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Six entry-level cybersecurity job seeker failings

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Here’s how many cybersecurity entry-level job seekers fail to make a great first impression.

When it comes to hiring, enterprise security teams can use all of the help that they can rally. But when it comes to hiring entry-level talent, that’s not as easy as it may seem.

According to a poll last summer of 1,000 18–26 year olds conducted by Zogby Analytics and underwritten by Raytheon, about 40 percent of Millennials reported they would like to enter a career that makes the Internet safer, but roughly two-thirds of them said they aren’t sure exactly what the cybersecurity profession is, and 64 percent said that they did not have access to the classes necessary to build the skills required for a career in information security.

That means, at least when it comes to the entry-level information security market, that there will be many job applicants continuing to enter the field with backgrounds that lack formal information security training. This echoes what we hear when we speak with CISOs and others who often hire security talent.

With all of this in mind, we recently reached out to those CISOs to see if there was a common thread of mistakes among information security career newcomers who are in the job market. Here’s what we found:

1. Fail to show oneself as a team player
Sounds like a no-brainer, right? But it’s not. Many of the hiring executives we spoke with say that personality can – and often does – trump technical assets. This is especially true as more and more information security roles interface with the rest of the business. It’s essential that applicants be themselves – amiable, articulate, and able to prove that they can work with different areas within the organization.

2. Sell one’s self as a jack-of-all-trades
“Entry level applicants across almost all verticals of information security make the mistake of trying to be a one-size-fits-all candidate,” says Boris Sverdlik, head of security at Oscar Insurance. “Security is broken up across many verticals and even among those who are experienced, it’s almost impossible to be well versed in all aspects,” he says. “The most annoying candidate is the arrogant know-it-all,” says Brian Martin, founder atDigital Trust, LLC. “I don’t mind arrogance when it’s earned, but not in a kid who’s never been tested. In cases where we’ve tried to work with these types, it hasn’t ended well.”

If you have interests in many skills in information security, highlight a couple that best meet the needs of the organization.

3. Falling flat on job search and interviewing basics
For many CISOs, such as Martin Fisher, manager of IT security at Northside Hospital, it is common for potential hires to harm themselves by flunking the basics of job seeking. “On resumes, misspell HIPAA, and I’ll toss the resume,” Fisher says. He also says that he too often encounters typos, punctuation errors, and resumes laden with information that’s not relevant to the role being offered.
INSIDER: 15 ways to screw up a job interview

Mike Kearn, principal security architect at US Bank, cited what job seekers don’t do when it comes to the basics of interviewing. “When I offer them an opportunity near the end of the interview to ask me anything, and I emphasize the word ‘anything,’ the majority ask me softball kinds of questions about culture or why I like working there. Missed opportunity on their part,” he says.

4. Believe certifications and degrees matter more than practical skills
“Many think that I care more about their degree or certifications than actual skills,” Kearn says, while others are under the misguided assumption that a degree or a certification equals a job. It doesn’t.”

Likewise, many entry-level applicants think technology is the hammer to squash every security risk nail. “Too many think that the solution to most problems is a technology control, rather than people and processes,” says Eric Cowperthwaite, former CISO for Providence Health and Services and currently advanced security and strategy VP at Core Security Inc.

Ben Rothke, senior eGRC consultant at Nettitude Group and former CISO, agrees. “The technology tools they have experience with are the definitive techniques for approaching information security. Not every security problem can be fixed by a firewall or IDS,” says Rothke.

5. Stretch the truth
This one certainly isn’t exclusive to information security, but it is especially silly to try to pull this off on experience security professionals who tend to be a suspicious bunch by nature. “You’ll notice that they tend to exaggerate their experience to impress hiring managers; some range from slight fibs to full-blown lies,” says Sverdlik.
Have you ever caught a candidate in a lie?

Yes, but yet they continued with the charadeYes, and they admitted to it No VoteView ResultsPolldaddy.com

Kearn concurs: “A lot of them attempt to inflate or enhance their resume by saying they know someone and are connected via LinkedIn. But when I press them on it, because I actually know the individual personally, they cave almost immediately.”

