I’ve been helping another reseller with some recruitment using a method I’ve developed over the years to find not just competent technicians but also good employees. However, I must admit that I’m pretty disappointed in the quality of responses that I’ve seen so far. I was also stunned to see that none of the applicants for the position used any sort of social media tools. No Linkedin, blogs, etc to promote their qualifications.
To me this indicates that good technical people don’t reply to online job ads any more. So what are they doing? I reckon they have their details up on places like Linkedin, for example, and use it to connect with people and solicit testimonials from their contacts. I’d also say that they are blogging about technical topics to demonstrate firstly their discipline to write regularly but also provide a ‘living’ CV that they can refer anyone to as a way of highlighting their ongoing efforts in their professional field. There are plenty of other ways that smart people are using social networking to get ahead. Take a look at this example:
The Google Job Experiment – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FRwCs99DWg
If you are someone looking for a better job then you really need to be using social networking and becoming connected with as many people as possible. In many cases it is the strength of weak ties that lands you the job you never expected via a friend of a friend. Best of all, most of the tools of social network are free to join and maintain.
Now if you are looking to hire someone I gotta say that the same message also applies to you. If you think you are going to land that great employee simply by running an online ad I think your chances are going to be fairly slim. Many smart businesses, again are using social networking to stay in touch with ex-employees, customers and other contacts. In this way they are extending their reach and ‘weak links’ so when the day comes that they need someone they will either have that individual with their existing social network or they can use their network to find someone.
As a business or an employee you need to maintain and foster your networks but by doing this you are constantly giving yourself the greatest chance of having the position or person you want find you. Personally, I think now days the first place I’d start looking for someone is via Twitter or Linkedin. Why? It doesn’t cost anything. Only after exhausting all my social networks would I consider running an online ad.
Most amazingly of all, many small businesses totally ignore social networking as a method of recruitment. Most prefer to employ ‘someone they know’ but few utilize the tools that effectively allow them to do just that. To me, this is simply another example of how important social networking is in the SMB market. Smart business are leveraging it for all sorts of things like marketing, publicity and, as I outlined here, recruitment. Most businesses know how hard it is to recruit good staff. You have a much greater chance if you go to where progressive talent is located (i.e. social networking). If you simply run an online add you are really just ‘hoping’ there ‘maybe’ someone out there. Not a very good return on investment in my books.
Times are changing. If you are a good business or a good employee don’t rely on the old ways of recruitment, start to understand and utilize the tools that social networking provide and save yourself time, money and really stand out from the crowd. I really feel sad for not only all those people who have submitted ‘bland’ CVs for me to evaluate but also for the business who is using this method to recruit. The chances of any of them truly finding what they are after is very slim in my books, very slim indeed.
Backup workshop roundup
Over the weekend we ran a Backup and Disaster Recovery workshop for SMB resellers. It was pleasing to see the event so well attended, with people even travelling from inter state to be present. I’d like to think that we did something a little different at this workshop by inviting a number of vendors to demonstrate the ability of their products to not only backup a standard SBS 2008 server but also to do a bare metal restore to different hardware without them actually touching the hardware (a volunteer was used to perform all the work). The consensus on day was that BackupAssist provided the best result in our tests but all vendors performed superbly and we thank them all for their efforts.
Another first for us was that the event was conducted over two days, stretching from our previous single day. Even then we could have probably gone another day but most attendees agreed that three days would be just too much. Apart from the content around backup and disaster recovery we also had a number of other technology presentations including those from:
Jeff Alexander on Microsoft Data Protection Manager,
Peter Vane from ITWest on selling Backup and Disaster Recovery to customers,
Kieran Cook from Trend Micro and
yours truly on SharePoint and Cloud Computing.
We where also luck enough to have both Susan Bradley and Kevin Royalty present remotely. Many attendees commented on how much they liked the mixed of presenters and topics over the two days so we take this opportunity to thank all those who did take the time to present over the workshop.
