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Marketing Yourself as an IT Jack-of-All-Trades?
ultimatemonty asks: "As an IT professional looking for a new job, I'm trying to figure out how to market myself as a 'jack-of-all-trades' IT worker. I'm currently employed at a medium sized university as a video conferencing specialist. I'm good (competent) at many IT related tasks (Linux server management, programming, Windows/Linux desktop support, video conferencing support, etc...), but specialize or excel in none of them, sort of like the lone IT manager in a small shop. What kinds of jobs would the you look for with this kind of work experience, and how would you market yourself (design your resume, cover letter, and so forth) to prospective employers so they get the full-breadth of your capabilities, without over-stating your abilities?"
Oh wait! You said Jack of all trades! My bad! I thought I saw 2 'f's there.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
If you list a bunch of divergent technologies on your resume, and you describe yourself as a jack of all trades, employers basically see you as a junior admin with exposure to a lot of different technologies that really doesn't know all that much (especially given the huge number of resumes out there that list technologies in the "skills" section because the applicant once read about it in a magazine or something).
Tailor your resume to fit each specific job you apply for. If the job is Windows heavy, emphasize your Windows work on your resume. If the job is Linux heavy, emphasize your Linux work. Also, don't just list what you know, list what you've done. Tell them about your big project that saved the company $10 million. That sort of thing holds a lot more weight than telling them you once logged in to a VMS machine.
Basically, employers don't need to know and don't care about the full breadth of your capabilities: they care about what you can do for them. Do not just shotgun a laundry list resume to a thousand different companies, make sure each resume you send out specifically addresses how you can fill the need the company has, as evidenced by their job posting.
While a "Jack of all trades" is great you a hook to sell yourself on. Pick something you enjoy doing both as a hobby and for work and then become an expert in that field. If you really are competent then the step up from "good" to "great" shouldn't be that hard and great should be enough to get you the job except for very specialist roles.
Also be honest when you get interviews. There is nothing wrong with saying you have recently decided to aim at a particular area in which to become an expert.
You are worrying more about the problem than just getting on with it.
as a generalist, you could qualify as "sysadmin" at a smaller shop, which because of their IT budget, usually means "guy that knows how to do everything for us". I'd emphasize creative problem-solving abilities and a drive to arrive at good solutions quickly.
Of course, you'll want to avoid coming off too arrogant -- no one wants to hire an I.T. jackass-of-all-trades, but we all know a few!
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I found myself in a similar situation, and found a place that suits me perfectly. It's a small development shop. I'd definitely recommend trying to find a smaller company; the smaller, the more freedom you have to use all your skills. Seems the larger the company, the more specialized they believe their IT folks need to be. The smaller, the less particular jobs are a specific person's responsibility. Just my two cents.
"Actually, I enjoyed this in the same vague, horrible way I enjoyed the A-Team" P. Opus
I would say overstate what you know in your resume, any technology you have touched for more then 5min should be on there. If you are good at picking things up and understand how technology works in general you are way better off then 95% of IT workers out there. I work as a consultant and I see people with 10+ years of experience on a single product and in 20min of reading a manual i am more proficient in it and able to do more. There end up to be two types of people that interview you, one that looks for the bullet points and if you don't have them you don't move forward, second the tech person who should be more interested in your base knowledge and your ability to learn then knowing some small detail.
I've been on both sides of the desk with regards to IT staffing and interviews. The resume and cover letter were the least important factors. For me, the interview was most important, followed by professional references. This is not meant to belittle the value of a comprehensive and professionally done resume. I'm of the opinion that you should place more emphasis on the interview(s).
If I were the interviewer, I'd want to know that you can solve problems without creating more problems. That you know when you don't know an answer. That you know how to find the solution. That you're presentably dressed and groomed. That you are at least competent when it comes to communication and interpersonal relations. To me, these factors are more important than a list of operating systems you've administered. The "IT" part of "IT professional" is relatively easy, a solved problem at the very least. It's the "professional" part that eludes some people.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I really think the next easiest option is to look at the things you have done and specialize in what you like the most. If you like programming, learn to program well, be able to answer basic questions like what is a linked list (or more complex questions) - learn one language well, as well as the basics of programming that you find in books like "Code Complete". If you like server management do that.
