Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom The State of IT in 2016

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom The State of IT in 2016 The latest report fromSpiceworksoutlines whats happening in IT this year. The study of 800+ worldwide IT pros, which we started covering last year, explores budgetary concerns, technology trends, and the general state of the IT industry. First and most importantly, IT budgets are barely budging. CIOs’ global planned spending is expected to increase by only about $2,000 year over year, and North American IT departments will get more money than their EMEA counterparts. Along those same lines, 60 percent of IT professionals are not planning to hire additional staff in 2016. According to the research, more than half of respondents expect company revenue to continue increasing in 2016. Nevertheless,IT is not considered a strategic imperative, and senior leaders are determined to keep costs low until something major breaks. Where the Money Goes IT leaders’ top priorities are hardware and software, though spending for hosted/cloud-based and managed service projects is slated to increase slightly over 2015. Also, despite the fact that Windows 10 is a free upgrade for most, IT pros still plan to spend some money on hardware as part of their OS rollout. Some speculate about a world without desktops, but they aren’t going away anytime soon. IT pros may predict that desktops will eventually be replaced by mobile devices, but nearly a quarter of all hardware spending is still allocated to them. IT is driven to purchase new technology mostly by EOL and company growth requirements. New features are the least compelling, with only a quarter of IT pros citing these as drivers for new tech purchases.If a system is working well, IT will usually not move to replace it. What Keeps Them Awake? Security and OSes top the list of troublesome issues. Only half of surveyed IT pros believe their organization’s data is adequately protected and consider IT security a top priority for 2016. About three-quarters of respondents consider their organizations at risk for technology, IT security, and manmade disasters or incidents. Yet IT spend on security hardware, software, and services will remain flat year over year with IT professionals planning to allocate only 6 percent of their total budget to security. Per the survey, many organizations aren’t conducting regular security audits or updating security practices to help protect against worldwide increase in security breaches, so there’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to securing IT environments. Spiceworks’ respondents report that Microsoft Windows 7 is still the most adopted OS, followed by Windows XP, which does not have a great reputation when it comes to security. Of the most popular OSes, Windows 8 has the lowest penetration rate. Even Microsoft Windows Server 2003, which had its end-of-service in April 2015, is still present in 60 percent of companies. IT pros say their top OS initiatives for 2016 are upgrading to Windows 10 and migrating from Windows Server 2003. In addition, surveyed IT pros who’ve allocated budget to OS upgrades expect to upgrade older hardware during these OS projects. More than three-quarters of survey respondents currently use server virtualizationâ€"significantly more than those supporting mobility and BYOD. But only a third is using advanced solutions despite increased security attacks. For more insights, check out the full post on Quickbases Fast Track blog.

