|
The Dreamer posted:What's a good way of putting odd job IT work on a resume? The only actual hands-on IT experience I have is doing odd jobs for locals in town. Cleaning PCs, replacing hardware, getting rid of viruses, throwing together websites, etc. I've considered doing something like "Self-Employed - IT Generalist" but I'm not sure how that would go over on a resume. I would absolutely put that first bit on your resume and be sure to mention you were self employed. As for the second bit not sure how I would word it but make sure it's in some kind of bullet point.
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 21:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 11:23 |
|
|
NippleFloss posted:Yes, but that doesn't mean that you have better options. If you live in a place with no better options then move to a place with better options. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0q4o58pKwA
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 21:28
|
|
|
Sickening posted:If you live in a place with no better options then move to a place with better options. They should do a Sierra-style game, like Goldrush but you're traveling out west to make it rich building a startup.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 21:31
|
|
|
Tab8715 posted:I would absolutely put that first bit on your resume and be sure to mention you were self employed. I probably should have specified. The "Self Employed" bit was because I wasn't sure of another way to put "Resident Town Tech Guy" on a resume. I'm just the guy everyone calls if they have a computer related problem. I do odd jobs fairly regularly but I don't have a business license or anything and am actually employed part time at a non-tech job. I'm not sure whether I should put self-employed or not since its not a legitimate business or anything.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 22:40
|
|
|
DrAlexanderTobacco posted:Oh, so he shouldn't move on then. Ok. He should. But people like to throw around "you're getting hosed" in here based on a few details about salary without any understanding of the persons local labor market or job situation. It's stated as if you'd be a moron to work for that little. But the U.S. in general is grossly unfriendly to labor and relatively poorer areas are even more so, so saying "you're getting hosed" as if it's something that the employee can easily fix by just demanding more money or finding a better job is insulting and blinkered. The minimum wage is still only 8 bucks, if that, in a lot of places, and help desk work often won't pay much more than that because it's treated as roughly the same as cable internet or phone support in terms of skills required. You can certainly hope to move on quickly from it once you've got a bit of a resume, but you've still got work somewhere for a bit to get that resume.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 22:43
|
|
|
The Dreamer posted:I probably should have specified. The "Self Employed" bit was because I wasn't sure of another way to put "Resident Town Tech Guy" on a resume. I'm just the guy everyone calls if they have a computer related problem. I do odd jobs fairly regularly but I don't have a business license or anything and am actually employed part time at a non-tech job. It absolutely is relevant experience and you really ought to find a way to put it on there. I'd use the phrase "Freelance computer repair, maintenance, and consulting"
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 22:46
|
|
|
NippleFloss posted:He should. But people like to throw around "you're getting hosed" in here based on a few details about salary without any understanding of the persons local labor market or job situation. It's stated as if you'd be a moron to work for that little. But the U.S. in general is grossly unfriendly to labor and relatively poorer areas are even more so, so saying "you're getting hosed" as if it's something that the employee can easily fix by just demanding more money or finding a better job is insulting and blinkered. The minimum wage is still only 8 bucks, if that, in a lot of places, and help desk work often won't pay much more than that because it's treated as roughly the same as cable internet or phone support in terms of skills required. You can certainly hope to move on quickly from it once you've got a bit of a resume, but you've still got work somewhere for a bit to get that resume. Just because a ton of other people are getting hosed worse doesn't mean he's not also getting hosed. More to the point, his question was basically, "Should I just keep doing this for an arbitrary period of time, or should I start looking for something better?" To which people replied, "you're getting hosed at that pay rate, there's nowhere to go but up, start looking for something better now." It was advice he solicited. So no, it's actually not insulting that people told him that he should look for something better.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 23:01
|
|
|
I have successfully withdrawn from my overwhelming IT Class today! Gods be praised!
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 23:06
|
|
|
Grouchio posted:I have successfully withdrawn from my overwhelming IT Class today! Gods be praised! Do you... still want to go into IT?
