place original prompt for this assignment here later

Kaizen in the Job Search Process

The concept behind Kaizen is to examine a currently working technology or process and improve upon it by altering method or tools used. It is used in major companies such as Toyota Automotive in an effort to constantly improve performance. This document is to examine how Kaizen can work when looking for a job.

What is currently missing in job search education in classes, at job fairs and online?

I feel that in general, there is not enough formal education introduced into the US education system in High School and through advanced education such as college and technical school. While there are career guidance counselors and certain classes in higher learning institutes which cover the career search process and provide aid to students.

More specifically, at a technical college, the career search process doesn’t begin until the degree program is nearing its completion. I personally disagree with that method, and I think the idea and resources should be made available to students when they begin at a technical college rather than at the end.

For example, at ITT Technical Institute, a Portfolio class is an end-of-degree course which encourages people to examine skill sets and produce a finished piece of work that will assist students in the career search process.

I am of the opinion that the concept of creating a porfolio should be introduced as early as the introductory classes and should be something that students keep in mind throughout an entire degree program, especially in a specialized field such as Computer Network Systems. It will encourage students to produce higher quality work and to design materials specifically so that they will be appropriate to be used in a portfolio, rather than working ‘backwards’ and attempting to sift through old assignments to find portfolio-grade material.

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In terms of places like career fairs, I think that they are useful for some people, however many people (including myself) do not feel very comfortable with a ’shotgun’ method of selling your resume and portfolio to as many people as possible in as short a time as possible, competing literally face to face with hundreds, possibly thousands, of other job applicants.

I believe that job fairs should be changed into a networking event, possibly being folded into a larger convention. Certain industries favor a more informal approach, and in a more relaxed setting, applicants and interviewers both have an opportunity to speak to each other on more equal terms, rather than being made nervous by the competition. Job fairs, as they are right now, put a large amount of stress on both parties due to the time commitment and the amount of resources needed.

Moving from a physical job fair to an online job fair may be the solution. Examining the amount of information and the availability of the Internet (especially for people looking for a job in the Technology industry) may encourage people to attend. In addition to less physical resources being consumed (everybody saves on travel, stationary, etc.), there is also the added layer of privacy - not to be confused with anonymity. Being able to speak one on one with a company representative without having to deal with general noise from a job fair floor may be beneficial to both parties. In a text-based environment, this also encourages people to think about what they type and allows them more time to answer questions. With companies examining people on social networking sites with a measure of increased scrutiny, this may be what the job fair evolves into.

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What makes a job seeker more successful?

The most important thing for a job seeker are the tools they use to find their job. They need to budget their time effectively while minimizing the amount of stress to prevent them from burning out and falling into a vicious cycle of depression and hopelessness. Keeping a clear mind when in the job search is important.

In addition to the ‘proper frame of mind’, a person who has the Internet at their disposal will have many more resources at hand than the traditional job seeker. Many companies prefer to post their listings online at major job searching sites such as Monster, Dice, Jobing.com, and even classified ads such as Craigslist. Maintaining an online presence is important, and understanding what works best for a given individual is probably the greatest asset.

As a corollary to being relaxed, a job seeker should be confident: both in their abilities they have listed on their resume; and self-confidence so that they can speak with authority and pride in an interview. A job seeker should not make themselves appear desperate - if they are so desperate for a job, then they should seek to find a temporary part-time position while they search for a career, even if that means they have to take pay beneath what they should be earning.

Are these definitive things that will make a person more successful in the job search? No. These are things that I personally believe a job seeker should have - confidence, a clear mind, and ready access to the Internet. Maybe other people have different views and priorities. A person has to make the decision to do what they feel most comfortable with when searching for a career, and to not lose hope. There is always somebody out there willing to give you your just desserts for the work that you do; it is only a matter of time before you find them.

Anyway. I want to make the modern-age typewriter.

Now, this might seem a little misleading. What do I mean by the modern typewriter, you might be asking yourself?

It bothers me that I have to boot up a computer, log in to Windows, then load up a word processor when all I want to do is type out a simple idea, especially when I am out and about on the road. I am not the best handwriter and when the gears start turning, the writing usually goes for much longer than my poor wrist can take.

