Career question (1 Viewer)

kilroyscarnival

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Hello! I've visited the forums in the past to find information to help me out of a jam in Access or Excel, and have always found it very helpful.

I'm a research director for local television stations in the U.S. When I started doing this work over 10 years ago, it seemed like there were always research people needed at big TV stations. In a short time, with media ownership consolidation and a downturn in the economy, I very rarely see job postings anymore in my field.

Our new owners just downsized seven people in our location, and though for the time being my job is safe, I don't want to be the last to read the writing on the wall. Within my company there's no opportunity for my advancement, and I'm not sure a better opportunity in my niche will be 'out there' when I want it.

So I've been thinking of taking my small set of skills working with data and really honing them, perhaps getting some college credits, and working towards becoming a database specialist. I'm more or less self-taught when it comes to Excel and Access, and whilst among my coworkers I'm the 'expert', I still have to scramble through to find solutions. If nothing else, sharpening my skills will make me better at my present job, but I feel I need to find something else for the long-term.

I would love any constructive input from anyone about what types of books to read, courses to take, degree to pursue, and anything else you suggest, especially as it may pertain to making myself marketable to U.S. companies. Thanks very much.

Best regards,

Ann
 
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Spend thousands of dollars every year on education including books, training, magazines, memberships, and conventions. That's the only way to keep up in the ever changing technical world. Otherwise, you find the world has moved on and you have no marketable skills. Spend tons of time reading this and other sites developed exclusively to your chosen sub-field.
 

Len Boorman

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Are you aware of Learning Tree International ?.
If you want to start learning these are people who offer trainingcourses and certifications thatI believe are recognised in the US. Even better if you canpersuade somebody else to pay the course fees

Len
 

rsmonkey

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at the end of the day qualifications (unless specialist) mean not that much to corporations. Qualifications are there for the inexperienced to gain a stepping stone into business. So you have to do a number of things.
Quantify you're skillset & experience. What do you want to become.
You must realise that access is pretty mundane within business, which is used really for quick RAD development projects, rather than a proper funded project. If youre looking to do database develeopment then thats not a bad field to be in as its one of those skills which is being very much overlooked (in the UK at least). This is where I think access is great for learning the theory behind DB's in a visual manner.

You have to be aware that development is predominantly being exported to 'development farms' (warehouse of coders) in India / China etc.... However this leaves a niche market of application maintenance / support / modification. i.e. you get these development farms to create the core of the program but unfortunately the nature of these developments generally creates loadsa bugs & then needs further development to be a more focused tool for the business. Companies also prefer to have inhouse developers to prevent having to play communication tennis on requirements etc.. So generally I would look to going back to college as a last resort unless completely necessary. Get your CV together looking swish & apply for some perspective jobs. Obviously have your interview skills up to date having some challenges you've faced etc etc... Companies much prefer experience, i have many self taught friends doing application development. good luck
 

Len Boorman

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rsmonkey speaks a lot of sense.
The sort of progression I would look for
1) Get some formal education in Access because understanding the technology of databases is essential.
2) use this to get a foot in the door.
3) look to move up heading for Oracle
4) get a certificate for all courses you attend

Yes companies do look for experience but my view is that they also look at you as a person and how did you get the experience. Totally self taught is admirable and I know that there are some very knowledgeable people on this forum who are self taught. They also have an enormous amount of experience. In order to sell yourself I suggest that some formal education can help to balance an initial shortage of experience. As you move up then the experience plays a bigger part.... but you have to get in the door first

Good Luck

L
 

dan-cat

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This is going to sound kind of big-headed but alot of companies don't actually know what they want.

I was tending a contract for a company that had long-term web projects to be developed. I told them that if they wanted on-going development flexibility/stability then a proper n-tier architecture would have to be used. The current web developer argued that 'it's just a web-site, it doesn't need to be complicated, just develop as you go'. This 'quick and dirty' approach appealed to them.

I'm re-developing one of their sites now as I mentioned in a previous post, and discovered a 2mb xml file being reloaded 5 seperate times on a single page load event. I suspect that each time they 'developed as they went' they decided to copy and paste the script that reloaded the xml file instead of refactoring the entire page load procedure.

In the end you have to demonstrate a benefit to their business. This quite often means clean-up operations and the patience to rise above the 'quick and dirty' relationship between business and contractor. Takes alot of work too. ;)
 

Fifty2One

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While you feel your job is safe start getting the formal education for your future ventures. Many companies will foot the bill or part of the cost of higher education so cash in on that if you can. There is lots of employment possibilities in development or re-development.
These days you always need to have a Plan B because a lot of people walk into their job at 9:00 to discover by 9:15 they are the lucky recepient of a severence package as a parting gift in the Outsource Lotto.
 

Len Boorman

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A lot of experience coming out on this thread.

Yup been there are been lumbered with the quick and dirty to resolve.

Fortunately I am at the age where I can say "We either do it properly or you get somebody else".

Not everybody is in that position ... I understand but I totally agree with guys above. Companies frequently really do not know what they are getting into, what they actually want and who can provide a solution that can be extended as the business changes.

Len
 

kilroyscarnival

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Thank you all for your thoughts and advice. There's a lot here to consider. I also asked my IT manager in-house, off the record, when we were discussing the recent job eliminations and so forth. He gave me some good input as well. I will refer back to this as I get out there and explore. Thanks for your time and input!

Best regards,

Ann
 

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