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 23:14
|
|
|
Grouchio posted:I have successfully withdrawn from my overwhelming IT Class today! Gods be praised! Don't get too discouraged, you just need to find the correct place to start. Once you get your foundations built you can probably find a branch of IT that works well for you. Are you going to be enrolling in a different course? Maybe we can help you pick a class that's right for you. I'd look for something that starts with the phrase "Survey of..." or "Introduction to...". These classes will give you a broad view of the options and help you get the fundamentals down.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 23:29
|
|
|
He hopped in a frontend dev course and it sounded like he was skipping class 
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 23:35
|
|
|
Che Delilas posted:Just because a ton of other people are getting hosed worse doesn't mean he's not also getting hosed. More to the point, his question was basically, "Should I just keep doing this for an arbitrary period of time, or should I start looking for something better?" To which people replied, "you're getting hosed at that pay rate, there's nowhere to go but up, start looking for something better now." It was advice he solicited. So no, it's actually not insulting that people told him that he should look for something better. But I didn't respond to his post or offer him any advice at all. I responded to another post that didn't offer any advice beyond "you're being hosed because you only make X" which is both useless and not necessarily true. That may simply be the market rate in his area for entry level with no experience. He's getting hosed in the same sense that most all of who aren't one percenters are, but he's not necessarily getting hosed especially badly. For New York, yea. For rural Mississippi? Nah. Certainly he should try to move up and out as quickly as possible, but that's true of literally any job ever. "Find a better job that pays more as soon as you can," is the most obvious and trivial advice ever.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2014 23:37
|
|
|
wrong thread Methanar fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Oct 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 00:00
|
|
|
never mind
KERNOD WEL fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Oct 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 00:24
|
|
|
Dr. Arbitrary posted:Don't get too discouraged, you just need to find the correct place to start. Once you get your foundations built you can probably find a branch of IT that works well for you. Seconding this. I have a friend doing some sort of European IT course thing and some of his required classes are beyond useless - designing poo poo with logic gates, reinvent-the-wheel each week with Python, etc. A lot of it can just be finding a professor that isn't a massive shitheel and will actually impart useful knowledge that you can use in your future career instead of "write a program to find which number in a list has the most factors while using only this incredibly restricted subset of functions in the language"-jerkoff assignments. The Dreamer posted:What's a good way of putting odd job IT work on a resume? The only actual hands-on IT experience I have is doing odd jobs for locals in town. Cleaning PCs, replacing hardware, getting rid of viruses, throwing together websites, etc. I've considered doing something like "Self-Employed - IT Generalist" but I'm not sure how that would go over on a resume. I did this by just putting "IT technician - self employed" and has a list of various projects I'd worked on. The guys at Resume to Interview were a big help with fleshing everything out. I'd definitely put "working knowledge of Linux" on your resume - you don't need to be a pro, but pointing out that you have that knowledge is never a bad thing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 00:48
|
|
|
I've posted a few times in the thread and thought I'd jump back in with a  update. Put in my two weeks and will be done next Friday. Can not wait to get out of this place and on to bigger and better things. $25k more a year also helps
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 00:55
|
|
|
Heads up, Meraki webinar (one-hour switching) tomorrow is giving away free 8-port PoE switches with 3 year licenses to attendees. Same eligibility requirements as the free AP deal, but not mutually exclusive (can receive switch if you already got the AP).