I am a UNIX systems administrator, and for me, even this is a very broad definition. I understand that firmware/time-of-day should be in sync across CPU/memory boards on Sun Enterprise 4000's, or that the file /etc/redhat-release is the file which shows which version of Red Hat you are running, but I can tell you it is very, very rare in interviews to find people who would know both those things. You're lucky if someone "strong in Linux" even knows that about Red Hat. I have to say that Solaris people tend to know their stuff better (and this is coming from a Linux fan). So I consider it difficult to bridge these two things, which are very close, and you are talking about all over the place.
My suggestion would be to specialize in one thing, and learn it well. I had to rank a Google job application on how well I knew something, I forget if the scale was 1-10 or not, but you should specialize in something and get to know it as a 9. Being a jack of all trade is fine, meaning having 3-6 ability in other things, but you should know one thing well - something you enjoy and think has a future. Once you master that one thing, then you can work on getting other things up to 9, but I meet so few people who are at level 10, 9, or even 8 for what I need, I would reiterate to learn one thing well. A real jack of all trades knows multiple things at say an 8 level, but that is rare. We have one where I work, but he knows many things at a high level. Someone who knows lots of things at a 4-6 level I generally find useless, in any environment.
If you are truly a generalist, then it should be easy to tailor the information on your resume to suit the position you're applying for and market the "extra" skills as a bonus when you land the interview. So if the position you are looking for is say an Exchange Administrator you list that as being a "Primary" skills and then list your other skills seperately. When hiring managers or HR people have to hunt around your resume to find what they are looking for they'll pass you over.
That said, if you want to do a mish mosh of just about anything you want to look at a smaller company that has a small IT team or maybe a start-up but start-ups eventually grow (or die) and you might find your self having to pick a role. Your other option here could also be contract work, it's a great way to do varying things provided you're only landed quick contracts.
In the end I'd advise you pick a specialty and see it through. Generalism is fine but if you want to be the best you specialize. Pick the one thing you're best at or love the most and pursue it with everything you got. You're general knowledge will never be wasted, everything ties together in one way or another. I was a bit of a generalist too and when I really focused on my speciality my general knowledge really paid off since I could always talk about my work in the larger context of what was going on.
Oops, how did this get here?
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When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. By commanding diverse technology, you're able to develop solutions to best suit the customer rather than just doing what you did everywhere else. If you want to make an analogy to the medical field, while there are specialists for feet, brain surgery, etc, at the end of the day, you call a doctor for your initial diagnosis, not a neurosurgeon.
Another thing you can do that no one else can is a nuts-to-bolts solution from the bottom up from a problem -- you can manage a solution from the get-go rather than being "the oracle guy". Large consulting companies like IBM do solutions that are sometimes agnostic w.r.t. implementation.
Lastly, you're an independent worker -- you can find solutions where none exist! This is terrific for many positions.
Some ideas of places where you'd be good: I work for a large software company who does road shows regularly. There's an IT guy who goes to set up our servers/clients/etc who needs to know how all of it works -- he can't call the database guy to help him. Freelance IT Professional -- there's quite a few places (car dealerships, small businesses, etc) which need IT infrastructure but can't pay for a full-time IT guy. Just ask around, you'll be surprised at how many places need help (and how well it pays) and you're one of the few people who could do it (warning: requires people-skills). Last idea: larger consulting company like IBM. IBM builds call centers and stuff all over the place and needs people who can implement solutions as well as think them up to work in existing IT environments.
You sound like a very qualified employee who I'd rather hire than the "oracle guy", since I bet you can learn oracle whereas other IT guys get stuck in specialization ruts.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
That's the title.
Some places think a Network Admin is someone who administers a network. They're wrong.
Those are called Network specialists or something like that.
Generally a company of 20 to 100 employees hires one IT guy to support all desktops, the servers if any, the website, Internet connection, managers' blackberries, the occasional phone issue and the president's home computer (and his children's Xbox). That my friend, is a network administrator, occasionally called a system administrator.
IT Technician, IT Administrator or IT guy are also used. As soon as you hit 2 IT employees, you are called an IT manager and everyone stops worrying about what to call you while you start looking for IT Director jobs on dice all day.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
It really depends. Your targets probably are small shops and startups, particularly if you have any real experience, unless you can find a position that touches the bulk of your skillset.