6. Don’t understand the highly interpersonal nature of infosec
Many entry-level applications come from workers in small businesses, and they are not prepared for or don’t seem to understand how large enterprises function. That’s fine, and part of the learning process for new professionals – but keep an open and learning mindset when it comes to practicing information security at a larger enterprise. “A lot of people have expressed ways to do business that simply won’t work in a large enterprise. Typically, the person would be very direct toward people who want an exception to security policy, avoid collaboration, avoid discovering why the person wants the exception, and just dictate behavior,” says Cowperthwaite.

“They often don’t realize that their excitement and sometimes irrational exuberance around all things information security is not shared by most people in the organization,” Rothke says.

In the end, perhaps the most important thing is to be one’s self. “Show that you have a passion for security, be it examining logs, performing code review or risk assessments, or even administering security appliances. If you are good at critical thinking and have a good technical background, learning the rest is easy,” says Sverdlik.

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How automation could take your skills — and your job

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A new book by Nicholas Carr should give IT managers pause about the rush to automation

Nicholas Carr’s essay IT Doesn’t Matter in the Harvard Business Review in 2003, and the later book, argued that IT is shifting to a service delivery model comparable to electric utilities. It produced debate and defensiveness among IT managers over the possibility that they were sliding to irrelevancy. It’s a debate that has yet to be settled. But what is clear is that Carr has a talent for raising timely questions, and he has done so again in his latest work The Glass Cage, Automation and Us (W.W. Norton & Co.)

This new book may make IT managers, once again, uncomfortable.

The Glass Cage examines the possibility that businesses are moving too quickly to automate white collar jobs, sophisticated tasks and mental work, and are increasingly reliant on automated decision-making and predictive analytics. It warns of the potential de-skilling of the workforce, including software developers, as larger shares of work processes are turned over to machines.

This book is not a defense of Luddites. It’s a well-anchored examination of the consequences and impact about deploying systems designed to replace us. Carr’s concerns are illustrated and found in, for instance, the Federal Aviation Administration’s warning to airlines about automation, and how electronic medical records may actually be raising costs and hurting healthcare.

In an interview, Carr talked about some of the major themes in his book. What follows are edited excerpts:
Glass Cage cover

The book discusses how automation is leading to a decay of skills and new kinds of risks. It cites an erosion of skills among aircraft pilots, financial professionals and health professionals who, for instance, examine images with automation. But automation has long replaced certain skills. What is different today about the automation of knowledge or mental work that makes you concerned? I think it comes to the scope of what can be automated today. There has always been, from the first time human beings developed tools, and certainly through the industrial revolution, trade-offs between skill loss and skill gain through tools. But until the development of software that can do analysis, make judgments, sense the environment, we’ve never had tools, machines that can take over professional work in the way that we’re seeing today. That doesn’t mean take it over necessarily entirely, but become the means through which professionals do their jobs, do analytical work, make decisions, and so forth. It’s a matter of the scope of automation being so much broader today and growing ever more broad with each kind of passing year.

Where do you think we stand right now in terms of developing this capability? There are some recent breakthroughs in computer technology that have greatly expanded the reach of automation. We see it on the one hand with the automation of complex psychomotor skills. A good example is the self-driving car that Google, and now other car makers, are manufacturing. We’re certainly not to the point where you can send a fully autonomous vehicle out into real-world traffic without a backup driver. But it’s clear that we’re now at the point where we can begin sending robots out into the world to act autonomously in a way that was just impossible even 10 years ago. We’re also seeing, with new machine-learning algorithms and predictive algorithms, the ability to analyze, assess information, collect that, interpret it automatically and pump out predictions, decisions and judgments. Really, in the last five years or so we, have opened up a new era in automation, and you have to assume the capabilities in those areas are going to continue to grow, and grow pretty rapidly.