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 02:10
|
|
|
Fixed a nasty problem at work today. A Shoretel VoIP switch wasn't talking to our HQ server properly. Everything could ping, but there was definitely a problem with the network because a port was open at the site but not across the link. We discovered juniper had a bunch of application level gateways enabled that were loving up all the shoretel traffic. We disabled all the ones remotely related to our equipment and we were able to talk to the equipment for the first time in months. Celebrated with some green tea when I got home 
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 04:02
|
|
|
Sheep posted:Seconding this. I have a friend doing some sort of European IT course thing and some of his required classes are beyond useless - designing poo poo with logic gates, reinvent-the-wheel each week with Python, etc. A lot of it can just be finding a professor that isn't a massive shitheel and will actually impart useful knowledge that you can use in your future career instead of "write a program to find which number in a list has the most factors while using only this incredibly restricted subset of functions in the language"-jerkoff assignments. I have a question related to something you mentioned about working knowledge. After I was downsized from Dell, I started working for IBM as a field agent permanently assigned to a bank undergoing a transition (bank was bought by a foreign bank). I explicitly outlined in my CV that I was more of a hardware specialist with middle Windows experience (my clustering, AD and IIS knowledge is pretty scarce) yet they threw me to the wolves, since the client basically has doing all productive requests (SQL and Sybase queries, incident handling and such) despite me having 0 previous experience with SQL or Sybase. I know the basics of SQL and Sybase (I can administer DBs, run queries, program jobs, backup and restore DBs, run performance stored procedures). How should I phrase this in a CV? I don't want to put my foot in my mouth by claiming full DBA experience but I would like to come off from this assignment looking better than query monkey.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 04:13
|
|
|
Sheep posted:Seconding this. I have a friend doing some sort of European IT course thing and some of his required classes are beyond useless - designing poo poo with logic gates, reinvent-the-wheel each week with Python, etc. A lot of it can just be finding a professor that isn't a massive shitheel and will actually impart useful knowledge that you can use in your future career instead of "write a program to find which number in a list has the most factors while using only this incredibly restricted subset of functions in the language"-jerkoff assignments. A CS, EE, or CE program isn't vocational training. Learn .NET somewhere else. The point of using a subset of a full-featured, simple language (like Python or Java or scheme) is that you can focus on how the algorithms work instead of abusing the namespaces and standard library. Knowing how to somearray.sort() doesn't help you if you need to write a quicksort someday, or walk a b-tree, or use C interop. It also helps give students a feel for what is and isn't efficient code. Similarly, you can't really understand how computers work without knowing how logic gates work (or that the CPU is a giant truth table). Like it or not, CS involves knowing Turing machines and other theoretical stuff that may not be professionally applicable. It's a science. Your friend is going to a good school. Sheep posted:I'd definitely put "working knowledge of Linux" on your resume - you don't need to be a pro, but pointing out that you have that knowledge is never a bad thing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 04:19
|
|
|
TerryLennox posted:I know the basics of SQL and Sybase (I can administer DBs, run queries, program jobs, backup and restore DBs, run performance stored procedures). How should I phrase this in a CV? I don't want to put my foot in my mouth by claiming full DBA experience but I would like to come off from this assignment looking better than query monkey.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 04:22
|
|
|
If I'm somewhat proficient at XYZ, how would you prefer it be outlined in a resume?
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 04:24
|
|
|
Tab8715 posted:If I'm somewhat proficient at XYZ, how would you prefer it be outlined in a resume? My general take is "list projects and accomplishments, maybe duties, never skills", but I'm lazy. If a recruiter or employer can't infer my skills from my duties/accomplishments, I probably don't want to work there anyway.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 04:46
|
|
|
evol262 posted:Heads up: if you're not a pro, it doesn't belong. Including Linux. Because if you're not a "pro", you probably don't have "working knowledge". It's possible, but very unlikely. It's not 2004. I can find people with professional Linux experience pretty easily. Nonsense, especially for something like having working knowledge of Linux, and for someone who's probably going to be targeting entry level jobs. Hell, I've seen job postings that have more or less that exact phrase as a "nice to have." A better tip would be, if you have a skill in your list, back it up with a specific duty or accomplishment involving that skill.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 12:32
|
|
|
evol262 posted:Your friend is going to a good school. If he were studying CS, EE, or CE then sure, but he's not. Something like Stanly would be right up his alley but isn't an option because of out of state tuition, and there isn't a remotely decent analogue in his country. I also think that, considering the guy is looking for entry-level jobs, there's no reason not to put "working knowledge of Linux" on that guy's resume. Your point certainly stands for mid- or late-career people who are looking for jobs f.e. working with nothing but Linux systems, though. Sheep fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Oct 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 12:45