Six new ways to get a job

Six new ways to get a job Recruiting practices are changing at a break-neck pace as new technology emerges, and many recruiters are software savvy and focused on innovation. (In fact so many recruiters are blogging that this week is the annual best recruiting blog contest.) These changes in recruiting cause fundamental changes in job hunting. Two months ago, I listed ten job hunt tactics you might not know. Here are six more to consider: 1. Use your blog as a resume. Yes, that time has officially arrived: In some cases, you can stop with the resume and just use a blog, says Jason Warner, head of North America recruiting for Starbucks and author of the blog Meritocracy.net. I could send you my resume. But do you really care what I did at Starbucks, or do you care how Ill solve problems at your company and whats important to me? Also, the presumption is on your side if you let a recruiter know you have a blog: Blogging has given me an outlet to think about things differently, says Warner, and I am convinced that blogging makes people smarter. 2. Find a blogger you want to work for. Your chances of landing a job are much better if you know the person you will be working for, so find a blogger youd like to work for, and start posting comments. Most companies have at least one employee, or even a CEO, who is a dedicated blogger. Large companies, like Sun, have hundreds of serious bloggers. And most blogs have very small communities one blogger and about twenty people who post intelligent comments on a regular basis. Make yourself one of those regulars over the span of a couple of months, and the blogger will appreciate you enough to do an informational interview. And then youll be at the top of his mind when he has a job opening. Bonus: A blog is revealing of the writer, so youll have a good sense what youre getting into when you go to work for a blogger. 3. Negotiate to change your current job. Smart employers understand that they need to make flexible jobs in order to keep employees. Deloitte says they saved $100 million by creating flexible jobs for people who would otherwise leave. And Warner writes, in a post with one of my favorite titles, Holy Negotiation, BATNA!, that you are often in a more powerful position than you realize when you negotiate with an employer. 4. Build something the employer wants to buy. Its hard to stomach the idea of going to a big corporation and being entry level, but its also hard to imagine running a startup out of your basement for years and years with no financial stability in sight. A compromise is to build a feature that some company wants to buy for their current product line. Writely is an example of this tactic Google bought the company while the software was in beta, and now the Writely team works at Google. Another example: Netflix is offering $1 million to anyone who can improve their search mechanisms by 10%, and you could either take the money and run, or you could sell what you develop to a company that will take you on board in a salaried position you help create. 5. Find a recruiter to be your agent. For this, admittedly, you have to be a star performer, but if you are, you can work with someone like David Perry, who has been known to attract the best of the best and then successfully represent those people to companies as if Perry is a Hollywood agent and the candidate is the movie star. Perry describes this process for a time he represented two marketing geniuses: I took them as a team. I calculated the return on investment and wrote the value proposition. I researched the market, created a web site and blog for them and built their profile by lining up newspaper interviews and podcasts. This is actually a primer for anyone who wants to market themselves. But by hooking up with a recruiter-agent-type like Perry, the results can be dramatic: In the end, he says, the guys received eight offers, and they took five and started their own advertising agency. 6. Sift through resume piles for possibilities. If you have ever hired someone, you probably faced the loathsome stack of random resumes. But hold it. Maybe theres someone there you dont have a job for but youd like to meet. The pile can tell you whos out there. Or maybe there are twelve resumes from the same team at the same company. Thats competitive information. And maybe you can find a job for yourself in that pile; giving career advice must be genetic, because this final tip comes from my mom.