My own resume is about 5 years of programming, a year or so of build/release, and 6 years of QA, along with a lot of general IT and strategic skills. For a while, I had problems with dilution--I wasn't really in the programming space anymore, didn't have enough build/release to be more than junior there, and didn't have enough QA to make it a slam dunk to pay me at my overall experience level.
In my case, I went to software test automation, which synthesizes all these skills, and have done quite well in that space. But in addition, I regularly get hit up by startups who want to cover two or three hats with one person. Eventually, with enough experience, you'll be in demand if you can ride out those early years.
The trick, if you go that route, is you really need to be quite competent in everything you sell yourself as (or at least be able to inspire confidence until you can get to the man page or O'Reilly book). Otherwise, you're only really as marketable as your best skill. That's why it can just be a lot easier to concentrate on one thing. Of course, if that skill goes overseas or otherwise becomes obsolete in the local workforce, you're screwed.
Those that employ Hammer-Engineers and Screwdriver-Engineers, as opposed to those who employ carpenters.
... "3, but I've been a sysadmin for 15 and did other backup software etc etc..", "No, we're looking for a Veritas Netbackup Engineer who did this for at least 5 years". These people see me as a junior netbackup "engineer" of 3 year experience and lots of totally irrelevant other history. As far as they care, I could have been shoveling shit for the rest of my career, it wouldn't matter. They can't see the relevance.
I'm in the same spot you are. I'm a coder, a sysadmin, I do server support, desktop support, network support, firewalls, routers, topology planning, you name it. Geek through and through.
My experience teaches me I'll NEVER be happy in a place that hires Hammer Engineers. Why? for one thing, because I'd be undervalued from day one ("How many years of experience do you have managing Veritas Netbackup?"
Now, if by any odd fate you'd end up working there, you'd be sitting among people who made a career of running Netbackup, or Solstice Disksuite, or BMC, or notepad, or whatever. People the majority of whom cannot manage their own windows box. People who don't meddle and tweak and experiment what they're given to, seeing themselves as specialists in their field and knowing nothing but ("You're a SOLARIS administrator! WHY are you wasting your time on practicing your coding skills?!")
This is, of course, an extreme case, but it's a real-life one I've worked on and hated every second.
Contributing factors are size of company, non-technical management (the level of management directly responsible for hiring the tech people, not senior management) that have limited capability of gouging how well a candidate fits a role other than by narrowing down the scope of the role to something their non-technical minds can grasp and putting a numeric estimate (# of years experience) on that. Companies with high employee turnover rates that use these narrow-scope-job-roles to easily replace people, etc.
I'm not an Open Source fanboy. I'm pragmatic both ends of the divide, and am just as good using paid solutions as unpaid ones. I'm for *thinking*, then doing what's best. These hammer-engineer-hiring companies typically stay away from the thinking bit, some having policies dictated by FUD-overfed clueless management. When I mentioned simple solutions like using some Open Source tools, I ran into a fucking concrete wall, just making me more frustrated.
I've since moved to a company that hires carpenters. ONLY carpenters. When I hit here, there were 3 of us taking care of a 300-odd-employee organization, ~100-200 servers, 3 int'l subsidiaries, and everything from PABX to desktops to servers. Needless to say, all three of us were complete JOAT's that had the required skills to put into production anything the organization required, given access to google, the net, and a reasonable amount of time to learn and implement the topic.
We've since become 8 people, and being a Jack-of-All-Trades is the only way one would ever get to work here. The sysadmins code, the coders can do their [linux!] desktop box without desktop support changing their diapers.
This kind of employer is YOUR home court. Whereas you would almost always be undervalued, underpromoted and underpaid at the former kind, here you are valued significantly higher than a specialized candidate. Needless to say, the proximity of likeminded individuals will very simply and in the most literal sense, make your work really really fun.
If I had a gazillion dollars, I'd quit my former job, yet I would keep working at this one because I enjoy it.
To narrow down the places you want to be looking for, look for the following:
1. Places that are not afraid to use open-source. More often then not (obviously not always) this requires people who "know their shit" to properly piece together and manage.
