Resources, Advice & Useful Info.

Resources, Advice & Useful Information

This section gives readers some useful information, advice & resources on careers (including hot jobs and career advice), networking and tech lessons learnt as well as business resources such as Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning and Digital Strategy.

IT/Tech Careers

The below skill sets I am seeing as hot right now:

  • Experience in Amazon Web Services, GCP and Azure (certifications even better),
  • Data Analytics (Data Scientists, Data Engineers)
  • Dev Ops (with automation skills)
  • Software Developers (.net or Java)
  • Internet of Things (IoT) experience
  • CX and UX designers

I am also seeing a shift away from silo’d skills to those that are multi skilled (e.g. networking, scripting, puppet, open stack, Linux, Open Source etc)

Job Searching Advice and Social Media

If you are thinking of looking for your next role, then you should look into refreshing your resume and/or LinkedIn profile, click here for some tips.

Top pick careers site (for general advice): Career Experts UK

The IT Industry in NZ

As part of an ARMS (Auckland Regional Migrant Services) initiative to give new migrants a variety of view points (from recruiters, hiring managers, tech experts etc) on the New Zealand IT industry.   I was asked to give a presentation on careers, job hunting and an overall status of the NZ IT Industry.    The presentation was largely based on my experiences and insights having working and hired in the IT industry in New Zealand for over a decade.

Click here for the presentation

Digital

So not “going Digital” should really not be an option for many organisations, especially if they want to be loved by their people and customers and remain agile enough so they can continually respond to, or even lead the development of disruptive products, services and experiences.

However before embarking on any digital transformation the foundations must also be in place to support this transformation, such as people (with the right mind-set and multi skilled), processes and technology (such as automation, CI/CD, stable infrastructure).

The Business of IT

Strategy:

The business of IT should not just be about keeping the lights on, whereas that may have been a strategy in the past it certainly will not be good enough in this Digital age.  Organisations may require the CIO and IT (or what ever you are calling your internal IT team, e.g. IS or Business Technology) to guide them through periods of significant change or lead Digital strategies and innovation.  IT must therefore be an enabler and leader of change and must ensure it can respond to the current and future needs of the Organisation by being flexible and agile. So how can IT achieve this?  If IT cannot get to grips with this approach, then we may see a proliferation of shadow IT or IT being bypassed by the Organisation in favour of advice from outside influences that can help the Organisation consistently respond to and meet its business objectives.. Read more……

The CIO for a Digital Era:

One way of delivering innovation and stability is to take a two speed approach to execution. Gartner defines this “as the practice of managing two separate coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed”.  Whilst I support the bi-modal approach, I do not agree with focusing solely on innovation at the expense of just keeping the lights on.  In this article, I will look at how taking a “collaborative bi-modal approach” can help a CIO, and ultimately an organisation, to become more innovative and customer focused whilst also transforming the organisation’s legacy systems.  Read more…….

Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Resources:

Have you struggled to start your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning?

If you have, try downloading my Business Continuity Plan Template (by clicking on the button below) that I have created and used successfully on a number of occasions, please feel free to use as much or as little as you require…just an acknowledgement will do.  For more information on planning for a disaster please see one of my other articles by clicking here.

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