How to make amends for bad behavior

How to make amends for bad behavior Photo by Roz Joseph c. 1970 It used to be that the reason people hated me was because I offended them. Poor social skills. I’m sure you can imagine, but if you can’t, here’s the post about how I spoke at a women in business blogging event and I offended everyone by telling them that their blogs sucked and how to fix them. Maybe I should set up a coaching business where I tell people how to fix their blogs, but really, most people don’t want to know. It’s like going to couples therapy. It’s a lot of work. And there’s always the hope that great sex can make up for everything else. People strive to write the blog equivalent of great sex. 1. Understand your personal style for bad behavior. Anyway, the way I offend people today is different. Because I’m much more conscious of my lousy social skills,  and I’m always trying hard to compensate for them. So my new way to offend people is to have terrible followthrough. In case you are wondering how bad it is to have terrible followthrough, it’s one of the five most damaging deficits you can have in the workplace. Anyway, here’s a list of what I do with my life: Earn $150,000 a year from career coaching, speaking and ads on my blog. Homeschool two boys ages six and nine. Drive eight hours to Chicago round-trip once or twice a week for my son’s cello lessons. Go to the gym almost every day. Manage a vegetable garden that allows us to eat completely off the farm from June to September. Do you want to know how I do it? I miss stuff.  Not the stuff you are thinking. I mean, I miss that, too. Like, I rarely see my friends, I don’t go to movies or out to dinner. I don’t go shopping. 2. Dont say youre sorry. That gets old. Take action instead. But I also miss stuff  like Chris Guillebeau had a book coming out, and he asked me to endorse it. I know Chris, and I like his work, and he’s a fun guy. So I wanted to help. I carried his manuscript around with me for months. During those months, Chris sent me two followup emails asking if I was still doing it. They were really nice emails. I sent back emails saying “Yes, of course, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, okay next week.” Also during that time, the Farmer had a chance to read the manuscript. “Did you read the book by Chris Gillebeau?” he asked. I said, “Do you think that’s how you pronounce his name? I don’t think it is.” He said, “So you didn’t read the book, right?” “Did you like it?” “Yeah. It’s good. You should read it. “ I didn’t read it. But then Chris sent me a copy when it was done, with endorsements that included, of course:  A list of all the people who had their shit together. And I read the book, and here’s my endorsement: The $100 Startup is a book that shows you there is nothing keeping you from launching your own company. (Its a great book to give to all the people who talk about how they are entrepreneurs but never do anything.) 3. Do unexpected favors to make people forget about unexpected rudeness. Another thing: I missed a conference. I was supposed to give this talk in Madison. Melissa says the reason I didn’t go was because I wasn’t getting paid. This might be true.  I know that this whole blog is a diatribe on how money doesn’t make you happy. But money makes me motivated. So this was a really small thing about giving writers advice on being writers and I wasn’t getting paid, and I missed it. Not that I didn’t have a good reason. We realized that our siding was falling off in pieces and it is asbestos (I always wondered why our siding didn’t look like any siding I had ever seen) and then when the guy came he told us that we had asbestos all over the pipes in the basement and the cats were clawing at it and the air was totally infested. I think that’s the real reason the farmer is always coughing, and it’s not really allergies. I told him that and it just made him freak out more because I’ll tell you what farmers hate to do: spend any money on the house. There are barns to maintain and fences to build. Those fences are expensive. So the Farmer was having a fit over having to spend money on the house and I was having a fit that the kids had been in the basement playing for two years and they were going to die before me and there is no more terrible thing in the world than watching a kid die and there were hazmat guys climbing all over our house and I forgot to go to the writer’s thing. It’s particularly bad because the writer’s thing was in Madison and I worry that people in Madison don’t like me. I worry that they won’t do playdates with my kids because of this blog and I also worry that they just think I’m a nutcase. I’m not going to link to nutcase. You can think of a lot of appropriate links, I’m sure. But maybe there’s someone reading who lives in Madison who came to my blog because they heard I’m really fun and interesting. I don’t want to give them any bad ideas. Wait. Here’s a link for fun and interesting. So I called this hazmat guy in Madison to come ASAP, because I’m from NYC and everything for me is ASAP even though I expressly moved to rural America to stop being the ASAP type. I called him and he came right away. Advanced Health Safety. That’s the company.    The guy’s name is Bob Stigsell.   I’m putting his name here so it’s free advertising for him. This is a way to get people in Madison to like me. So look, if there is anyone who was planning on going to my talk about how to make money being a writeror whatever the talk topic was, I can’t totally rememberbut if you were supposed to see me, and you’re disappointed, you can just email me and I’ll set up a time to talk with you. Actually, I’ll set up a time to talk with anyone about how I’m making money being a writer. I’m great at doing that. But if you were’t signed up for the conference you have to pay me my regular consulting fee. (And, what do you think? Would that count as making money being a writer or is that something else?) 4. If your bad behavior is toward yourself, be judicious with second chances. Finally in my list of things I messed up because I am doing too much is my essay about why eating meat is ethical. That’s right. The New York Times had a contest for who could write the best essay on that topic. Melissa sent me the info  and said I should enter. I thought: She’s right. And I wrote my essay on the spot and I sent it to her. She wrote back, “I love it. You’ll totally win.” I thought, “Yeah. She’s right. I’ll totally win.” I thought how I should start entering contests again. I used to do that when I thought I was going to be the female version of Philip Roth but now I just write blog posts and I think I’m a winner if I get more than 100 comments. Okay. So I didn’t send in my essay. I decided I would hold onto the essay for a few days while I figure out how to replace the part about killing kittens. (We do that. Kill kittens. I wasn’t sure if it really had a place in the winning essay about how eating animals is ethical.) But then I forgot to send in the essay. I noticed one day while I was supposedly catching up on stuff. But really you can’t catch up on stuff that is past.  So I was just sulking, really, and then Jeanenne came into the room and said, “Do you want this sweater washed or dry cleaned?” And I said, “Whatever. It’s clean just put it away. Don’t talk to me.” I am so disappointed that I sent my essay in late. I was thinking maybe they would let me be late. I was only a day late. But the contest is in the ethics column. And The Ethicist cant really let me cheat on the contest. So I am fixing this, too. I am publishing the essay myself. Here. You can read my winning essay for The New York Times contest on why its ethical to eat meat. And I’m wearing my sweater anyway. I’m pretending it’s not dirty. And it seems that people are pretending right along with me.

