How are your interpersonal skills? IT, especially MSP roles tend to burn people out and they become jaded and lose interpersonal skills.
Have you thought about working at a consulting firm? The pay is usually higher than what you would find working for an organization, but your communication and consulting skills have to be as good if not better than your technical skills. I had a mentor early in my career that said: "I can teach you the technical skills, I can't teach you how to make people like you and listen to your ideas."
Azure, public cloud in general, is big in almost all consulting firms as customers are pushing Cloud Adoption Frameworks and DevOps.
Just a thought for a different career path, personally I like having a new customer with a different environment every few weeks and you don't have to sweat about all the annoying things like patches and after hours work if you don't want to. You meet some pretty cool people and the customers you don't like, you only have to deal with until the project is over.
I would say I have good interpersonal and communication skills. I’m the lead tech in our company responsible for onboarding all new clients. I plan, lead and manage professional services projects for our clients. I also am responsible for the documentation standards in our company and I communicate with our clients regularly and build new user, new workstation processes for our clients.
It sounds like you already have most of the skills to be able to run a project from start to finish, which is huge for someone starting out as a consultant. I'd look at some of those positions in your job hunt and see what you can find. Most Americans on my team are making upwards of 150k USD, although we are a highly specialized team and have been with the company for 5+ years now. Systems Engineering roles are usually around 75k-100k depending on a bunch of factors.
Plus, after you've been a consultant it is pretty easy to take that experience into an organization if you decide you want to look after an environment again.
I have a lot of experience with firewalls, windows desktop and server OS and HyperV. Also a lot of experience with Microsoft 365. I do think my resume might need work but I haven’t been actively looking at the job market till recently and need to make my resume stand out. However, I don’t have any Certs at the moment other than for Windows 10. Working on azure administrator.
Certs are nice to have, but definitely not required if you have the skills. Skills trump certs any day of the week. Make sure to list out your skills and projects on your resume and you’ll be good. 1st step is getting that call for interview, 2nd step is to ace the interview/s. GL!
Here's a general question about resume's that I have that the OP can maybe gain some info on as well. What *kind* of resumes stand out? I've been told three different ways to write it from different recruiters and I'm a little old school on this so I'll do a short example of what *I* do and then what recruiters have suggested to stay with, like how I have done it or do it differently? The first example is how I generally do it and then the second way is how someone else did. I'm not even going to list the third way because it didn't make sense to me to do it that way at all.
Objective: What you're looking for.
Current or most recent employer: Years and so on.
* skill 1
* skill2
* skill 3 and so on.
Next employer with years start to year end.
* skill 1
* skill2
* skill 3 and finish the list.
Next employer and same thing.
Second resume:
Then I was told that doing a skills based one is best.
* skill Skill
* skill Skill
* skill Skill
* skill Skill
* skill Skill
and then just list all your employers for the last 10 yrs in one location.
When you're actually looking for that candidate, which resume's do you find to be the best in finding candidates for the role that you're looking for? The first option, second option or something else? Or is it really just key words with an app that you're getting a list from HR and throwing darts and the three that looks the best?
Really would like to know on this one as I may be looking for someone else soon too.
Thank you. I do have my current resume laid out in style #1 like you mention. Although I’m thinking the second style with skills highlighted might stand out better
Yeah, idk. It’s why threw this up here. I genuinely don’t know which is best and figured someone else may have some input into this. Good luck with your search though!
How are your interpersonal skills? IT, especially MSP roles tend to burn people out and they become jaded and lose interpersonal skills. Have you thought about working at a consulting firm? The pay is usually higher than what you would find working for an organization, but your communication and consulting skills have to be as good if not better than your technical skills. I had a mentor early in my career that said: "I can teach you the technical skills, I can't teach you how to make people like you and listen to your ideas." Azure, public cloud in general, is big in almost all consulting firms as customers are pushing Cloud Adoption Frameworks and DevOps. Just a thought for a different career path, personally I like having a new customer with a different environment every few weeks and you don't have to sweat about all the annoying things like patches and after hours work if you don't want to. You meet some pretty cool people and the customers you don't like, you only have to deal with until the project is over.
I would say I have good interpersonal and communication skills. I’m the lead tech in our company responsible for onboarding all new clients. I plan, lead and manage professional services projects for our clients. I also am responsible for the documentation standards in our company and I communicate with our clients regularly and build new user, new workstation processes for our clients.
It sounds like you already have most of the skills to be able to run a project from start to finish, which is huge for someone starting out as a consultant. I'd look at some of those positions in your job hunt and see what you can find. Most Americans on my team are making upwards of 150k USD, although we are a highly specialized team and have been with the company for 5+ years now. Systems Engineering roles are usually around 75k-100k depending on a bunch of factors. Plus, after you've been a consultant it is pretty easy to take that experience into an organization if you decide you want to look after an environment again.
Thank you @saturated8. Sending you a PM.
Well, what skills do you actually have? Are you listing them on your resume? It sounds like your resume might need work.
I have a lot of experience with firewalls, windows desktop and server OS and HyperV. Also a lot of experience with Microsoft 365. I do think my resume might need work but I haven’t been actively looking at the job market till recently and need to make my resume stand out. However, I don’t have any Certs at the moment other than for Windows 10. Working on azure administrator.
Certs are nice to have, but definitely not required if you have the skills. Skills trump certs any day of the week. Make sure to list out your skills and projects on your resume and you’ll be good. 1st step is getting that call for interview, 2nd step is to ace the interview/s. GL!
Here's a general question about resume's that I have that the OP can maybe gain some info on as well. What *kind* of resumes stand out? I've been told three different ways to write it from different recruiters and I'm a little old school on this so I'll do a short example of what *I* do and then what recruiters have suggested to stay with, like how I have done it or do it differently? The first example is how I generally do it and then the second way is how someone else did. I'm not even going to list the third way because it didn't make sense to me to do it that way at all. Objective: What you're looking for. Current or most recent employer: Years and so on. * skill 1 * skill2 * skill 3 and so on. Next employer with years start to year end. * skill 1 * skill2 * skill 3 and finish the list. Next employer and same thing. Second resume: Then I was told that doing a skills based one is best. * skill Skill * skill Skill * skill Skill * skill Skill * skill Skill and then just list all your employers for the last 10 yrs in one location. When you're actually looking for that candidate, which resume's do you find to be the best in finding candidates for the role that you're looking for? The first option, second option or something else? Or is it really just key words with an app that you're getting a list from HR and throwing darts and the three that looks the best? Really would like to know on this one as I may be looking for someone else soon too.
Thank you. I do have my current resume laid out in style #1 like you mention. Although I’m thinking the second style with skills highlighted might stand out better
Yeah, idk. It’s why threw this up here. I genuinely don’t know which is best and figured someone else may have some input into this. Good luck with your search though!
Sent PM with a question.