|
|
|
There is a lot of discussion to the level of experience you put on applications and on your resume / cover letter. I tend to undersell my skills a bit because I don't want to be in a situation where I am in way over my head, and because I don't want to look like an idiot in a technical interview because I embellished my experience. For example, I have a good amount of ADFS and DirSync experience from doing two different Active Directories to O365 at my current company. I had an interview where they were looking for an Active Directory Expert and ADFS Guru, but only found that out during the interview. Am I an expert in AD? No. However, I can build them from scratch, repair/clean up old ones, and do things like ADFS. This guy was asking me questions straight out off an MCSA test that I couldn't give a solid answer to because no one can remember what every acronym stands for. Afterwords, the recruiter said they are having a really hard time filling the position because what they are looking for doesn't really exist to the extent of the guy they had leave. I also had an interview for a Linux position last year that reminded me of undergrad when you walked into the test, didn't know what was going on, and failed spectacularly. Again, I do not claim to be a Linux god, but I can certainly spin up machines, troubleshoot issues, install applications, etc without an issue. I am not a neckbeard who knows how all the fundamental levels of the OS works. The interviewer actually was positive and actually explained the ones I got wrong and was cool about it, but I had forgotten how bad it feels to get hosed on a test.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 13:59
|
|
|
The Dreamer posted:What's a good way of putting odd job IT work on a resume? The only actual hands-on IT experience I have is doing odd jobs for locals in town. Cleaning PCs, replacing hardware, getting rid of viruses, throwing together websites, etc. I've considered doing something like "Self-Employed - IT Generalist" but I'm not sure how that would go over on a resume. I'm a contractor so YMMV. I've structured my resume to get good hits on the resume bots. Company Name - From - To dates (Contract or not) Short 3 -4 sentence description of job duties. Bullet point list of technologies or software used (Windows 2012, Solaris 10, RedHat Linux, EMC Unishpere, etc.) If I was hiring, the "working knowledge of Linux" is a good line. It's something I'd ask about in an interview. It tells me that you're interested and capable of learning about computers outside of the job.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 14:18
|
|
|
evol262 posted:
This is terrible advice and you should never give this out again. The whole point of a resume is to sell yourself to employers. It should be for all experience and training that is relevant to the type of job you are applying for. If you leave out everything except you are a "pro" in you are most likely selling yourself short by a lot and you can believe the other people in the resume pile aren't. This is especially critical for people early in their careers. Sickening fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Oct 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 14:57
|
|
|
Thanks for all the advice guys. One last question. For a resume targeted at entry level IT is it a good idea to list customer service experience under professional experience? It seems like something that would be important for Help Desk and Tier 1 support type jobs.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 15:09
|
|
|
Sickening posted:This is terrible advice and you should never give this out again. Linux is odd here. There's a tendency for shade-tree admins who've never done anything more than follow howtos on the Ubuntu forums to say they have a "working knowledge" of Linux, and I've interviewed so many of them that I'm simply skeptical. There's an assumption that Linux is so obscure that knowing anything at all about it puts you above the competition. That used to be true. Using Linux at home for basic stuff is neither experience nor training. It's common to encounter people with "Linux" on their resume who cannot use an editor on the command line, do not understand how permissions work, are at a complete loss for what logs to look at for basic troubleshooting, etc. If you can't pass an LPI sample test, it has no business being there. If you can, go ahead and put it on. Yes, you're selling yourself and all that, but you should believe that you may get asked about it. If you have to question whether you should be putting it on your resume, how well will questions go?
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 15:35
|
|
|
The Dreamer posted:Thanks for all the advice guys. One last question. For a resume targeted at entry level IT is it a good idea to list customer service experience under professional experience? It seems like something that would be important for Help Desk and Tier 1 support type jobs. Help desk is 90% people skills and communication and 10% knowing how to solve the issues. It's definitely relevant.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 15:42
|
|
|
evol262 posted:If you have to question whether you should be putting it on your resume, how well will questions go? Presumably, there would be an initial question about Linux ("I see here you have some experience with Linux..." etc.) where he would properly and honestly summarize his experience levels with Linux, which would forego the more in-depth questions. If someone's rattling off complex Linux troubleshooting questions for a tier-1 support position, they're more in the wrong, imo. I just think your definition of "working knowledge" varies from most people's. I'd say that I have a "working knowledge" of MS Office, but I'm not going to be able to throw together a complex Excel sheet with pivotcharts off the top off my head. I mean, you could split the difference and have something like - "Basic Linux Experience (Installation, Configuration, Day-to-day Use)" - but for me, that's my interpretation of "working knowledge."