So what did people think? Well here’s a number of feedback comments from attendees:
“The SMBiT workshops are excellent. They offer real value for money with solid technical and business content. Almost as valuable is the time spent networking with other IT professionals. Well worth it.”
“For the busy IT consultant, these workshops offer a great way to learn a lot in a short space of time. Like TechEd but without the massive cost!”
“After the first day I can whole heartedly recommend attending the events that are run by the NSW group, the content is at the perfect level for the attendees in both technical and informational levels.”
“The SMBiT Workshop days are some of the best value for money seminars I have been to. They are real hands on rather than theory, powerpoint & overview. A lot of the additional value is undocumented such as networking with colleagues & other technical hints that come up during presentations.”
“Absolutely fantastic. You’d be crazy not to attend at least once! We picked up so many ideas from the two days, I’m looking forward to working out how to fit them into our business!”
Thank you Sydney SMBiT Professionals group for organising most stimulating and informative workshops. They were well run and had the level of information I was looking for. Each of the workshops were true to their names and the practical nature of them, was what I wanted to see and not the marketing hype of the vendors.
Well done and I am looking forward to more similar professional sessions. Great value for money and a good investment of my time.
You’ll also find some further feedback from Susan Bradley and Peter Vane that is very much appreciated.
A big thanks for the day must also go to Hilton Travis from QuarkIT who travelled down from Queensland to webcast and record the event (as well as provide his unique point of view on most topics) as well as Ryan Spillane and David Wales from Correct Solutions for the hardware and the pre work that went into getting it ready for the workshop. A heartfelt thanks.
We are now towards the next workshop on the 20th and 21st of August that will be around business development and cloud services. Make sure you reserve the days because after this one I’m pretty sure places are going to fill really fast!
Sweat
One of the most important things an independent IT Professional (or anyone for that matter) needs to do is take care of their health, for without your health you can’t hope to earn a living. Sadly, this is generally not the case for most IT Professionals I know as well as many other people I must say. The secret has really got more to do with your mind than your body, but that is a topic for another blog post.
Attempting to be health conscious myself I spend a certain amount of time each day at a small local gym keeping my self in condition. I do however notice a constant stream of people who come in and ‘pretend’ to exercise. To get any benefit from the exercise you are doing you need to look at your heart rate and in effect raise it from what is considered the ‘resting rate’. Here is a good article all about heart rate and intensity, but basically you should exercise with your heart rate at 65-85% of its maximum (which varies with age) and maintain that for the duration of your workout. Doing that consistently has all sorts of benefits which again is fodder for another future blog post.
What I want to focus on here is what also comes with lifting your intensity – sweat. After every work out I make sure that I’m sweating, if I’m not then I haven’t trained intensively enough. However, the other people I see in the gym would probably get more exercise sitting on the couch watching TV. They are deluding themselves if they think have achieved any benefit of going to the gym for that time period. They are simply wasting their time because they are not even breaking a sweat.
So let’s now translate that to how you run your business. Can you honestly say that you are lifting the intensity of your business? Are you pushing your business (or yourself) to make it ‘sweat’? Unfortunately, most are like the people I see coming into the gym, fooling themselves that they are working out. Their business may have made it into the gym but it sure ain’t doing a workout! Again, there is no sweat.
Much like maintaining fitness, you need to push your business beyond the comfort zone. Again like exercise, you don’t go mad and try and run a marathon without preparation you need to build your intensity up but you need to keep building, you need to keep sweating if you plan to improve it. There are going to be the odd aches and pains along the way but the main aim of the game is to continue to lift the average which is never going to happen if you leave your business sitting on the couch eating potato chips.
Take a look around at the people that you know, are they lifting their intensity? Are they looking to improve their average? Are they and their business getting fitter? A wise man once said that you are the average of your surroundings. If you want to improve your average many you have to make a change to your environment. Any change will require effort resulting in sweat which is the easiest way to know you have increased your intensity.
Make sure that when you take yourself or your business to the gym you come away sweating. I can assure you that over time that the results of this effort is worth the investment.