When I was looking for a job, I found the following search criteria to plug into job-ad searches to
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There are an awful lot of "that doesn't work" sort of replies, but I'd beg to differ.
The jobs are MUCH harder to find than specialized jobs, because you'll be working for a small firm- a startup, or some other limited size organization. They wont' be the ones posting on monster.com - craigslist, maybe, but not the big job sites.
If you don't find anything by casually looking around, you might want to get creative and inventive. I landed a job once by directly approaching the owner of a company who was growing 300% per year and selling the idea of "do it right from the start" sort of IT approach. Actually, it was a 6 month contract with the option to hire me at the end (which I refused, even though he wanted me). I set up Active Directory, established policies and procedures, built up their infrastructure, data storage, accounting and upgraded their workstations. I built their website into something useful instead of boring and empty and I built a helpdesk that could help manage the company as it grew bigger.
I'm currently "IT Director" for a small company. I only have one person working for me, but I'm paid alright. I think folks are right when they say that generalists have a salary cieling. It's a unfortunate truth that unless I'm willing to go into corporate middle-management where I could potentially make a ton of money, but be busy in board meetings and very rarely get my hands dirty, I'm stuck with a 5-figure salary. High 5-figures, but still stuck. However, within a startup, you can position yourself as a driver of ideas and perhaps end up in upper management as the company grows. There are additional benefits such as stock options, profit sharing and such, that are not available to your average specialized techie within the corporate world.
The stock options from my previous employer are starting to look very tantalizing as there are rumors of a buyout or IPO circulating. Suddenly, 10,000 shares begins to look like $500,000 and my time stuck behind a $70k salary quickly begins to morph into an actual paycheck of more than $200k per year, but on the other hand, a poor startup can end up costing you money as you find yourself working without pay now and then when money is tight, only to see the company fold just as you are expecting a Christmas bonus.
Fortunately, my recent experience has set me up as a bit of a security specialist and I've begun to do some contract work for a large security company, deploying firewalls, security appliances and such. This job, if i were to take it full time, would definitely be a 6-figure opportunity and would lead to potential future contracts with customers that often pay 6-figures for 6 months of work doing highly specialized security deployment and management.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
"The days of the one page resume are long gone."
ummmm No.
Average time a person spends on a resume, 12 seconds.
It better be short, it better list what they are looking for at the top, and your first sentence needs to make them want to read more.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You don't have 3 years .NET experience with RUP and Agile development methodologies. Forget it.
It better be short, it better list what they are looking for at the top, and your first sentence needs to make them want to read more.
A JoaT needs a long resume if they want to demonstrate the range and flexibility and variety of solutions they can bring to the company. The solution is the split resume: a summary with the major hit points, ideal for the 12-second scan, followed by the 2-3 page compendium that prepares the interested employer for the interview.
Maybe you haven't done any hiring, or work at unimaginative corporate hives, but that 12 seconds is generally used for sorting, and the short list candidates get the long treatment, where the laundry list resume is more than useful.
I've been hired as executive director of an organization that required me to build turnkey editing systems and assist with IT in the parent organization, do creative design and production, marketing and admin and business planning work, design curriculum, speak at conferences, and competently address social justice issues. Very, very few eligible candidates. Similarly, I've worked at startups where the JoaT position was a necessary evil at first, and the long resume clinched those jobs. YMMV.
Damn those pesky terrorists
You really didn't specify what kind of company you prefer. And the answer to your question will come down to that particular preference.
If you want a job in any Mid-Enterprise ($200M to $1B annual revenue) size company or above, you will generally *NOT* be a jack of all trades. These companies generally have HR personnel, and are big enough that managers are generally not plopping down on Monster.com and finding resumes. As such, any HR person or recruiter is going to cull resumes (no matter where they get them from) based on a few keywords. If their looking for a NOC technician, they'll search for network, monitoring, Cisco (or whatever the infrastructure is) and maybe a few other key pieces (CiscoWorks, etc.). If they find a resume with those keywords duplicated a few times, especially over a few jobs, they'll pass it on to the hiring manager. If they don't see those words, they generally just bit-bucket it and move on.
As such, as many other have mentioned, if you are looking at any larger organization, you need to target your resume to a real job. Sending in resume's randomly not knowing what jobs are open won't work. Sure, they'll have a policy that resume's submitted need to be kept on file for X months, but my experience is that older stuff, which isn't fresh in the persons mind, just never gets dredged up.
