Destiny Steps

 

Success in a free country is simple

Get a job, get an education, and

learn to save and invest wisely

Anyone can do it

You can do it

~~ Willliam J. O’Neil ~~ 

 

 

Yeah….Lets Rock & Roll………..Set goal, Plan, Practice, Work, Focus, Drive, Sharp, Dedication, Commitment, Trust, Passion, Skills, Strive for Excellent, Be Different, Away from Mediocre, Higher level of Standard, Live Extraordinarily, Total Immersion, Intensity, Adrenalin, Delivery, Achievements, Fulfilment,………Yeah baby…Satisfaction.

I am a firm believer of reading, not the women’s magazine, the tabloid..but books that enrich the well of knowledge. So, I try to make it a point to read although I don’t have much time to have this luxury. I will always have a book with me, trying to steal time while stuck in the traffic jam, waiting for people, during meals, just before bed,… Yesterday, I was reading the professional life of a market legend - J.L. Something that he said makes me ponder….Emotional Control…he doesn’t attached sentimental emotion to the processes towards his goals/objectives because it will simply cloud his mind to make clear & precise decision. Assuming one has chosen a profession or a life goal, one must have a clear concise strategy, design an intelligent battle plan like a General directing an army….then go to work on this battle plan, this strategy with absolute strict DISCIPLINE. hmm…how often we are being caught by taking things or issues personal, getting our emotion into it that our mind is so clouded we put feelings before our execution of the battle plan. The successful people (5%) put the horses before the cart….the mediocre people (95%) put the cart before the horses

Clients :

(1) An AP Shared Service Center for a Dice Manufacturing company (MNC)
(2) Pan Asia Leading Mobile Solution company listed in SGX
(3) UK based Software Development Center

Requirements:

Degree in Computer Science/IT or any relevant field with 4-7 years of experience.

Expert in Oracle Database Administration (Oracle 11i), Oracle Application Servers , DBMS versions 7x, 8x and 9x, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Unix Shell Scripting, SQL and PL/SQL. Experience with other Oracle technologies to include; Oracle Portal, Oracle Discoverer, Oracle RAC and other related technologies

Experience should include:

Experience with maintaining complex dbms environments and providing oversight of tablespaces, indexes, rollback segments, database sizing and other pertinent database activities

Experience with creating monitoring scripts using SQL, Enterprise Manager or other DBMS monitoring tool

Analyze and tune the performance of the Oracle databases, rollback segments, tablespaces.

Administer security to users and roles.

Support developers with Application enhancements including; sql tuning, code implementation, patch application and system issues/troubleshooting.

Proficient in back-up/recovery methodology and implementations to include RMAN and Veritas.

Able to maintain a secure, stable production, test and development environment for Applications in accordance with IT SLA (Service Level Agreement) guidelines.

Implementing or upgrading Oracle 11i ERP Applications

Experience with upgrading Oracle DBMS

Experienced with SQL and PL/SQL

Work on major system projects and enhancement to include project resources from internal and external team members.
Execute rapid cloning and recovery procedures.

Qualified candidates are invited to submit detailed resume with details of current salary + 2 referees (ex-reporting superior)

This is my favourite client of all. Why ? you may ask. If you have a client who is

• very civilize in all your engagement & liaison with you
• understand they should be trusting you in order to be their effective executive search partner
• takes care of the candidates you placed
• Feedback from candidates that you placed with them are well & happy, especially no attrition after more than a year down

Won’t they be your favourite client ?

This client of my now is having the next wave of hiring. This round is for a new product line which is scheduled to be out to their clients in the market by 2009. The product line is web-based & will be developed using J2EE. Thus, this person(s) has to be strong in J2EE designing & architecting, leadership quality will certainly be a quality they are looking for. A team player & non political player will be important to them. Technically, One MUST be strong in perceptible experience with analysis & design in an OO-Environment (UML). You will be required to have a min of a degree in IT related discipline, Computer Science preferred. Else, an impressive track record is required. As a person, you should be an energetic & flexible person, effective work organizer & manager individually, possess strong communication skills. If this describe you, get in touch with me with your complete detailed profile.

It is a very interesting and attractive company which is managed by people of passion & prudent approached. Apart from these vacancies, the company is on a constant hunt for cream de la cream kind of IT people. If you are top norch development talents (developer, architect…), get in touch with me with your complete detailed profile.

To know more about the company. check out my older posting http://destinysteps.net/?p=29.

For some of us is from the day we stepped out of varsity into earning our own money. For others might be from all the part-time jobs while your are still in your tertiary. But whichever it is, it doesn’t matter.

From the very day we begin to receive the monthly cheques or should I say right from the point that we are about to receive the monthly cheques, what was in our mind ?

• the car that i wanted;
• the latest handphone you have been eyeing;
• that dress/shirt in that shop;
• that games/gadgets 
• that jewelry;………..
• or even that credit cards.