What is the worry here? If I can get into my self-driving car in the morning, I can sit back and work on other things. There are two worries. One is practical and the other is philosophical. The actuality of what’s facing us in the foreseeable future is not complete automation, it’s not getting into your car and simply allowing the computer to take over. It’s not getting into a plane with no pilots. What we’re looking at is a shared responsibility between human experts and computers. So, yes, maybe at some point in the future we will have completely autonomous vehicles able to handle traffic in cities. We’re still a long way away from that. We have to figure out how to best balance the responsibilities between the human expert or professional and computer. I think we’re going down the wrong path right now. We’re too quick to hand over too much responsibility to the computer and what that ends up doing is leaving the expert or professional in a kind of a passive role: looking at monitors, following templates, entering data. The problem, and we see it with pilots and doctors, is when the computer fails, when either the technology breaks down, or the computer comes up against some situation that it hasn’t been programmed to handle, then the human being has to jump back in take control, and too often we have allowed the human expert skills to get rusty and their situational awareness to fade away and so they make mistakes. At the practical level, we can be smarter and wiser about how we go about automating and make sure that we keep the human engaged.

Then we have the philosophical side, what are human beings for? What gives meaning to our lives and fulfills us? And it turns out that it is usually doing hard work in the real world, grappling with hard challenges, overcoming them, expanding our talents, engaging with difficult situations. Unfortunately, that is the kind of effort that software programmers, for good reasons of their own, seek to alleviate today. There is a kind of philosophical tension or even existential tension between our desire to offload hard challenges onto computers, and that fact that as human beings, we gain fulfilment and satisfaction and meaning through struggling with hard challenges.

Let’s talk about software developers. In the book, you write that the software profession’s push to “to ease the strain of thinking is taking a toll on their own skills.” If the software development tools are becoming more capable, are software developers becoming less capable? I think in many cases they are. Not in all cases. We see concerns — this is the kind of tricky balancing act that we always have to engage in when we automate — and the question is: Is the automation pushing people up to higher level of skills or is it turning them into machine operators or computer operators — people who end up de-skilled by the process and have less interesting work. I certainly think we see it in software programming itself. If you can look to integrated development environments, other automated tools, to automate tasks that you have already mastered, and that have thus become routine to you that can free up your time, [that] frees up your mental energy to think about harder problems. On the other hand, if we use automation to simply replace hard work, and therefore prevent you from fully mastering various levels of skills, it can actually have the opposite effect. Instead of lifting you up, it can establish a ceiling above which your mastery can’t go because you’re simply not practicing the fundamental skills that are required as kind of a baseline to jump to the next level.

What is the risk, if there is a de-skilling of software development and automation takes on too much of the task of writing code? There are very different views on this. Not everyone agrees that we are seeing a de-skilling effect in programming itself. Other people are worried that we are beginning to automate too many of the programming tasks. I don’t have enough in-depth knowledge to know to what extent de-skilling is really happening, but I think the danger is the same danger when you de-skill any expert task, any professional task, …you cut off the unique, distinctive talents that human beings bring to these challenging tasks that computers simply can’t replicate: creative thinking, conceptual thinking, critical thinking and the ability to evaluate the task as you do it, to be kind of self-critical. Often, these very, what are still very human skills, that are built on common sense, a conscious understanding of the world, intuition through experience, things that computers can’t do and probably won’t be able to do for long time, it’s the loss of those unique human skills, I think, [that] gets in the way of progress.

What is the antidote to these pitfalls? In some places, there may not be an antidote coming from the business world itself, because there is a conflict in many cases between the desire to maximize efficiency through automation and the desire to make sure that human skills, human talents, continue to be exercised, practiced and expanded. But I do think we’re seeing at least some signs that a narrow focus on automation to gain immediate efficiency benefits may not always serve a company well in the long term. Earlier this year, Toyota Motor Co., announced that it had decided to start replacing some of its robots in it Japanese factories with human beings, with crafts people. Even though it has been out front, a kind of a pioneer of automation, and robotics and manufacturing, it has suffered some quality problems, with lots of recalls. For Toyota, quality problems aren’t just bad for business, they are bad for its culture, which is built on a sense of pride in the quality that it historically has been able to maintain. Simply focusing on efficiency, and automating everything, can get in the way of quality in the long-term because you don’t have the distinctive perspective of the human craft worker. It went too far, too quickly, and lost something important.