For full disclosure, my company does IT staffing, although I'm not in that portion of the business. However, I've now seen that from the inside and out, and every company we work with, and every staffing firm we work with, they all work the same way.
Now, if you're going for a small company, with fewer than 100 employees and not much in the way of critical needs, then you can play the jack of all trades and get away with it. These companies can't/won't afford an expert in each technology, and mostly need someone with enough knowledge to keep the running on a day to day basis, as well as plan for the future as it comes along. However, such jobs can be a pain (you'll never know when you'll simply get deluged with 20 broken laptops in one day right after the email server gets hit with a spam onslaught and the local phone company suddenly decided to route your main DID number to another county. And they can also cause stress in the sense that in many of those companies you'll be close enough to top management that you'll be forced to interact with them, but many, if not all, won't have a clue about what you do. Justifying upgrades can be a real pain in the a$$, and the overtime can get old.
I have a good friend who works for a fairly famous small firm here in my town. He's the go-to guy for everything more complicated than an electrical pencil sharpener. The smartest thing he ever did was go to the owner early on and let her know that there were some things he couldn't do, some things he wouldn't do, and there were times when he wasn't going to be able to do them. For each of these things, he gave her a strategy for supporting them (say, having service contracts on ultra-high end printers, or having a local company that could provide on-site and phone support when he went on vacation a few times a year.
So it really depends on what you want, and what kind of company. You have to tailor your resume and job search to that segment.
And remember: the best jobs never get posted on the internet, but get snapped up via word of mouth within days of someone deciding they're going to hire someone. Never, ever underestimate the power of networking and talking and keeping in contact with people from your past.
Bill
It better be short, it better list what they are looking for at the top, and your first sentence needs to make them want to read more.
I believe this might be a US thing. Here in Australia, multi-page Resumes are the norm, and if you don't have enough information on your Resume to give the person reading it a fairly good idea of your skills and experience, they'll just bin it.
As an Australian, working for a US company, that has to interview US applicants, I find the "one-page Resume" to be incredibly frustrating. There's never enough information included to tell anything useful about the applicant unless it's either a) an applicant who's very new to the industry or b) an entry-level job like L1 helpdesk where applicants don't really need many skills past a pulse. This means I have to do, at the very least, a preliminary phone interview to find out whether or not the applicant is even worth bringing in for a "real" interview - an annoying and time-consuming proposition (doubly so for me since I have to line-up timezones appropriately to call people in the US).
Contrast this to the Resumes I receive from Australian applicants, who typically include academic qualifications, industry qualifications and job histories *with details* of responsibilities, achievements, skills gained, procedures, etc. Sure, there's a one-page summary that has a brief outline (what an American applicant would call the whole Resume) but it *also* includes more in-depth information allowing me to get a good feel for how the applicant has spent the last few years of their working life, in terms of gaining/exercising skills and experience.
The end result is that I can spend 30 - 60 seconds looking at each Resume's summary page, to quickly weed out people who are clearly unsuitable (eg: Electrical Engineering degree, about 30 years old, last 3 jobs in another country, applying for a L1 helpdesk job), then go back and spend 2 - 10 minutes for each Resume in the remaining pool finding the people who actually look suitable for the job, and make the shortlist for interviewing. Thus, by the time I actually get around to calling them in for an interview, I am already reasonably confident they have the requisite skills and experience, and the interview becomes about a) *verifying* (as opposed to discovering) their technical abilities (easier, relatively speaking) and determining whether or not they have the right attitude and personality.
I have yet to see a "single page Resume" that has told me anything truly useful about an applicant. A page's worth of bulleted previous employers, boilerplate "skills" and "responsibilities" one-liners, and "achievements" of maybe a sentence or two each, just doesn't have enough meat in it to determine whether or not an applicant is capable (purely from a skills and experience perspective) of doing the job. Subsequently, I've ended up getting in further contact with some applicants who were clueless and, I'm sure, missing a few that would have made excellent employees.
Slashdotters, what's it like in the UK, Canada, etc ? What style of Resume is typical in those places - just the one-page summary, or a one-page summary backed up by a relatively detailed explanation ?