[Klug-general] Methods of Gaining Linux Skills to Work in Industry

[J D Freeman]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 07:14:24PM +0000, Ben Sutton wrote:
> >ARE YOU MAD?!
> Yes.

Thats a good start :p

> > Do you fully understand what you are letting yourself in for?
> No.

Come along at the weekend and talk to some of those who work in the sort
of thing you are after.

> > Are you really good?
> 
> I don't know, depends on what scale and particular skills.

This is the really fun one. I don't know where you are going to end up
employed, but its very hard to show more than a noddy level of
experience with just what you run at home. This means you need to show
things in a wider scale. With a few notable exceptions, most employers
you will want to work for will value your experience over any bits of
paper you can wave about (A thermometer has a degree and you know where
they shove that). So you Need to show experience. This produces a really
funky chicken and egg problem, can't get a job cos you need experience,
can't get experience as you don't have a job. So you need to move
sideways. See what you can get in the way of voluntary work. Look at
local charities who want someone to do some support for them. Or as Karl
said, get involved in big OSS projects.

The other thing to consider, and something alot of geeks fail on, is
that your CV needs to show more than just skills and expereince. You
need to show that you can work in a team, work with others, work alone,
communicate properly using many different media. Etc... Ultimately, you
need to prove you are a human, not just some sad nerd. This is an area
alot of people fail on. Consider how you can show these things.

In fashion these days are competance based interviews, where you get a
question like:

"Can you give us an example where you have demonstrated your ability to
work in a team?" 

Which is a tough one, to improv on. Think about your answer.

My personal pet hates for interview questions are: "Why do you want this
job?" - 'Cos I need money, and your job looks fun' is what you want to
say. or "What is your biggest weekness?" - To big a weekness and they
wont want you, play it wrong you look arrogant. Etc...

As we spoke on friday, I can help you further with this lot in the pub
on friday, bring a couple of print outs of your cv, and a couple of
pens. Will see what we can do to help.

> > Answer these questions fully, then we can proceed.
> 
> I'm confident in my ability to develop skills and work towards the things
> I'd like to achieve.  I'm not sure I could walk into a job involving Linux
> server administration and succeed today - which is partially my reason for
> posting to the list.  Some of the posts have made it clear there are some
> gaps in my knowledge that I may encounter day to day in this role.  There
> have been some great replies giving me ideas how I can work towards plugging
> these gaps, and for that, I'm thankful.

Think about how you would show this in an interview, what examples can
you give?

J
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFFtnH+42M0lILkmGIRAv0EAKCjYiZKft4/N2p3FCKTmwTeUGvJKgCfTHWP
aNDXQQqo/BmLfqJhJwrzt/8=
=tY08
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----