In a nutshell, it was all about how do I spend that money way before it even come in.

Then as we progress in the so call working class, climbing that corporate ladder, as it comes in each month, what do we do ? It went right back out to :

• Rental,
• loan repayments
• Credit card(s) min payments
• buying stuff that you been eyeing,
• …………….more payments

The list goes on. What do we call all these ? COMMITMENT !!! (Are they really ?)

I caught up with a few friends during the raya weekend. One common thing about all this friends is : they are all into investments. Among them was this one particular guy whom my friend dragged along. He has been “investing” since the day he left school.

From the every month inflow, it was not about what he has to pay or what was the latest thing that he wants to buy. He went shopping at a different place - investment. He didn’t spend time in the shopping malls but rather studying the advice of successful investors, their method, approach & strategy. As a result, 10 years down, he is not filthy rich like George Soros or Warren Buffet or Lim Goh Thong YET. But he certainly has a life much less stressful than all of us because he has minimum or no monthly payments at all. His house, an average house, is fully paid off (Now, this is what I call true ownership of a property, not those in your name but hold by the banks & financial institutions ;)). He is still a simple humble engineer, wearing unbranded clothings, driving local car, BUT, a big BUT, he has no monthly payments, in a position which he can fire his boss anytime. (ain’t we all wish we can be in that position many times over ? fire our boss ? **snigger** )

Something for us all to think about ? Still think employee can’t be rich ? Technical position won’t get you anywhere or has no money ? Food for thought isn’t it ? hmmm…..

I often get the chance of following some of my candidate’s blogs. I thought of this girl who is in my database a week plus ago. I have not checked on her blog for some time, so I immediately clicked on the bookmark. This was what I found :

http://2lina.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

I can’t agree with her more.

Years ago, when I was still at the scratch bottom of the career ladder, my peers & I would never need our superior to tell us to put it extra hours to get task complete before deadline, never would we wait until our superior come to us to check on status only then did we tell him/her the obstacles that we faced, neither would we ever simply tell answer a brainless “I dunno” to our superior for question ask. We will strife to be resourceful, find solultion & deliver. But today, the culture of the young & fresh is just…………..:S. Upon landing on a job, they would to have the “proper corporate” training, to be paid extra to should they be required to put in extra hours or go the extra miles, to be told how to do, where to get resources & etc, superior to come to them instead of them go to the superior….

Where did they get this idea of they are supposed to be paid to be trained (what happened to their tertiary studies ?), motivated, & etc ? No wonder there are this inreconcilable plenty of jobs in this active market & yet tones of employers complaining to us for not able to find the right cabilre of people they wanted.

The society’s fault ? The failure of our education systems ? …………..the verdict will deliver itself in due time.

Early this year, there’s this frequent radio ads about reducing housing loan monthly payment so that you have more money to spend and many other similar kind of financial institutions’ product. It is such a subtle “education” which leads the nation to think that in debt is the way to live.

Each time I visit the shopping malls or hypermarts, there are plenty of kiosks & promoters offering “free” credit cards. It is just so scary..they will chase you down even though you tell them plenty of NOs. Some even use pity tactics such as “please lar, help lar.” Once I told the guy who just won’t let me go, “I do not subscribe to the idea of debt spending.” He actually went into, “its ok, is free. You can sign up now then cancel later. Just support us lar.” He obviously does not understand the principle of financial management.

I had a young ex-colleague who has just been out of college for less than 3 years. She has accumulated a good 8+K debts on 4 credit cards. When she asked me for advice, I told her to :

1. cut all credit cards
2. list all the amount owed together with its monthly minimum payment
3. use snowball payment method to pay them off (at the time i don’t even know is called snowball method)
4. Commit to repeat the above untill the HOLE is covered

Too bad, she can’t do it.

I have since wanted to write about the whole financial thingy but it was too thorough & detailed. But last week, a candidate of mine sent me a link from youtube which speaks it all. So, I have taken the trouble to link it all here for your benefits.

Hope you will be able to parttake in the joy & freedom of totally debt free and be able to build cash wealth. Enjoy it.

Just as any business, we have our standard 30 days credit terms for 95% of our clients. So, when I placed one of the candidates to this Australian base company in March this year, my office manager started to chase for the payment in May. After many rounds of them saying the cheque was issued & sent, our long wait & frequent visits to our mail box, there was no sign of the cheque. After months of Ding Dong, we finally got our payment round about 6 months after the placement.

All these Ding Dong made all of us wonder where has the cheques gone to since our client claimed to have sent it. Well, we finally got the answer. One of the cheque (not the 1^st one) post mark May 25, 2007 appeared in our mail box in the 3^rd week of Sept 2007. Why did it take so long ? Where has it gone to before arriving ? Who is responsible the world tour – Australian POS or POS Malaysia ? You guess is as good as mine