While searching for a job, the interview is your opportunity to showcase your talents and the strengths that you bring to an organization. But I have a few more random thoughts about conducting your job search that I thought were worth mentioning. The Personal Touch The first thought is a quick one. In our high-speed technology driven world, a personal touch still makes a difference. So be sure to send a thank you e-mail after concluding an interview, assuming you liked the company and the opportunity. There was a time when a hand-written thank you note was the appropriate response. … [Read more...]
Plays Well With Others – More Thoughts on the Job Search
Filed Under: Opinion, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, Professional Development
Plays Well With Others – Influence versus Authority
You’ve probably found that the prefix “lead” is a fairly common occurrence in the technology world. We have “lead developers”, “lead DBAs”, “lead architects”, and “lead consultants”. Yet, we don’t have “lead managers”, “lead directors”, or “lead VPs”. Why is that? Well, there are probably a number of different reasons for having “lead” technologist titles depending on who you ask. For example, the HR department might say that adding “lead” to a technologist’s title justifies the better salary that the company had to pay to acquire that specific talent. The IT department chiefs might … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Opinion, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, Management, Plays Well With Others, Professional Development
Plays Well With Others – Metrics to the Max!
November 2009 would have been the 100th birthday of famed management guru, Peter Drucker, were he alive today. Now for those of you who don’t know the name, Peter Drucker was no mere guru or simple pundit. He was in fact the father of management and universally acclaimed as the world’s greatest management thinker. Anyone who’s taken a business class, studied for an MBA, or had to deal with an IT project to build a management dashboard has been touched by Peter Drucker. If you have a spare moment, add Drucker’s Concept of the Corporation to your library. Drucker came upon the scene at a … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Governance, On-Line Resources, Opinion, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Strategies Tagged With: Best Practices, Career, Management, Professional Development
SQLRally Precon Voting
I have submitted a pre-conference session to present at the PASS SQLRally, May 11, 2011 in Orlando, FL. My session is entitled Leadership and Team Management Skills for the Database Professional. If you've ever attended my 1-hr professional development session at the PASS Summit, which has scored highest in the professional development track, then you've seen a preview of what we'll be covering over the course of the full day. During the session I will discuss how most IT leaders earned their promotions based on technical competency, not on leadership or managerial skills. Technical … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Conferences, Opinion, Presentations, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, Management, Professional Development, Training
Plays Well With Others – Upsizing Your Skills With OCW
In our last installment , I describe the three essential skills I felt were hallmarks of the best and most successful directors that I’ve worked with. Good directors, indeed good strategic leaders of all stripes, usually have at least one or more of these skills: strategic planning, visionary goals, and emotional intelligence. The good news about these skills, and lots of other skills that can advance your career, is that you can learn them. Many people will spend a fortune on a classroom approach to learning these sorts of skills via an MBA. If you’re a penny pincher, you can get a leg … [Read more...]
Filed Under: On-Line Resources, Opinion, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Strategies, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Best Practices, Career, Goals, Plays Well With Others, Professional Development
DBTA: Getting Up to Speed on the SQL Server Social Media Scene
If you haven't paid attention to the new social media, you're doing yourself a disservice. Just as email was a game-changer in the 1980s and the internet revolutionized society in the 1990s, social media is making a huge impact on the way people work and interact today. Personally, I was skeptical about social networking until some good friends persuaded me to give it a trial run. It seemed like a great way to dither away some valuable time, but I didn't see the business value in the whole proposition until I tried it. [READ MORE] … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Cloud, DBTA, On-Line Resources, Opinion, PASS, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Trends Tagged With: Career, DBA, Professional Development, SQLPASS, SQLSaturday, Tools, Writing
Plays Well With Others – Successful Directors versus Successful Technologists
The skills that enable a person to be a top-tier database professional have very little to do with being a successful member of a board of directors. So what skills are needed for a person to be successful on a board of directors for any large organization? Here are a handful of skills, in no particular order, that I’ve seen demonstrated by very successful directors from days past: Strategic thinking Let’s face it - technology is detail-oriented work. No database professional can be truly effective at their job if they never get the parameters correct when calling a function, can’t … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Ethics, Governance, Opinion, PASS, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Strategies Tagged With: Career, Management, Plays Well With Others, Professional Development, SQLPASS
Plays Well With Others – A Primer on Hiring
Good hiring practices are vital for any organization. As you move up in ranks, you’ll be given more influence and authority in hiring situations. Unfortunately, most organizations offer no training on how to effectively hire the best candidate nor do they have a formalized policy on how to conduct hiring. The larger your organization, the more likely it is to have a formalized hiring process and well-defined roles for HR and for the hiring manager. Even when the HR department (if it exists) is helpful and has good intentions, they often bring little to the hiring process except to weed out … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Opinion, Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, Management, Plays Well With Others, Professional Development
