Week 4/5

She did various different job, but is going back teaching.

She mentions the need to develop your skills, trying new things and getting experience. This could include going on training courses, using online articles and books, conferences, meetings and talks (something that i often have access to through my business and using sparkhouse).

She showed us a nice colourful chart called a career map which gives you details and requirements for a multitude of different jobs.

3 reasons to join Proffesional group:
Shows you take being a professional seriously.
Gives access to members and lecturers
1 more which i have forgotten, oh well.

Employers look for:
Well-rounded person
Communication skills
Adaptable
Interpersonal skills
Business awareness - find out how businesses operate, relate to business people, don’t talk techy jargon.
Presentation skills - good for getting across your message.
Teamwork 
Project skills - will train you in their ways and methodologies.
Pc skills - word, excess, PowerPoint. - don’t like flashy apparently.

Programming skills:

Dont need to know a specific programming language, know the basics.
Want you to have a disciplined approach and be capable of writing maintainable code.
(This is interesting, however I can’t imagine myself going for a job unless they wanted someone with the skills i have in flash and asp.net 3.5)

Current hot skills:
Technical software testing,
Remote networking
Social networking tools
----
Project management
Leadership
People communications
Financial management

Interviews:
Practice them
Put yourself in employers shoes (i have actually done a few interviews before for xsbroadcasting)
Why would they employ me. - Experience.
Hobbies
Show interest in the company and what they do.
Technical interview - Can ask questions you dont know to see how you handle it and the unknown.
Mention something you would like to expand your experience for.

Finding jobs, where to look:
Careers office
Recruitment agencies
Internet
Careers fairs
Local paper
Industry conferences
Placements i have been on.
Word of mouth. 

Actions: 
Do research before you apply. Find out about their competitors.
Develope generic cv to use as a template then tailor it on a job by job basis.
Address to a person... Not dear sir.

Week 3 - Osiris

Again, another ex-student has come in to give a talk. It is interesting to see yet again, like Wendy in Week 1, he had previous experience before taking his degree. He also, like Wendy, came out with a 1st class degree. On a side I note, I definitely think coming in as a mature student is the way to get a degree; you come in so much more prepared.

Anyway, as far as the talk went, if I am honest, nothing really caught my interest apart from him mentioning in an interview situation; it is a good idea to think of ways in which you can add ‘value’ to the company you are applying to. I’m sure this is something that would impress a lot of potential employers, and will be something I will attempt in my interview unit when the time comes.

Week 2 - MS Silverlight

I was looking forward to this talk as Silverlight is a technology I have been keeping an eye on for some time. Some of the capabilities of the technology were displayed at the Microsoft talk last year, despite it running version 1.0 (JavaScript) it looked very impressive.

This year they showcased the capabilities of the superior version (they demonstrated this last year when Silverlight 2.0 was beta by getting “.net” to play “JavaScript” at a game of chess... .net never lost). Something that stood out for me was the similarities to flash, it is obviously a competing technology the bonus for me being that it now runs on the .net framework with c# being at the heart of most applications made. This is good for me because although i often use Flash in my projects I use ASP.NET 3.5 C# at the backend to serve all my server side needs. If i were to learn Silverlight it looks like i could use C# across both technologies.

Week 1 - Wendy

I would like to start this blog by saying it was interesting to learn of Wendy's past. She spent 10 years working in the education sector before entering university at the 3rd year as a mature student; she went on to achieve a first class degree. This is something I could relate to as I spent 3 years working for a company before starting my degree, all be it at year one. At the time I didn't know I could join directly to the final third year or this may have been something that I would have been interested in doing.

Wendy is now freelancing; working primarily again in the education sector doing web design and teaching students, young and old anything from ICT training to digital animation.

Thinking back I should have probably asked how she deals with clients, how she chases them up for content to make sure she hits deadlines, as this is one of the problems I am having while running my own company part time.