Budget Tips You May Be Overlooking

Budget Tips You May Be Overlooking Most of us spend a third of our time or more working to produce income.  But there are two sides to a budget, and these budget tips will help on the expense end of it. Time is the most valuable commodity we have.  Its become almost second nature to include in our evaluation of income and expenses how each element puts a demand on our time.  So its easy, especially when it comes to spending, to just pay a little more to save time.  More often than not, we are not even aware of opportunities to save money because you guessed it it takes to much time to either find out about them or too much time to use them.  Ive used these and know that they work, take little or almost no time, and on average save me 10% to 30% on my purchases.  Over the course of a year, that really adds up. Budget Tip 1: Coupons (Dont Cringe!) Using coupons to save money isnt new.  Your grandmother did it decades ago.  Back then, it was the old clip and file routine.  TIME consuming, and a hassle.  Now, there are a wide variety of discount and coupon sites.  Groupon is one of the best known, but others such as fyvor.com  offer either general coverage or focus on certain kinds of products.  Most allow you to set up alerts, so what youre looking for comes right to your smartphone with the coupon or discount code ready to use.  The savings on these sites can be huge.  Last fall, I saved nearly $2000 (yes, TWO THOUSAND!) on a laser eye surgery that wasnt covered by insurance.  So take a lazy Sunday afternoon, visit some of the sites and set up alerts for the items on your to-buy list. Budget Tip 2: Hidden Discounts Very few people are aware that many retailers have unpublished allowable discounts available to those who ask.  Some are very straight forward.   For example, Home Depot has a current in-store policy that all department associates are empowered to use.  All you have to say is,hey I can get this same item at so-and-so for quite a bit less.  Can you give me a discount?  Say it politely and with a smile, because just because the associate is empowered to give it doesnt mean they have to.  I dont ask for small purchases, but on literally every large purchase Ive made with them over the last year Ive gotten some discount just for asking. Extra tip on this one:  If you frequent the same stores on a regular basis, take the time to get to know the staff.  People appreciate your friendliness, and when the time comes when you almost conversationally ask for a discount, youre much more likely to get it. Budget Tip 3:  Know the Competition So its time for a new laptop or tablet?  WARNING:  There are friendly, good looking guys inside that Best Buy or Frys or where ever you shop for electronics.  They are trained to smooth you gently into buying not only what you thought you wanted, but what the store has great margins on and wants to sell more of.  When its time for a purchase thats not one you do every day, you definitely want to know competitive pricing before you go.  This is the time to go online to any of many major retailing sites and see what the item is selling for.  Plus, there are reviews that help to steer you away from an item you might have thought was hot but in reality is an over-priced lemon.  Once youre armed with this information, you now have physical proof (you printed it out, right?) that supports your request for a price match or discount.  Its worth a few minutes to not only get a good product, but save money thats much happier to stay in your bank account than in the stores receipts. Extra tip on this one: Dont be shy about asking the store to throw in (for free, of course) extras.  Once they know youre committed to buying the big item, theyll almost always include an extra or two.  Example:  You buy a new phone, and ask for a car charger or case or screen protector.  Its amazing what you can get, gratis, if you just ASK. Budget Tip 4:  Doing Sales The Right Way I love to shop.  Yes.  Clothes and shoes, oh yes.  Give me a session in my favorite stores and its therapy.  Unfortunately, its probably more expensive that paying for a REAL therapist!  But theres a right way and a wrong way to do sales. Wrong way:  You head to your favorite store and luck is with you.  Theres a sale!   Thats about like Russian Roulette, you may or may not get lucky.  Or, you know there are great sales in January and July, so you keep most of your volume shopping to those times.  While the latter is better, its still needs tuning to make it work for you. Right way:  Knowing that there are sales in January and July, put it in your calendar with a reminder to call the store or mall a couple weeks ahead of their normal sale start dates.  The  objective is to find out exactly when the sales begin THIS year.  Then, go shopping the night before the sale officially starts.  In almost all cases, especially with seasonal clearance sales, the items are marked down in advance.  The racks are already there the night before, already marked down and waiting for you. Budget Tips Are Just Shopping Hacks So there you have it.   Dont think of these tips as just passing ideas.  Theyre more like useful hacks, shopping hacks, that help you keep more of your hard-earned dollars, pounds, yen, or euros in your pocket right where they belong. Photos:  Coupons Carol Pyles   Girl w/money Tax Credits