The end goal is to make a laptop or similar computer turn into a glorified typewriter. One that is lightweight, does not need to be plugged into a wall, has extremely long battery life, and has a few of the trappings that modern-day word processing has (most importantly, the ability to undo/redo, save files, and move about in a given text document). Everything old is new again, and so forth.

If you look at the evolution of text editing, during the rise of computers, more and more features began to be placed into rudimentary text editors, turning them from simple one-function applications into a Swiss Army knife that is now known as a word processor, the most popular of these being a well-known application known as Microsoft Word.

The journey from typewriter to word processing brought several paradigm changes, all of which I think are covered very well in this Youtube video called “Web 2.0 - “The Machine is Us/ing Us”. In short, text and typography have become nonlinear in their design. A person could jump around a document and add content where they wished at their leisure by using a simple mouseclick to where they were before, or by paging up or down on their keyboard. Mistakes could be easily corrected; entire sections of text could be revised at a moment’s notice.

Anyway, the specifics of what you can and can’t do with a computer and a text editor compared to a typewriter are somewhat outside of the scope of this post, but they are still very related.

It was very late at night and I couldn’t sleep, so I was talking with a Linux-oriented buddy of mine, Dennis, about a topic similar to this. I intimated that I wanted to build a distribution of Linux that was, effectively, the new reincarnation of the typewriter. This theoretical distribution would be extremely lightweight and contain little to no trappings of a modern operating system. In terms of requirements, it had to boot up into a simple text editor; it must be optimized to run on a laptop or similar portable device.

Here is a short run-down of the requirements that came up in the discussion:

• Must boot up in 10 seconds or less from a GRUB boot menu.
• Must be able to write to an NTFS partition to a default directory.
• A minimal installation (or portable installation if available) that contains an intuitive text editor.
• Must be fully keyboard driven - no mouse input should be necessary to accomplish any task. Optional, but everything should have a keyboard-only method.

Dennis suggested I check out retrofitting Arch Linux. Stripping the UI to something simple, paring down the drivers, and using simple bash scripting to immediately boot into a text editor environment would probably do the trick. As far as the application that would provide the presentation to the user, PyRoom was brought up. Its design philosophy was very close to what I wanted to achieve.

Anyway, probably after graduation I will get working on this project; I have enough on my plate as it is. Apologies if this got a little too technical or boring.

I have been using both w.bloggar and the built-in WordPress editor to format my blog entries. I plan in the future on tossing in images to the blog as well to better illustrate some points - one of my teachers at my school said that adding relevant images to documents tends to make them much easier to understand and has the ability to engage a reader further, something I am starting to take for gospel, after paying more attention to how popular blogs are laid out. Even if the picture does not demonstrate anything, it will still help the user stay focused on the intended topic.

I wouldn’t expect pictures of cats or anything of that sort to be on here; such things are reserved for a different blog! This one is about me detailing my academic and professional interests.

At its core, this project’s goal is to create a proposal (and accompanying documentation) in response to the RFP (Request for Proposal) from a fictional association of five doctors. They own fairly decent sized fictional offices each with similarly sized nurse/clerical staff departments. As part of the proposal, we need to design a solution that will allow the doctors to maintain their offices during normal business hours without any service interruption. There is also the issue of security, backups, and migrating client/doctor information to a centralized RDBMS (database server) at a central office.

So far, we have been keeping fairly on top of things. The first two weeks of the project have involved preliminary research and beginning our documentation. I have introduced a method of centralizing all of the research data and information that the group finds into a project website using 37signal’s very excellent web application, Basecamp. Even though we see each other all the time at school (the majority of my group shares the same classes earlier in the week that I do), having an online presence to store data and keep updated is proving to be a good idea already.

I am something of a bang-whiz enthusiast; if I find something interesting that has a practical application, there is a good chance I will tell other people about it and attempt to foist it off onto other people in the hopes that there are more benefits, especially if it is user-friendly and intuitive like Basecamp is. I have been familiar with 37signals and their offerings in the past, and I am currently using their Backpack web application as a note-taking device for all of my classes this quarter. I’m of the belief anybody who has to handle a lot of information, or just needs somewhere to store their thoughts online (barring a blog or personal website like this one) in a private environment, Backpack is a handy tool to have.

Anyway, next week I plan on bringing up the workload another notch; we are going to get into the real thick of things when the group gets together next Wednesday. I don’t know if I’d want to do something like this exclusively (prepare a full, customized solution from the ground up for a company) as a career, but thus far it has been fairly enjoyable.

