Destiny Steps

July 6, a friends buzz me over IM & sent this link over http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/7/6/nation/14754924&sec=nation.

In summary, it was about the human resouce minister reported that :

• Our country has 20,217 registered jobless graduates
• Mainly are ICT graduates
• Reasons of them being jobless was what they studied in Uni/college has become obsolete
• Among these jobless grads, 67% are from public universities & 33 from private colleges
• Many ICT companies have contacted HRD for candidates with professional certifications
• Demands from these ICT companies are good, wanting to hire people in the 100s at a time.
• That graduates did not know how to get information on job vacancies advertised in the ministry’s electronic labour exchange.

 10 days later, another articles on soft skills appeared. http://thestar.com.my/education/story.asp?file=/2006/7/16/education/14806118

I don’t know about others, but I personally found the points in the jobless article to be ironic. I would think whole article sounded like it can be summed up as : 

There are plenty of jobs out there and we also have plenty of university grads. From this HUGE pool of fresh grads, employers are not quite able to find the match they want. Furthermore, the majority of this un-match grads are from the public universities. As such, our authority is blaming it on the institution for outdated courses.

What really is the challenge ? Is it really the courses ? My 2 cents worth of observation is our education system and society that is overly focus on academical delivery & neglected the person development. No doubt it is an important foundation. But foundation it is. That’s all. The % of jobless fresh grad from public university is double the % of private college is also an indirect reflection of many employers choose foreign grads or private colleges/uni. It is not that they deliberately want to do so, but many a time a foreign grad or a private college grad’s quality as a candidate/applicant stands out.

What do I mean ?

Well, I just need to post an ad, I will have loads of fresh grads applications. Lets take this particular one as example. I posted an ad for “Top Norch Developers” with technical skills in J2EE, C, C++, knows UML, OOAD…As usual, many fresh grads applied. But this particular one stands out. She was a twining student to UK. Her CV was simple but it has the very relevant quality that attracts the potential employers. What does she has ?

Apart from the usual biodata, the education back ground…… she has (1) the URL link to a nice simple corporate website she has done for a client (2) a personal internet radio station which she has done in her free time (3) an audio book site developement done out of she own study purpose and other small freelance projects. Under all these headings, she listed & explained briefly the technology use for specific purpose plus drop screens.

Simple. Nothing fancy but it sure spelled out a lot of stuff of this fresh grad.

1. Commitment & passion. It shows this lad chose what she studied for a reason - passion. And she is not about to stop learning just because she has graduated. In fact, she did her own R & D & used new technology & use it for the projects she did. An indication of serious commitment for continous learning & advancement. 
2. Resourcefulness. Resourceful enough to hunt for freelance job. She didn’t wait for instruction to do stuff. She diligently seek out things that she can do.
3. Communication & people skills. The abillity to handle freelance project is also an indication of her ability to communicate, engage with business people & understand business requirements.
4. Self Initiative & Willingness. She certainly doesn’t have that attitude of I have a degree, I am a uni grad, so I deserve big MNC & a big pay with work only with the 9-5 office hour. Instead she took it upon herself to build herself from the very foundation that will cushion her career into the future.

Other quality reflected : direction/goal, knows where she wants to develope herself into, self initiative, a go getter instead of a wait for it to come to me attitude, ……….

Wow, there is so much I can write about this ……………

I have in many occassion been told this statement. It particularly comes from technical candidates, rarely the business/sales candidates. Surprisingly, this statement also rarely come from those who are passionate technically or those who excel greatly in technical.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not mean one shouldn’t be coverting for career growth towards management role. It is certainly good to have a career goal of some sort. However, what really do they mean by “management position”. Yes, what do they define as management ? My finding was it is commonly referred to :

• being put in charge of a few team members, officially or unofficially
• the performance of producing administrative reports & simple coordinative tasks  which the manager above him/her has delegated or instructed.
• to get away from too much of technical work, eg coding part or the actual hands on of system work
• Becoming the messenger between several parties with no actual decision making power which will affect projects/services profitability value
• many more miscelleneous administrative tasks
• some even go to the extend of thinking getting an MBA will be the automatic door opener to management

Really, to put the above into right perspective, it is but just a administrative/runner’s role, not even a junior management role. Furthermore, if this wish is not properly manage, it can become an attitude issue in the eyes of employers.

In a more proper sense, should anyone be involved in any management role, it should include but not exclusively below:

• one will be responsible for the performance of the budget, has the power to decide on the utilisation of the budget with an accountability of saving %
• Resources hiring & firing decisions and its relation to budget,
• Team member appraisal decision including the % of increment
• Power of decision comes with accountability, eg. in the case of project, one will be responsible for conflict management with client (not referring back to manager on top), customer satisfaction & retention accountability to the extend which can cause one’s career, project delivery (if it is not delivered on time, should the client take legal action, you will have to take the stand in court)….
• A big accountability for one or more business revenue streams

And the list go on & on & on….

Well, what am I trying to say ?

1. It is certainly praise worthy for candidates to have a healthy hunger for career growth. However, very often the real reason behind the desire to move that direction was really the candidates wish to quickly get away from technical (either because they are tired of it or they know for a fact they are not that good with it) & move in to a role where they don’t have to be involved in technical but instead satisfied thinking doing some form administrative tasks signify management roles.
2. It is not very wise to let go of technical hands-on for administrative roles. In fact it should a base/foundation to build upon. without it, it could cause you to be stuck in the rut
3. Maintaining a strong technical hands-on, keeping tap of technological changes & being able to keep up it & be good at it while learning the robe on operations aspects over time will strongly strengthen your marketability. As you progress along this line, professional certifications such as PMI/Prince 2, ITIL, ISO, CISSP coupled with technical certifications such as CCNA, CCNP, CCDP, CCIE…….. will potentially open up a lot of doors for you instead of MBA.
4. Time. Time got to be allowed for the above to take shape. It won’t happen over night, it may not even be in 12 - 18 months. It may well over 2-3 years before one will see the fruits of their labour, but it will be worth it because momentum will give you speed in the end.