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 15:51
|
|
|
Yeah, the definition of "working knowledge" will change with the position you're applying for. I feel like that's kind of inherent in the phrase.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 15:54
|
|
|
Japanese Dating Sim posted:I mean, you could split the difference and have something like - "Basic Linux Experience (Installation, Configuration, Day-to-day Use)" - but for me, that's my interpretation of "working knowledge." I've had people say they 'know Linux' but didn't know what SSH was when I asked them to get into a web server.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 15:55
|
|
|
evol262 posted:Linux is odd here. There's a tendency for shade-tree admins who've never done anything more than follow howtos on the Ubuntu forums to say they have a "working knowledge" of Linux, and I've interviewed so many of them that I'm simply skeptical. There's an assumption that Linux is so obscure that knowing anything at all about it puts you above the competition. That used to be true. I didn't have any Linux on my resume, but during the group interview when asked by the neckbeard I casually talked about playing around with different distros on home pc's, and having a laptop running Mint. Nothing major, but it made for good conversation about how I have always been interested in it but haven't used it in any job atmosphere (always been windows environments). Well, I got the job and he pretty much took me as his padawan. I was sad to see him leave, but I now feel like I can put Linux on my resume  I guess it's better to underpromise and overdeliver rather than overpromising and failing. edit: however, I probably wouldn't put Linux directly on my resume. I'm not trying to be a Linux admin, but I can use it. It's a canvas. I want to focus on the applications that I installed and configured on Linux, to Bob Morales's point. Fiendish Dr. Wu fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Oct 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 16:08
|
|
|
If you didn't have to fight your way through 15 years of undocumented bash scripts to make a usable system then you don't deserve to wear that medal soldier! I don't claim to be the greatest admin in the world but I have 4 years experience of running and developing an Oracle DB system on some old Sun boxes before porting it to PostgreSQL (converting Oracle PL to PostgreSQL PL is not fun) on some RH linux servers. We are all told to sell ourselves on our CVs and to put as many technologies and buzzwords as we think we can get away with because recruitment agents and HR people who don't have a clue about technology will look at the first and play buzzword bingo. This encourages people to create huge lists of stuff they have heard of or maybe looked at once because hey might help get your foot in the door. Of course then they come to the interview and you ask them about the specific things you are interested in which their CV said they had and yep they don't know anything so everyones time is wasted. What I am trying to say is tech recruitment is dumb and broken.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 16:37
|
|
|
BigPaddy posted:If you didn't have to fight your way through 15 years of undocumented bash scripts to make a usable system then you don't deserve to wear that medal soldier! I don't claim to be the greatest admin in the world but I have 4 years experience of running and developing an Oracle DB system on some old Sun boxes before porting it to PostgreSQL (converting Oracle PL to PostgreSQL PL is not fun) on some RH linux servers. It's funny because my director said he liked my resume because it wasn't full of a ton of bullshit, and he liked my interview because I could talk to every point on my resume and then some. I credit R2I. But yeah it's broken. I blame Dark Helmut.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 16:43
|
|
|
Inspector_666 posted:Yeah, the definition of "working knowledge" will change with the position you're applying for. I feel like that's kind of inherent in the phrase. I agree with this. Given that The Dreamer is presumably applying for totally entry level work, I don't think a reasonable interviewer is going to look at "working knowledge of Linux" and assume he could stand up a 50 node OpenStack cloud on his own or something. Don't lie or oversell your experience, but it doesn't sound like he's doing that. That said, you always want to tailor your resume to the job anyway. If you're applying for a help desk role in a 100% Windows environment, there's not much point highlighting your Linux experience. Leave it off to help keep your resume under one page, and give yourself more room to talk up the skills you're actually very strong in.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 16:58
|
|
|
I'm comfortable with basic Linux system administration (configuring common services (apache, squid,bind), troubleshooting, basic shell scripts, restarting services and googling stuff), but I generally leave it off my resume unless the job posting specifically mentions it. I'm a Microsoft guy by trade though and target senior MS jobs.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 17:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 11:23 |
|
|
skipdogg posted:googling stuff This should be on every resume.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2014 17:10
|
|