Secrets of Getting IT jobs Software Job Interview Process Maps & Tips on Interview,Resume preparation Flowcharts

Software Career Counselling Personally talk & get guidance from an IT Professional

Many people write to me asking for guidance for their career. It becomes difficult since to guide someone we need to

Understand him/her well,
Understand what are the skillset or expertise this person has
What are the Career aspirations or Goals of the person
How can the person reach those Goals efficiently (Fast)
What should be his/her short term goals
What should be his/her immediate steps & what decisions should he/she make


People always crave to talk to someone about these things & they rarely find anyone. Its hard these days to get someone who has patience to hear about your career plans. Its even harder to get anyone who can guide you for a better career.

More than emails talking to a professional in person can make a big difference & if that professional can give some solid tips thats invaluable. Many of my blog readers email me asking to play such a role but due to personal reasons I will not be able to do that.

I have a friend in Bangalore who had accepted to do this difficult task. He is willing to listen and guide people in person ( All you Bangaloreans can meet & talk to him in person ) or through voice chat (Online). I am still working out all the details for the blog readers as to how they can reach out & get his suggestions. It may take some time for me to write an update on the same. But you can email him at " highsalary2007@gmail.com ".

It has been my experience that anything available for free people just use & forget. It eventually looses its value if something like "Personal Counselling" is given for free. So this service is going to be a paid service. The fee for the same will be decided based on your profile. You need to email your tech,educational details & write about what you need to discusss. You will get a reply back with in 4 days time with a schedule to meet in person or talk through a voice chat. The fee for this IT / Software Career Guidance will also be mentioned in the reply. If you are fine with these details you can confirm & reply back else let the professional know that you can not go ahead with this.

The fee for this service is going to be very nominal thats for sure.

This is not done with an intention of making huge money - a Consulting project can bring better money than doing this for my friend. He is interested to help people especially those who are still in the planning phase for their Software Career. Do write & let your thoughts known on this.

My Email to Storage Student who is interested to build his Career in Storage technology

He has already emailed me showing his interest in getting personalised online (email based) 1-on-1 Storage training. This is one of my early emails to him. I thought sharing this email helps many of my blog readers to get an understanding what it requires to plan & Build a Career not just in Storage technology domain but any Information Technology segment. This is a paid service & I charge a little heavy for this Storage training if you are interested email me.Those who are not able to go for this I have a Simple Yet Effective Suggestion check out the right hand top corner of this blog for "Blog Archive" section. Start Clicking on the Year/Date/Sub segment ( Titles of my previous blogposts) you will find a Huge Treasure of articles, interview questions , interview experiences, interview preparation tipcs, salary structure of software companies as well as many storage companies, many videos on storage related topics, some tutorials on Veritas,NAS,Solaris, Storage fundamentals etc. It is a real good treasure for all those who are really interested to get into storage technology. You just need to put enough time to read through all these articles which I have not copied from anywhere but written as almost a personal email to a friend. So do let me know your feedback on this blog. Whoever emails me giving their feedback or suggestion or any article contribution recieves 3 Tutorial PDF downloadable files & many other surprise gifts. Make sure you write a little lengthy email :)

Content of my email to my student is copied below
Brief outline of sugestion for your Storage learning is
Build Strong Storage Fundamentals
Make sure you are good in Operating System ( Either Solaris 10 or preferably Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 or RHEL5 ) with administration level of skills
Be good in Networking and Servers/Hardware knowledge
EMC2 or Netapp > SAN range of products u choose any product series based on ur preference no issues > Backup & recovery or Virtualization both are equally hot segments for a Job hunter .

Timeline : 25 days to 2 Months on EMC2 or Netapp or HP SAN product learning
15 days to 2 months on either Backup and Recovery OR Virtualization technology
In total 2 months to 4 months if you can dedicate & work hard

This is what I would say ur roadmap should be if you are aspiring to build your career in Storage domain. I guess this is a very basic outline to begin with. But I want you to comeup with your list of your strengths & weakness pertaining to this , so I can rewrite the details of this Guidance outline. I want you to understand this road does not seem easy it does require your consistency in learning & relearning and revising whenever necessary. Be clear about the necessity of putting enough time & efforts for this learning.

Send your Present Resume/CV to me & i'll have more clear idea on this.
if thats not an issue let me know what is ur salary expectation , other terms if you have any. whats ur present salary & responsibilities .

Your study should be more goal oriented, what i mean is , make compressed notes of what you r studying, make Question & Answer kind of notes on all the topics you study & make a soft copy always .This helps you in interview prior preparation as well as it is easy to revise when you have your own compressed notes than reading huge reference books or several online articles. This also helps you build your own last minute quick reference guide for any interview even if they schedule it the very next day.

I want you to email me all the progress you are doing on a daily basis if possible. I may be allowed to publish some of those content online. I will never reveal your identity in anymanner online I will just say contributed by one of the blog reader.So if you permit me to publish some of your email contents (NOT the personal communication but only tech stuff) I will do my part of supporting you in reaching your goal.

I want to clarify that I am not a SAN guru or Storage guru I am just someone who knows how to help U reach your goal. So I am not stressing on mere Tech help but I would be a bit more than that as a personal friend(Online) who knows industry expectations, can share some of the insights & can help U reach your career goals. I dont email/help many on a 1-on-1 basis i do it rarely,selectively & I would like to support only those who value my time & my requests/conditions.

Email me what you have planned so far & what are your expectations clearly.
So let me see ur next email . Then I will continue this conversation.

Outline whatever u know already in an informal list for my reference . write down frankly what u clearly know & what u know just on the surface, we will take it forward from there

Regards
Roger.Smithson@gmail.com