So, may I encourage those technical candidates, do not think technical career leads to no where. Especially with the current shared services & outsourcing market trend, if you build it right, there are plenty of room for technical people & it will come with a nice price tag in the end.

So, cheers & all the best !!!!

I am just so so swamp, swamp with job assignments. Are they do-able ? Yes, all are do-able. But too many cramp at the same time. I wish I have 36 hours a day, no need to sleep, has extra batteries attached, plus extra brain, 2 more pairs of eyes & hands to go through CVs & call candidates.  

Gawd, why all jobs must come together ? 35 positions to hunt/place, 99% technical…..All of which has very short, I really mean very short, deadline. 2.5 days to produce a good 3 - 5 candidates. Clients must be thinking we are CVs dispensing machine. 

How I wish I have a master list of all people…..Anyone has any solution ?

Contractual employment, contractual engagement. Is there a different and what is the different? This topic came up in one of my conversation with a candidate lately. I thought it will be a very informative & helpful topic to my candidates for me to write about it.

Generally, majority of our hiring today are still the conventional permenant employement. Lets define conventional permenant employment. If you are hired by a company and your employement terms are

1. without a time frame or an expiry date,
2. you are being paid an agreed sum of salary,
3. given EPF & Socso, PAYE is being deducted from your monthly salary
4. misc allowances such as travelling/transport, handphone, broadband, …etc
5. Annual leaves, sick leaves, compassionate leave…
6. Medical & insurance benefits
7. extra extra…
8. If you wish to leave, you are required to give notice abiding to a notice period. Should the company decided to terminate you, they need to do the same. However, should you really be terminated, other than disciplinary reason, you are able to bring the case up to the IR and possibly win a case depending on the situation.

This is what I call the conventional permenant hiring which all of us are familiar with.

What then is contractual employement ?

This type of employement has become more & more apparent or preferred by some MNC since the late 90s. Generally, contractual employement varied just a little from the conventional permenant hire. You have all of the above except there is a duration or an expiry date on the employement contract. This kind of employment works very well for organization with resources need driven by projects span more than a year. This method of employment may also be employed by companies who want to have the liberty of terminating employment contract without much complication on the IR issues. 

Of course, candidates will ask if salary will be higher. Well, not neccesary. It depends on the company but they are not obligated to as they provide on par benefits with the conventional permenant hire.

Now, contractual engagement.

One good example of this will be the SAP contract consultants. They are commonly being engaged for a monthly “fee” with a time frame of probably 6 - 12 months, sometimes longer. On top of this “fee”, nothing else is being given. It is a clean service fee for the services provided. For some case, the candidate may even ask to incorporate an enterprise company & bill the “employer” for the agreed monthly “fee”.

Yes, the pay for this kind of engagement is certainly higher. How then a candidate to calculate the fee they ought to charge? The general rule of thumb will be the compensation should at least be the sum total of

1. expected salary
2. employer’s EPF & Socso
3. Allowances
4. Annual & sick leaves cost (some company may still provide this for a contractual engagement) 
5. medical & insurance cost, eg. insurance premium
6. other cost

This is certainly not a cast & stone’s rule. As far as I know there are companies that pays RM700 - RM1200/day for a DBA & etc. So, it also depends on which company you are dealing with.   

Which type of employement most suitable for you ? Only you know. Are you are risk taker or a risk adverse person ? Have you been managing & planning your finances well ? How many months forward can you live without a job or an engagement ?

The answer lies within you.

 

Are you a TOP NORCH developers ?  My client is a Netherlands based solution company. (No, not the one who did a big time hiring and now with > 300 over staff strength. I know what you are thinking :D) They are the provider of planning, scheduling & supply chain optimisation solution. A tier one player, Netweaver partner of SAP, rank one of the top by Gartner. With their success in Europe, they are spreading their wings to Asia. Malaysia has been selected as the place they want to start with. Everything is set to go. Their biggest concern is can they find the kind of talents they want in Malaysia.   

Role : Participate in implementation of software with clients. Together with Business consultant, define the OO-business model at global structural level & detailed logic level using the application suite. The solution has the ability to 100% fit with client’s business which enables you to exactly model all important details and implement precisely the required optimization algorithms and business logic in a wide range of technical & business environments. 

If you are passionate about visionary solutions that support 100% customer satisfaction & love to solve “daily puzzle”, this is the right place for you to explore.   If you are a progammer/developer : 

• with at least a degree (A MUST) 

• the ability to operate on a high abstraction and analytical level, experience with object-oriented programming and modeling using UML, 3GL’s (Java, C++, Delphi, Smalltalk, Eiffel) or 4GL’s (G2, Aion, etc.).\ 

• Knowledge of optimization techniques in operations research and artificial intelligence (linear programming, genetic algorithms, heuristic search techniques, constraint programming, etc.), sound judgment in software technology (.NET, XML) and databases (ODBC, Oracle, SQLServer). 

• energetic and flexible personality, possessing strong communicative skills, especially in an environment of top professionals  

• with tremendous flair in development, 

• never fear technical challenges, in fact loving to push your technical envelope, 

• well knowledge in OOAD, C, C++, C#, Java. 

• Experience is good but not necessary. 0-5 years of working experience 

• Has a career goal set in software development or application solutions, 

6 Positions !!!!!!!!!!!

 In addition to the above, If you has an unquenchable passion in technology in the area of software development, you want to be groomed to be somebody in the company, then you deserve this excellent opportunity.