Recent Advice to a IT Support Specialist

Sometimes I get pinged from IT pros seeking to land an full time employment position in their respected field. This is one person that has a support background.  Here was my email response to him.

Thanks for contacting me. Unfortunately, I have moved out of recruiting and into IT Security. I’d be more than happy to help, but many of our support openings, re: help desk, reside in Waverly, IA, and doesn’t often include relocation to the candidate. I’d start networking pretty heavily. If you’re not on LinkedIn, get a profile. Join a few groups there and start telling people about your skills and weighing in on some discussions. I know you had worked for staffing firms too. I’d ping many of them to get some temp assignments, do awesome at those assignments and ask your interim supervisor if it’s ok to connect to them on LinkedIn and that your ultimate goal is to get FTE work.
It might even be a good thing to start a tech blog on wordpress.com or blogger. It’s free and will start showing off your knowledge beyond the resume. Then put that blog url on your resume. It’s showing your passion for IT support and your diligence on the blog. Make sure you update it consistently, that’s the key! A blog with articles every few months is not all that impressive.
I hope this helps. Good luck!

Leaving Facebook

I had a long post about Facebook and why I was deleting my account. The original post elaborated a bit about my beginning, middle, and end experiences with the social network. I read it over and over, made changes and edits, and realized that I was beginning to sound pretty dumb about the whole thing. I can just say this, “it’s not a place that I want to frequent any longer.” It’s nothing personal, really.

You can still contact me via Twitter or Google+. I know it’s crazy, but you can also call me: 608.616.0775. (this is a Google Voice number, so as long as that doesn’t go bye bye, you should be good)

Recruiter Turned IT Guy

1014431.largeToday was my last day as a corporate recruiter. I’ve been given the opportunity to join our IT Security team. Yes, I’ll be staying with my current employer so my email and phone number won’t be changing.

The  past week was filled with treat days, lunches with my peers, and getting my recruiting stuff in order so the interim person has an easier time managing the staffing needs of Shared Services as he also tries to find my replacement. Guess who has quite an incentive to fill my position? <let me know if you have a recruiting background and are interested in the position. 🙂 >

As I’ve mentioned to many people throughout my last 2 plus years, I never thought I’d be in a position in Human Resources. It wasn’t that I was opposed to it, I simply thought I’d be an IT guy doing server administration, penetration testing, coding, networking, whatever. I’m just glad that I was a member of THIS HR team. I’ve been employed in many companies, and worked with many different people, I never had a bad experience with any person in our entire HR organization.

One chapter ends, another begins.

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