[AusNOG] Work experience in networking/telecoms/DCs? Getting my foot in the door?

[David Walsh]

Hear hear Ryan. Well said.

On Dec 26, 2014 11:36 AM, Ryan Crouch <ryan at apexn.com.au> wrote:
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> Hey AusNOG,
>
> There's been some great points that many have brought up in this thread. The most important of those for me that I would endorse are typically the work hard, research all of the technology and also don't be afraid of mistakes.
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> From my perspective, I find the personality and ability to communicate of a candidate with both staff and customers to be one of THE most important factors. You can always teach people new technical skills, but it's difficult to shape someone's inter-personal skills and also attitudes/hunger for knowledge.
>
> As someone who's interviewed many hundreds of people for positions both locally and globally, the whole textbook employee is always a factor. Someone who's honest about what they can  and can't do and can also talk about their experiences with a degree of confidence and pride will always 'rate' better. Massive points go to those who know when something is out of their league and they can explain how they might tackle it themselves while also highlighting how they can avoid impacting the situation further. If their responses are customer focussed then there's even more points to be had.
>
> Just one general thing that disappoints me in this entire industry more than 'textbook' qualifications is the lack of female candidates. I suspect it's got a lot to do with the type of work but I truly wish there were more applications for network engineering (or even just technical) roles by women. In the US/EU we had a few, but in Australia out of about 300 applications in the last couple of years for roles locally I have yet to see one. I know there are a few of them out there, but it's very very rare. Both men and women have differing strengths and weaknesses and often I find they tackle things from different approaches and a broad cover of more deep seeded skills across any team is valuable. I have also seen customers that refuse to deal with female technical staff, which probably exacerbates the entire reason there's not that many out there. On the flip side I have seen customers who are extremely 'difficult to work with' for male staff be utterly diffused by a woman in a technical team and they all of a sudden become a non-issue. I wouldn't hire one over another simply based on gender, but I do wish there was a more equal balance of candidates.
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> Just some input/food for thought, merry xmas to you all :)
>
> - Ryan