[Closed] IT Job help please

Where are you based?

I work as a field engineer installing internet security products and travel all over the world meeting different people every day almost.

My job is pretty much 40% people, 40% technical and 20% Documentation/Testing/Policy. Might be worth looking at some field based roles.

Might be worth looking for a field based role with a comfy car or allowance!

tomhoward:- I'm currently based in Leeds, West Yorkshire but i'm not fixed to anywhere really, I just studied here. Why do you ask?

somoukc:- Cheers, I may have to sacrifice my cushy cycle to work 🙂

Your could move into Business Analysis as a first step?

It's a nice blend between IT and the business; plenty of people skills through stakeholder engagement (and managing suppliers :-)) , but it helps if you have a knowledge of the business...well, it's kind of critical actually!

It's a real people job, where you have to promote the business requirements, often in the face of constraints but you really do build good relationsips with internal and external people. You could end up in any aspect of projects, from feasability, design, through to testing and implementation. (steer clear of governance though!)

If you have knowledge in any kind of business, be it the one you work for or through vocational activities, it's an advantage.

Your exp would make the functionality side of things a doddle; I suspect you'd easily be known as the expert in reviewing Fucntional Design Docs etc - invaluable as often errors get missed by business experts not posessing the technical knowledge to spot an issue, which costs a fortune later on in Change Requests.

Easy to get qualifications and then, you move onto project management...

Just a thought 🙂

Edit: I'm in Leeds 🙂

Kinda misread your post, thought you were looking for a job, and now I've read your post properly, you wouldn't like the job that my place has going. (sales based, but with a technical aspect, in IT distribution channel, in harrogate as it happens).

Easy go pre-sales, OK its a step up from hands on but you are the technical face of the company, translating sales speak in something deliverable. I was a CCNP CCDP CCIP considering CCIE but shaping the concept for a solution was too tempting compared to slogging away at the IOS CLI. Our place has pre-sales where you work on varied ops, customer tech authorities where you get allocated to a customer (usually funded as part of the deal) you do a sort of pre-sales/post-sales tech role where you shape the whole strategy, cust design authority again funded where you are responsible for the whole solution down to the configs.

I can easily do the last two roles, but prefer to remain pre-sales for the variety. I'm currently 50/50 new business and acting as a tech resource on some massive projects with the provisio that when L3 support fails they can call me in to sort it out.

OK I loose the hands on but I learn lots more about a hell of a lot of varied subjects and just as importantly for me, I deliver something I'm proud of into my mates that are still in support.

Cheers, I am looking for a new job as it happens! Do you know if they are looking for previous sales experience? I would look at a sales role but would need somewhere willing to train.

Well pre-sales is a bit different to tech support, you have to hold your tongue a fair bit more, understand the commercials in a deal as you have the best idea of what kit is involved and how much time it'll take to install and then run.

My advice is that if you are at that point in your career agencies will be calling you all the time already so its a case of letting them know you fancy something slightly different. Then at the interviews being able to give a presentation (a common test) on a technical subject but at a whole pile of levels,from the testing cust techie who wants to keep their job so will test you with outfield odd questions to the C level ones.

Avoid acronyms, spend time working out how you would explain a complex subject to someone who's intelligent but just not in our field of expertise.

Confidence, Mojo, such knowledge in a subject that you project we can do it better than anyone else.

We have had some succss in taking L3 support guys under our wings, starting them off on day to day pre-sales type roles, for example adding another site to a customer solution, WAN circuit, QOS, Switch, WAAS, VoIP as a indvidual order. Then once they are used to that getting them doing small value RFI's/RFP's and then if they are up for it progressing to the larger more complex stuff.

Pre-sales isn't a bad shout, you could keep your cycle to work then 😉

Would also mean you get to keep ahead of the product and keep on top of technical training if you ever wanted to move on. our pre-sales guys normally have a lot to do with the product improvements as well as they collate the stuff potential customers and competitors want to see in the product.

What Russell96 said, except I work in Professional Services - an approxiamation of my job title for Job searches would be "Solution Architect" or "Business Analyst".

He and I do virtually the same Job. Have spent 20 years going from software trainer, consultant to principal consultant to managing a team of solution architects I took the decision (kinda forced on me but that another story) to go solo in my business area in this role.

As Russell describes, I get to spend a lot of time with Sales & Customers selling the solution, performing a customer advisory role, working with project managers to deliver my solutions, marketing to market them, and tech guys learning new stuff. Its very customer orientated, and varied.

What Russell says here:

Confidence, Mojo, such knowledge in a subject that you project we can do it better than anyone else.

... is important as is (in the presales part) the ability to be confident but not arrogant. The only issues I find are you get to be the "assistant" to the sometimes gloating Sales people and their bigger rewards, and you have to defend against the Project Managers who believe they can deliver it better than you (not that some cant btw) and can't spot the issues they create by doing so. But hey ho every silver lining has a cloud.

Plus I'm master of my own diary and we all know what that means... 😀

Thanks for the ideas all, i'll see what's out there 🙂

I'm in Leeds

Check out Technophobia.

Your could move into Business Analysis as a first step?

good luck with that, going from a network engineer background 😉

I'm an Analyst/Programmer with 20+ years experience, can I get into Business Analysis? can I heck 👿

What Russell said - presales = more cash and more fun. If you work for a vendor/manufacturer you'll get the opportunity for travel (UK, Europe, World) for work and some jollies. Most organisations will take a techie who's comfortable dealing with people and drop them into a presales role without too much difficulty. You don't need to sell per se, just know when to talk and when to shut up, how to tie a tie, to know your product(s) and to understand the difference between a feature and a benefit. Sure there's more to it than that but it's the obvious (and rewarding) choice if you want to get away from being a pure button pusher.

I'm an Analyst/Programmer with 20+ years experience, can I get into Business Analysis? can I heck

You are probably a decent programmer then; I've seen a few programmers moved out of harms way to business analysis in a few different orgs.

Cougar: Technophobia? who what where when? 🙂

At a guess:

[url]www.technophobia.com[/url]

Cougar: Technophobia? who what where when?

I've a few friends work there. Seems a very froody place full of switched on people, and it's local to you. Dunno if there's any vacancies, but you could do worse than keep half an eye out just in case.