Today I reached 100
No not quite 100 years yet (but that will happen one day soon) I actually reached 100 Facebook friends. Wow! I can’t say that I’d even have thought I’d see the day. Now obviously that number can drop back if some ‘un-friends’ me (which would make me sad) but reaching triple figures made me ponder this whole ‘friends’ thing, briefly at least.
As Seth Godin says in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0h0LlCu8Ks
The Internet has allowed a huge amount of fake networking. Why? Because there’s a scoreboard that clicks over and allows you to compare that to others. Just because Facebook says they’re your friends are they really? And once they are your friends what then?
With almost 500 million Facebook users there is little doubt that anyone, let alone businesses, can afford to ignore the ‘Facebook factor’ but my question is, if you use Facebook for business what do you use it for? What are your trying to achieve with it? If you simply want to accumulate more friends, send me a request an I’ll be your friend but I’d really like to hear what business strategy people have with their Facebook accounts. Drop me an email (director@ciaops.com) and let me know how you use Facebook to grow your business. Also, please feel free to Facebook friend me via http://www.facebook.com/ciaops, I need to keep that score ticking along.
WSSOPS May update available
I have just posted up the Windows SharePoint Operations Guide (WSSOPS) subscriber update for May. Inside you’ll find updated information about uninstalling and reinstalling SharePoint on SBS 2008 as well as a new chapter on SharePoint Foundation 2010 security.
Also, don’t forget the CIAOPS email support group at:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ciaops/
which I am looking to build as a forum for information about SharePoint, productivity and cloud computing (as well as anything else related to the products and services of the CIAOPS). You’ll need a Yahoo Id which you can obtain from the above web site. Then you’ll be able to email through questions, answers and comments for everyone else on the list to see and provide feedback on.
So what’s coming in the June update for WSSOPS? Still early days but it is certainly going to have information about installing Office Web Apps, more information around SharePoint Foundation 2010 and most likely a detailed walk through of getting Search Server Express 2008 running on SBS 2008. Remember, this is only available to subscribers and for more information about that visit www.wssops.com.
Stay tuned.
WSSOPS turns two
I’m very proud to say that my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide (WSSOPS) has now turned two. It has certainly come a long way since that initial very rough release to the few foundation subscribers who were good enough to sign up back then. I certainly hope that their faith in what I have created has been justified.
There is also all the other subscribers who have come along over the years (and some who have now moved on). I thank you all for your support and hope that you have received value from what I have produced over the years. I continue to work hard every month to improve that value that you receive for your subscription.
I’d also like to thank Karl Palachuk from SMB Books who has provided me the opportunity of selling my Guide through his site. Due to his continued support, patronage and promotion I’m sure the Guide would not be as popular as it is now, especially outside Australia.
So where to now for the Guide? Well, from its initial focus on Windows SharePoint (WSS) and Search Server Express (SSX) the Guide has expanded to include information on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Windows Foundation Server 2010. Soon the Guide will include information about Microsoft Office Web Apps and BPOS SharePoint. As always I welcome any suggestions as to what people would like to see included.
As subscribers are aware, the Guide is more than just a tome of pages about SharePoint, it includes a DVD full of white papers, links, videos and other marketing material. It includes a free internet hosted demonstration SharePoint as well as a discount on support rates from the CIAOPS. As well, all subscribers gain free access to all of the CIAOPS webinars for their period of their subscription as well as any prior webcasts which have all been recorded. For a full list of benefits see www.wssops.com. I hope to keep improving these benefits in the future and welcome an suggestions people may have.
In creating the Guide I have also tried to continue to produce a number of free resources for people who are interested in learning more about SharePoint. You can find free document downloads at http://www.slideshare.net/directorcia and free video tutorials at http://www.youtube.com/user/directorciaops. Recently, I also created a CIAOPS yahoo email list that allows anyone (once registered) to ask any questions or contribute on issues dealt with by the CIAOPS. More information about this group can be found in this blog post. I will be posting more information there this month and can hopefully encourage some really positive information around SharePoint, productivity and cloud computing (and anything else of interest).