Personal Make Stuff Up Disorder - Career Pivot

3 Examples of Professional/Personal Make Stuff Up Disorder - Career Pivot Make Stuff Up Disorder I have written about Make Stuff Disorder multiple times including a whole chapter in my latest book Repurpose Your Career â€" A Practical Guide to the 2nd Half of Life. is dedicated to this topic. If you would like to listen to a narration of this chapter MSU Disorder â€" The Grave Temptation to Make Stuff Upon the Repurpose Your Career Podcast. Make Stuff Up Disorder is when there is a gap in our knowledge and rather than fill that void with facts, we justmake stuff up. I want to revisit this topic and give you 2 professional and 1 personal Professional Example #1 Marcus is a very seasoned marketing professional who is in a dead-end job. He is very vulnerable to be targeted for the next layoff at his company. Marcus had applied online for a director level marketing role at a competing company. He appeared to be a very good fit but did not reach out to anyone at the company even though he had multiple good contacts. 2 weeks after applying, Marcus was furious that no one had responded to his application. In his eyes, he was a perfect fit and they should have been thrilled that he applied. My response was “you have no idea why they have not responded.” I asked him, “Don’t you have a contact at the company?” His response was “yes.” Listen to the most recent episode I told him to contact this person and see if they could find out what had happened. Whenever you do not know why something has occurred, rather than make stuff up and cause yourself stress, take action over things you do have control. I previously wrote about this topic in the postWhen Uncertainty Strikes, Focus on What You Can Control. Marcus contacted his friend at the target company and asked if he knew the hiring manager. He did. Marcus’s friend asked the hiring manager why he had not contacted Marcus about the position. He responded â€" “He had never seen his resume.” It was all due to a crappy applicant tracking system (ATS). Marcus then was able to directly send his resume to the hiring manager where he was quickly granted an interview. He was a finalist for the position but lost to an internal candidate. Lessons learned: Use your contacts before you apply Quit making stuff up when you do not know For More:Do You Suffer from Make Stuff Up Disorder? Professional Example #2 Sarah had a grueling interview with a major technology company. She sat in a room for about 8 hours and with the exception of lunch did not leave the room. She was probed, prodded, and interrogated by 7 people over the 8 hours. It was an exhausting process and after it was all done, the recruiter told her that they would be contacting her. The first week passed and she heard nothing. A second week passed and she heard nothing. When I met with her late in the second week, Sarah was pretty down. She was convinced that she would not get the position. I asked her “how do you know that?” She responded, “they would have responded by now.” I answered, “you have no idea why they have not responded.” At the beginning of the third week, she heard from the hiring manager via an email. The hiring manager and the team leader both had been out of town and did not have a chance to talk since the interview. He apologized for not responding earlier but she should be hearing something in the next week. As it turns out Sarah did not get the job but she thoroughly impressed everyone and the recruiter was able to give her valuable feedback about her performance during the interview. During the interview process, you need to keep your emotions in check and do not make stuff up. I wrote about this in my post Emotions and the Job Search â€" Creating a Blank Slate. For More:3 Treatments for Make Stuff Up Disorder Personal Example Make Stuff Up Disorder shows up everywhere in our lives. Last week, my wife had a major Make Stuff Up event. My wife has had an on-and-off relationship with her parents. When she changed her first name about 10 years ago her parents did not talk to her for several years. They are back on good terms. For a variety of reasons including being ill when out of the country, my wife was late in sending her mother a birthday present. Birthdays are a big deal in my wife’s family. When my wife’s birthday was approaching, she kept a lookout for a card or a gift from her mother. Nothing came. On my wife’s birthday, she worried that her mother was miffed at her for being late sending her mother’s birthday gift. Her mother called late afternoon to wish her a happy birthday and told her that her gift was delayed due to Hurricane Harvey. Her parents live in rural east Texas and all of their snailmail goes through Houston, which has now been diverted to route through Dallas. All of the mail was delayed. My wife later told me that she was acutely aware of how she just made stuff up and caused herself all kinds of stress. Do You Have an Example? I bet you do. We have all done this in our professional and personal lives. If you tell me you have never done this … well … I do not believe you. How about telling us your Make Stuff Up story in the comment section below. Marc Miller Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above. Like What You Read? Get Career Pivot Insights! Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast Do You Need Help With ...

