From: Howard C. Berkowitz (hcb@gettcomm.com)
Date: Fri Apr 02 2004 - 16:28:04 GMT-3
At 12:34 PM -0600 4/2/04, Sam Munzani wrote:
>Wow!!!. If such fresh CCIE with such attitude is judging potential
>candidates, I am sure they will not find right person.
>
>Recently I had taken some interviews for potential candidates at my company.
>I go through candidate resumes and ask questions based on their projects.
>Once I came across a person who had 17 years or real hands on experience in
>consulting world. Many impressive Optical & satellite communication
>rollouts. I honestly told the guy that he would get bored at my company and
>he agreed. Then I utilized rest of interview time listening him on a few of
>his best projects and design desicions. I learned a lot from him in that
>interview.
>
>One other guy I came across had half page of publication list including 3
>RFCs and many technical papers. He knew 12 programming/scripting languages.
>I courteously sent him an e-mail that we would hire him in a heartbit but he
>will definately get bored at support role. I still keep his resume and try
>to use that as my goal.
Speaking as someone sadly underemployed, I wish companies would
consider creative approaches to the valid question of getting bored.
In this job market, it's entirely possible that you might get someone
with an extensive background, who is willing to take what everyone
agrees would be a short-term assignment in support. Part of the
agreement would be to train people there.
In an especially win-win situation, being present in some role might
give either side an idea about a more senior role that could be
filled -- one that may not even be recognized now.
Given the uncertainty of any employment today, the "get bored and
leave" phenomenon isn't quite what it once was. Now, some reasonably
clueful large ISPs recognized that somebody good in 2nd or 3rd level
support would average, even in a good economy, 13 months or so in the
job. What can be a win-win approach is to have paths mapped out from
support.
Remember that someone in support, especially for a service or
application provider, is going to learn a lot about your products and
services. That knowledge could very well translate into good sales
support or, where it's present, development or product management.
Even in an enterprise environment, if the network group regards
itself as an "internal ISP", there's a role for something that
doesn't always have a good description -- quality analyst, customer
advocate, etc. -- someone that goes to the customers/business units,
analyzes logs and utilization statistics, and tries to head off
problems before they become problems.
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