I just hope I don’t end up biting my tongue in the coming weeks thanks to that statement.

For comparison purposes, I have left the old resume here on the server and this current resume in a seperate file. I don’t really care for hiding information or fabricating tall tales about my abilities - the majority of changes are mostly concerned with formatting and layout.

Here is the current resume.

9/16/2008 version of my personal resume.

• E-mail server: I have heard that, in passing, many companies tend to unknowingly blacklist certain popular free webmail services such as GMail and Yahoo! Mail due to improperly configured mail server permissions. A large majority of server providers allow you to create your own mailbox and tie it to your domain; thus, I can have a variety of mailboxes for different tasks. It is important to note, though, that small businesses should consider investing in an actual privately-owned and operated mail server rather than one hosted elsewhere.
• Personal web site: Building websites are much easier than people seem to think they are. One of the more popular websites of the ’90s was one of the first weblogs for a certain man who referred to himself as Maddox (warning: content advisory). In the past, it was nothing more than hyperlinks, text, and images. Anybody could make a website that spoke about themselves or whatever topics they felt they would like to share/document online. The added benefit of having a private web server is that you can, for the most part, control what content you show to the public, and you don’t have to deal with advertisements or strict terms of service, as many free web hosts are prone to lumping in.
• Blog: Self-explanatory; if you would like to set up a blog, there are many free places out online, however they do not have the flexibility that a blog you set up and configure yourself does. Blogs that are on personal webspace tend to be viewed as more professional than those located on a free site, as well. Having near total control over the appearance and function of your blog is something many people do not often consider.
• Message board: This is for people who are part of a special interest group or community. The extensibility of many forum applications such as phpBB or vBulletin share the same properties as a blog; being able to have a greater degree of flexibility and control for a private forum means you can display what you want to your community.
• Wiki: A collaborative space for a medium to large project. If you are working in a large group or require repeated input without using special local software to communicate such as Microsoft Office Groove and so forth, using your webspace to host a Wiki can be a valuable asset. A company website, for example, could use a wiki as an internal knowledge base for its employees, readily viewable to all members of the company at a moment’s notice.
• Portfolio: Whatever the contents of a professional portfolio, the majority of it will more likely than not be in a digital form. Being able to post screenshots of your CAD work, network designs, or other examples of your work can be a valuable asset. Not only can prospective employers browse your portfolio at their leisure, it is an economic option if you can’t afford to give a full copy of your portfolio to a company (for example, the company you are applying to work for is in another country). It also provides a place to clearly document your ideas and your goals for your portfolio while saving hard resources, such as binders, ink, business cards, etc.

The sky is the limit for what you can do with your own webspace; particularly for technical professionals, I couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t maintain their own webspace to show to prospective employers or to use to maintain discussions with like-minded professionals. Even using webspace as a sort of scrapbook to collect various interesting articles from all over the internet is good.

In the future I will probably write more on each of these topics and possibly provide some tutorials on how to set up these things. The requirements for having personal webspace are fairly rudimentary: a computer with an internet connection; seed money (50-80 dollars per year) for the webspace proper and a domain name; and lastly, an open mind willing to explore.

One thing worth noting is that the majority of webhosting providers will provide a sort of automatic installer for most commonly used web applications (Wordpress, various wiki software, message boards, etc.); in that case, the process of installation is much more straightforward and requires very little input on the user’s side.

I am afraid I might be getting far too wordy with this post, so I digress; this is a fairly involved topic which warrants a longer discussion.

As of right now, they have a 18″ x 12″ menu on colored cardstock with various teas that they have for sale. Each tea has where it comes from, a description of the tea itself, and a rating from one star to three stars (rare). I have discovered, after speaking with the owner of the place about how people order, that they tend to think of the ratings as some sort of status symbol; some people must order three-star teas, even if they do not actually know the meaning behind it. In addition, nobody seems to ask or wonder where a tea is from, or what estate the tea is cultivated in.

To wit, the current menu has some good things surrounding it, though; the owner of the tea bar wrote fairly accurate, short descriptions of how each of the teas she serves on the menu taste; but, the menu in its current incarnation has some problems with it that need to be worked on (hence the redesign).