So to the many, many people who have been supported of the Guide over the years I say thanks. I will continue to work hard to increase the information and the value that the Guide contains for subscribers going forward. I always welcome any comments or feedback so please let me know what’s on your mind via director@ciaops.com.
Finally, where’s the best place to keep up with Guide and what’s happening with Windows SharePoint? This blog of course!
CIAOPS Email support list
I’m always on the look out for better ways of helping people with things like SharePoint, productivity and cloud services as well as boosting my business of course. These days I have the usual social media stuff, like this blog, Twitter, Facebook and so on. I also do what I can to monitor and contribute to sites on the Internet where people need assistance but that is difficult to manage given the sheer number of sites. I have also found over the years that most techie types still tend to like email lists.
So what I’ve done is gone and set up a CIAOPS Yahoo list that people can subscribe to and email messages with questions about anything they’d like assistance with or that they may think is of interest. Hopefully I can encourage a few other experienced hands to come on board and cover some of the areas that I’m no so good on. However, I see it mainly as a vehicle to help people with SharePoint and especially my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide.
Now I’m sure there are probably better options out there and I would love to hear about them, but hopefully this is something that will suit a certain audience, so I’d like to try it and see what happens.
If you are at all interested in signing up for the CIAOPS Yahoo list you can do so by the following means:
Email subscription to ciaops-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
or visiting
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ciaops/
You’ll need to create a Yahoo ID first to contribute in this group which you can do here. Once that is done I’ll approve you and you can start sending emails to group.
Hopefully, this will be a way to build a bit of a community around some the stuff the CIAOPS does as well as helping others.
SMBITPro Sydney event
I am involved with an association of IT Professionals here in Sydney called SMBITPro – Sydney, of which I am currently the President. We meet on a regular monthly basis (the second Tuesday of the month) from 6pm. During our meetings we normally have a few technical presentations from vendors as well a contributions from members. At the end of each meeting everyone in attendance get to do some networking over pizza. All in all it is a good way to keep abreast of what’s happening in the SMB market as well network with other IT Professionals.
Also in past 12 months we have commenced full day SMBITPro workshops. So far we have had ones on virtualization, migration and security. The next one, focusing on backup and disaster recovery, will actually run over two days (Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd of May) and will focus on vendors demonstrating the ability of their products to not only backup an SBS 2008 server but also restore it to completely different hardware. To further demonstrate the simplicity of their products each vendor will not be allowed to touch the hardware at any stage, during back or restore. Instead they must ‘instruct’ a volunteer from the audience through the entire process. We reckon this is as close to real world as you can get in a workshop.
Although the workshop’s major focus is backup and disaster recovery there will also be a number of other sessions on business and technology. Depending on the scheduling, I plan to give at least one session on SharePoint. One topic will be around helping IT Professionals understand the basics of SharePoint, as from my experience most people supporting SBS networks really have no idea about where to start troubleshooting when something goes wrong with SharePoint. This sessions will show them exactly where they should be looking. I’ll post up more details about this session and some others I have planned as the agenda gets firmed up (we are still waiting on a few vendors to confirm their attendance).
Perhaps more important that the technical discussions is the ability to network with fellow IT Professionals, before, during and after the event. Even if you can’t attend one of the two days I’d encourage you to come along to the pre and post dinners and network with attendees. Over the last three events we have generally found that many people actually discover they get just as much from these networking opportunities as they do the technical presentations.
So, where do you find out more information about the Backup++ event? Visit http://event.smbitpro.com.au for all the details including prices and registration. The front page of the site is actually an RSS feed so you can subscribe there to get all the updates as we get closer to the event. We already over one third full and expect more registrations as the event approaches so if you are considering attending please do as I’d love to see you there. If you can’t stay tuned to the web page for the next workshop event hosted by SMBITPro – Sydney.
CIAOPS 