Are You Using Technology To Help Your Job Search

Are You Using Technology To Help Your Job Search When you think about the many tasks youre executing every day in job search, are you wondering if there is a better or easier way? I dont believe any one tool or piece of technology will put a job in your lap. I do believe that by better utilizing your time and focusing on the high impact activities, you can speed up your job search. Technology is moving rapidly and every day new apps, software and gadgets are popping up. They are designed to make our life easier by solving some problem.   Now, you can say your abacus is working just fine, and who needs these hocus-pocus gadgets anyway; Or you can say, Sure, Ill give it a try. Which type of person are you? And by the way, which type of person do you think a company wants to hire? If you do decide to experiment with new technology of any kind, give it a chance. As you may have heard before, it takes 30 days to break a habit (and form a new one). Im pretty sure you have most, if not all, of these systems in place: Email Calendars Social Networks Contact Management Systems Reputation Management Tools You can learn more about the tools I recommend within these five areas and why by reading my full article on US News On Careers 5 Techie Tools Every Job Seeker Should Use

Using Correct Resume Writing

Using Correct Resume WritingPeople who work in the fields of business or the government can definitely benefit from a resume that includes correct resume writing. You do not need to be an HR executive to benefit from correct resume writing and vice versa. Whether you work in sales, office administration, legal service, medical sector, business sector, government, education, IT, advertising or other fields, you can use a resume that includes the correct resume writing.The purpose of a resume is to gather and organize all the necessary information about the applicant for the employer. You would like your resume to provide information that is unique and compatible to your educational level and personality. However, if the resume that you submit is not very appealing, the employer will not be impressed enough to remember you.First of all, you need to prepare a short resume that includes the necessary information about you. Once you have prepared this short resume, you will not have any p roblem with spelling or grammar as the employer may make a brief check on it. A resume should not contain too much information so that it would not take a long time to get the right impression out of the employer.Your educational level is not the only thing that the employer considers. The right attitude, skills, talents, and abilities are also needing to be considered. A resume that is in line with your qualifications and experience is what the employer is looking for.Being successful in the workplace requires having the right attitude and making the employer understand that you are dedicated to the job. Having good communication skills is also important. You can improve your communication skills through learning a new language or through completing a particular course in order to learn better.Of course, you will also want to include skills that you have acquired over the years, but it is best to include this information in a portion of the correct resume. This would be part of the experience section. This would be so that the employer would consider the experience that you have gained during your career.Lastly, your contact details should be included as part of the contact details of your resume. This is so that the employer can call you for more information about your job. When an employer calls for you, he would be able to get all the important information about your job.As you can see, a resume is an important document that needs to be written in order to be presented in the right way. If you are aiming to make a resume that is appropriate for the employer, you should be prepared to take on a lot of challenges and opportunities. If you have tried to write a resume, it is still possible for you to succeed because there are people who are capable of doing the job properly.