• Typographical errors: the menu was not proofread before being brought to print, so there are some errors that have since been fixed.
• Pricing errors: the price list that has been placed on the menu has since been altered. However, customers don’t seem to notice that.
• Missing items: some items on the old menu are no longer carried by the tea bar. In addition, there are many new menu items that have not yet made it into the menu.
• Misleading information: there seem to have been some things added to the menu prior to printing that the owner did not intend - namely, extra ‘fluff’ text in each of the menu sections that have not been proofread or verified by anybody other than the person who brought the file to the printing press.

In general, I am attempting to keep the new menu with the same feeling as the old one; the margins, paper size, and how the menu is laid out remain fairly similar. It has since been proofread and revised with the assistance of one of my roommates, a professional chef willing to lend some time, and the ‘fluff’ has been removed.

I have not necessarily done a restaurant-style menu before, so this is a new experience for me; however, looking at how many successful franchises organize their menu has given me some inspiration. I have found that choosing the right font was a somewhat difficult task; in addition, grouping the menu items in such a fashion without causing confusion to a reader has also proven a challenge. I think, however, I am on to something; the ‘fluff’ text is going to be rewritten, and possibly, a few choice quotes about teas may be placed in there instead.

I still have work to do on the menu, but in terms of layout, it might be considered complete; however, with the new items, it may be altered into a booklet format instead of the large double-sided menu that it is right now. If you would like to see the menu in its current incarnation, it is available elsewhere on the website - see the sidebar and look for “Tea Menu“.

I’m hoping I can get this menu finished by next week - there are really no set deadlines, but I’m trying to give myself a goal so I don’t keep delaying working on it.

So, I have four classes that go from 6:00 in the evening to 10:30 in the evening (one of them goes only to 9:30). In total, that amounts to roughly 14 contact hours of academic time.

The majority of my classes during my degree program at ITT Technical Institute have been in the evening; occasionally, they have also been on the weekend. This presents significant problems with scheduling, and it has been somewhat difficult to find work that lets me sleep at night and has enough time so that I can actually make it to class with my work finished. I can’t work night shifts or graveyard shifts (graveyard shifts start at 9:00 or 10:00 in the evening); they must start in the morning. Hopefully they don’t start too early though; getting home at 10:45, cooking dinner, eating dinner, and then going to sleep as soon as possible is somewhat harrowing. Also, the schedule excludes me from any job with rotating shifts or on-call positions; there is simply a conflict of interest.

I will be quite honest to say that I will be glad when I am done with school in December; I will be able to take whatever job, come what may. I would hope that I have a good enough portfolio and resume by then to stand out on top of the many other entry-level professionals who are trying to gun for the same spot. Perhaps it sounds desperate when I say that I will take whatever hours a company decides to give me; I won’t be shy in saying that I would like to begin paying off my loans and settling all financial debts as soon as possible. “Reverse the flow”, as one of my teachers says.

I do have a problem with one of the new rules that has been passed in the school which restricts leaving early, giving an unavoidable 5% off of your course grade; in addition, you need to obtain written permission from your instructor, and that has to be signed off by the program chair. It all seems somewhat ludicrous, to me; if you have to leave early, it is a good sign there is an emergency that requires your immediate attention. I hear that there was also a proposal to restrict students from leaving the campus during breaks. I’ll just let that lay where it is.

Graduation, I’m coming for you.

I will not jest too heavily when I say that in the past I have taken the majority of the course work lightly - I am a slacker at heart. However, this project allows the greatest degree of freedom in how to approach a problem that I have yet seen in my Associates program. In short, I am excited for this class, something I have not really felt about my academic journey for the last span of years.

Some of my team mates might take this project and view it as only something that must be done, a necessity; however, I view it as an opportunity to show people my skills and capabilities. The work on this project is not light; I intend to go above and beyond the requirements of the project so that when the time comes, there will be no question as to whether or not I have the know-how to design a network.

Over the course of the next few weeks I will no doubt be making a few posts regarding my experiences with my group and what challenges that I may face while working on the project. As this is the first week, I am not fully certain that the other four people in my group are on the same level of technical knowledge as I am, so during next week I will be showing them the Cisco Network Simulator, and designing the infrastructure for the network.

The road is long, but I am willing to put the best foot forward every time. Wish me luck.