
Well saying IT is easy is like saying Nuclear Physics is easy. It's all easy if you know what you are doing.

When someone rings me up to say theres a problem with e-mail I should simply reply to them 'thats easy any monkey can fix that - tara' - I don't think so.

IT can be incredibly simple or extermely complex depending on the level you want to go to. Generalising IT is not possible as theres so many layers.



M.
 
That wasn't the question that was asked, was it? The question that was asked was how could someone in IT make their CV more attractive.

And there are MBAs and MBAs. Anyone with an MBA from Cranfield or LSE is unlikely to be in IT at all, but I know several people in IT (especially SAP reseller staff) who have MBAs from places like Sheffield Hallam and Birmingham.

There are huge areas of IT where the ability to do it technically is almost worthless (£15-£20K/year) but couple that ability with a smattering of business skills and you have the makings of a very good living in Technical Sales and Support. Knowing how to do something isn't the key - it's knowing how the customer needs it done that's the smart thing. So being able to ask the customer the right questions and analyse the problem are key skills, as are being able to train the customer to operate the system afterwards. The actual coding can be done by a keyboard monkey in India or the Ukraine, as long as the specification is written correctly.

Anyone wondering what IT skills to brush up on is not going to even make the short-list. For example if I need a specialist Pascal/Cobol/Fortran programmer, that's what I'll advertise for, and only suitable CVs will make the list. Likewise CCNA/MCSE jobs.

Selection of candidates for interview then comes down to reading between the lines - I can take a businessman and make him IT literate. It's far easier to do that than to make an IT guy into a businessman. But my ideal is all my people to have MBAs on top of their degrees or HNDs.

Well you've just mixed a load of rubbish mixed with a few grains of truth.

How many of the helpdesk people I've worked with could progress to my job, maybe 1%? Real technical ability isn't teachable, enough to get by is but most people, if you taught them for 10 years couldn't do a high level technical job well.

Then again, most people in sales (particularly in IT sales) are little better, how many of them could be account managers in really high level companies. Maybe 1%?

The fact that some people are good at both is no coincidence, people who are brilliant tend to be brilliant irrespective of the discipline. They're just naturally talented and will be good at whatever you point them at.

Presently I have no intention of doing an MBA or anything similar, it would only be useful to me in a management role and right now I don't want that role. IT Director, at a decent level is probably going to pay up to 130/140k. Thats the same money I can get whoring my CCIE out to banks and a lot less stress, a contractor has to deliver a project successfully, senior management has to account for failures and mistakes which aren't always their own. Why choose a world of stress and explaining some engineers typo to the board when I can deliver a project and then forget all about it?

My point is, given the question, an MBA is a ridiculous suggestion. It's not only inappropriate for anyone who isn't relatively senior already but hugely expensive.
 
I dont know when you took the exams FrankJH or even which exam you took but my experience (I took my last exam a few months a go so it's pretty up to date) is slightly different..

The general network exam - around 2000/2001

Nowadays its not just questions but simulations as well. So you get to make AD changes, group policy changes, etc, etc, etc. These are heavily weighted as well so you normally get a lot more than 1 questions worth of points..

Glad they include simulations now - it was just multi-choice/multi answer questions when I took it

To pass an exam you need 700 or more points (basically 70%) and at the end of the exam (once you've clicked finish) you can review and leave comments / complaints about each individual question with an overall comment as well..

Glad you get the option to leave comments - where you able to go back and revise answers after clicking "next" between each question or not?(I never saw the harm in having this option myself)

Then after waiting several seconds (all the PC's they used for the exams were P2 buckets when I took the exams in Birmingham) you get your pass result..

Certainly recall the pc I took it on being ancient considering the type of course/ content lol


Business skills qualifications - MBA, Accountacy skills
People skills qualifications/Soft skills qualifications (negotiating etc.)
Train-the-Trainer qualifications

and anything that indicates you might be a team player, or a public spirited type - member of a team sports club, volunteer fireman, special constable, St. Johns Ambulance, TA/RNR/RMR/RAFR, charity work etc.

These sorts of qualifications say that you can do much more than the role you're hired for, so you will likely contribute more than others, and that you're a sociable type who can fit in and work with the existing staff. IT still attracts loners/geeks/nerds and who honestly wants to work with someone who still lives with their parents and doesn't know their own shirt-collar size because their mum buys their clothes (I'm not kidding - I interviewed a chap the other week and he didn't know what size boots and overalls he'd need because his mum bought all his clothes for him. Even though he was well dressed and suitably qualified he didn't get the job because he would have been a disaster in my organisation.

That is SO off the ballpark and in some respects degrading based on a single occurance

I cant see why any of those qualifications are necessary for IT - what has Accountancy or Art got to do with IT, so you can complete a degree is a good thing but doesnt mean either of those are any use at all surely?Negotiatiing what? Contracts for 3rd parties etc are down to managers/legal departments nothing to do with the nitty gritty of IT? Training qualifications - a little bizare to say the least

People skills of course are useful (in any office/ team job) and yes because of the "geeky" nature, maybe a little more important in IT - but to be honest in any small office (under 100) people most departments speak to most others on a daily basis for one reason or another

I had a good laugh at special constable etc etc, simply because so few people do this, it must be 1 in a million who you come across that do this kind of thing

Respect is due because you obviously hold interviews regularly - fair play and good luck to you (I would HATE to do that more than being the interviewee), but come on most of that is a load of crock

Depending on their age /experience with interviews, he may have just been flustered - although it sounds like he admitted it, which is a little embarassing I guess lol - but even so, I think yuo where a little harsh (we all have to learn somewhere), he may have had skills your interivew technique didnt highlight

Maybe I take my experiences for granted - working in Hotels and pubs probably show as much team work etc and need to muck in without really thinking about it - just think sometimes people need to get given a chance outside an interview situation to be able to prove themselves
 
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Hi.
Whats the general concensus on here regarding IT qualifications?

Ive been told multiple stories about this, some saying MS qualifications are must haves, some saying experiance is better, some saying a mix, some saying only do the MS qualifications for learning (like Exchange), some saying do the CCNA/CCNPs, some saying its only worth going upto MSCA so i can 'open a few doors' so to speak.

What do you all think?

Thanks in advance all. :).

Yeah, im kind of in the same situation currently i have done:

City and Guilds Dimploma for IT Practitioners Level 2 (Systems Support)
and
City and Guilds Advanced Diploma for IT Practitioners Level 3 (Systems Support)

Might do an MCSE

i think a mixture of experiance and qualifications i would recormend the MCSE, but thats me, but as i say, im stuck as to what to do next.
 
As other have said, I'd have a hard think about what area you want to go into - sure it's easy enough to re-skill, but (for example) there's little point in doing a full blown Sun course, knowing that you want to go into Windows...

My advice on this is, skill in an area that you feel most at home in, that way you'll learn better and enjoy it more (I did and haven't looked back)

Soft skills are important (as my boss reminds me!), at the end of the day - if you're up against an equally skilled individual and they put themselves over better, then they'll probably get the job.

As it stands, I'm a Senior Network Engineer with the following certifications:
ITIL V3 foundation
RSA SecurID Systems Engineer
CCNA
CCNP - passed last week

I don't envisage going down the Desktop support route, but I want to my CCVP to sort out my IP telephony skills...
 
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