[AusNOG] Job: Head of Network Operations - NEXTDC - SydneyC

[Ben Buxton]

I can give you a critique of your resume if you'd like to email it to me. I
don't know of any Melbourne jobs, but I can let you know what to expect
from it and/or reword to help it through.

Bb

On Sun, 22 Feb 2015 15:10 Michael Wheeler <michael at michael-wheeler.org>
wrote:

> I'm yet to find a company that is ok with "jack of all trades" resume in
> Melbourne out of the 50+ jobs I've applied for. Apparently showing any sort
> of interest outside of Network Engineering results in your resume being
> thrown out.
>
> Anyone aware of any jobs that might be lurking around Melbourne? At this
> stage I'd be willing to answer phones for a NOC.
>
> On 22 February 2015 at 13:25, Cameron Ferdinands <cameron at jferdinands.com>
> wrote:
>
>> +1 I wrote out this long reply but this pretty much.... nail....
>> head.. Especially about "jack of all trades" fitting into large
>> networks well, very well. When I look around this is a commonality of
>> our best people.
>>
>> > Apply for positions at your dream company, even if you think you might
>> not cut it. Many/most of my colleagues never thought they'd get the job,
>> but did.
>>
>> Absolutely, what do you have to lose? Worst case you get a job offer
>> to present to your boss for that raise.
>>
>> The other note, virtualization of network equipment has never been
>> easier, and if you run out of compute there's plenty of that on tap
>> now (<shameless plug> AWS </shameless plug>) if you want those 400
>> routers, that's within your reach for less then $50 for a couple of
>> hours. -- If you have issues getting $50 together for AWS, do let me
>> know.
>>
>>
>> On 22 February 2015 at 14:02, Ben Buxton <bb.ausnog at bb.cactii.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > I will chime in here, I've interviewed well over a hundred network
>> engineer
>> > candidates for Google (hi Phil!). Some personal thoughts here...
>> >
>> > On Sun Feb 22 2015 at 9:14:36 AM Skeeve Stevens
>> > <skeeve+ausnog at theispguy.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> I'm seeing a massive amount of foreign application these days (90%) but
>> >> equally missing relevant experience and the certifications rarely seem
>> to be
>> >> as 'solid' as locals.
>> >>
>> >> What strategies are Google/AWS using to find good candidates locally -
>> if
>> >> you don't mind telling us?
>> >
>> >
>> > I think I've found your problem.
>> >
>> > 90+% of the world's network engineers live outside Australia, so it only
>> > makes sense that you will get a substantial number of applications from
>> > overseas.
>> >
>> > My experience tells me the following generalisations (there are
>> exceptions):
>> >
>> > - Certs are a poor signal that someone may be a good candidate.
>> Candidates
>> > with and without certs are equally likely to perform well in a technical
>> > interview and job. All it tells me is that they can memorise and rattle
>> off
>> > the vendor literature. In fact, I tend to find that those with large
>> cert
>> > counts are particularly poor candidates as they seem to lack actual
>> > experience and cant work through oddball real-life problems.
>> >
>> > - The location of a candidate has no correlation with how good they are.
>> > There are equally good candidates from around the world. You need to
>> seek
>> > locally first to get a 457 i think, but there's only 1% of candidates
>> > locally.
>> >
>> > - Candidates who have worked in large companies can often have very
>> narrow
>> > experience due to siloing. They may have just touched the firewalls, or
>> the
>> > access side, or the peering edge. Whereas often candidates from smallish
>> > companies/networks often have had to be "jack of all trades" and their
>> > dealing with knock-on effects across infrastructure mean they can
>> quickly
>> > become brilliant engineers at large networks.
>> >
>> > So by excluding (or strongly biasing against) foreign candidates, those
>> > without certs, and those from smaller companies, you have just gone and
>> > dropped your pool of quality engineers by 90%. There's your problem.
>> >
>> > Go and find good engineers by speaking with them about interesting
>> > engineering challenges rather than first looking for CCIE numbers. And
>> be
>> > open to global candidates.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Or... what advice would you give to engineers who might be missing in
>> some
>> >> experience, to help them fill the gaps?
>> >
>> >
>> > Be curious. Turn on interesting protocols in a lab and fire up
>> > wireshark/tcpdump on them. Break them in interesting ways (and see what
>> > tcpdump shows). Write some software to do tedious tasks for you.
>> >
>> > Dont just memorise the cert cram material. This becomes really obvious
>> to a
>> > seasoned interviewer.
>> >
>> > Apply for positions at your dream company, even if you think you might
>> not
>> > cut it. Many/most of my colleagues never thought they'd get the job, but
>> > did.
>> >
>> > Unfortunately it seems you may need certs to get past some resume
>> > screeners...but you probably wont be happy working for those companies.
>> >
>> > BB
>> >
>> >
>>
> _______________________________________________
>> AusNOG mailing list
>> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
>> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>>
> _______________________________________________
> AusNOG mailing list
> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/attachments/20150222/b817d77b/attachment.html>