Gartner recently came out with a prediction that in approximately 10 years about one third of all the jobs that exist today will be replaced by some form of automation. That could be an over-the-top prediction or not. But when you think about the job market going forward, what kind of impact do you see automation having? I think that prediction is probably over aggressive. It’s very easy to come up with these scenarios that show massive job losses. I think what we’re facing is probably a more modest, but still ongoing destruction or loss of white collar professional jobs as computers become more capable of undertaking analyses and making judgments. A very good example is in the legal field, where you have seen, and very, very quickly, language processing software take over the work of evidence discovery. You used to have lots of bright people reading through various documents to find evidence and to figure out relationships among people, and now computers can basically do all that work, so lots of paralegals, lots of junior lawyers, lose their jobs because computers can do them. I think we will continue to see that kind of replacement of professional labor with analytical software. The job market is very complex, so it’s easy to become alarmist, but I do think the big challenge is probably less the total number of jobs in the economy then the distribution of those jobs. Because as soon as you are able to automate what used to be very skilled task, then you also de-skill them and, hence, you don’t have to pay the people who do them as much. We will probably see a continued pressure for the polarization of the workforce and the erosion of good quality, good paying middle class jobs.

What do you want people to take away from this work? I think we’re naturally very enthusiastic about technological advances, and particularly enthusiastic about the ways that engineers and programmers and other inventors can program inanimate machines and computers to do hard things that human beings used to do. That’s amazing, and I think we’re right to be amazed and enthusiastic about that. But I think often our enthusiasm leads us to make assumptions that aren’t in our best interest, assumptions that we should seek convenience and speed and efficiency without regard to the fact that our sense of satisfaction in life often comes from mastering hard challenges, mastering hard skills. My goal is simply to warn people.

I think we have a choice about whether we do this wisely and humanistically, or we take the road that I think we’re on right now, which is to take a misanthropic view of technological progress and just say ‘give computers everything they can possibly do and give human beings whatever is left over.’ I think that’s a recipe for diminishing the quality of life and ultimately short-circuiting progress.

 

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Horrible bosses are all too common — there’s even a movie about them. Here, three experts weigh in on how to spot a bad boss before you accept a position and offer tips on how to make sure you’re making the right employment choice. Everyone suffers under a bad manager – morale sinks, productivity tanks, absences increase. Even those above a bad manager in the corporate hierarchy feel the impact; executives must dedicate time to resolving conflicts, and often end up assuming the role and responsibility for those who aren’t adequately doing their job, says says Patty Azzarello, CEO of Azzarello Group, and a business advisor, author and executive. But there are warning signs, red flags to look out for when searching for a job and while interviewing that can identify a bad boss or an untenable work environment before you accept a job. Do Some Early Detective Work Your first step should be researching the company online – but go beyond the obvious corporate Web site and Facebook profile, says Craig Bryant, founder and product manager for Kin HR, which provides human resources software solutions for small businesses. [Related: How to Write a Job Description That Attracts Top IT Talent ] “Before you even start the interview process, research the company online. Go to Glassdoor and other feedback sites to see what current and former employees have to say about the company,” Bryant says. While the comments on sites like Glassdoor aren’t entirely objective, you can get a good sense of whether or not employees are happy with the company, their management hierarchy, whether or not there are advancement opportunities, says Johanna Aiken, human resources director at ecommerce solutions company Cleverbridge. “Especially in the technology arena, it’s critical to use social media to your advantage,” Aiken says. “Use sites like Glassdoor, sure, but don’t discount LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn to do keyword searches and connection searches; reach out to current and former employees and ask if they’re happy with the company, do they like their job, that sort of thing. If they’ve left, ask why,” Aiken says. What you’re looking for are patterns of behavior: Does every junior programmer leave that company only to reappear as a senior programmer at a different company? That could be indicative of a lack of advancement or promotion opportunities, says Kin HR’s Bryant. In addition, find out as much as you can about the company culture and work environment, says Bryant. Finding a good fit is as much about character, culture and personality match as it is about hard skills, and it’s important to make sure you’ll mesh well with the company. “When we hire, we’re looking for character and cultural fit, not just hard skills,” says Bryant. “We’re looking at who and what that person will eventually become at the company. Are you a freewheeling, work-anywhere night owl? You might not perform at your best for a company with strict nine-to-five hours and not a lot of flexibility, for instance,” he says. Look to Your Future Even more important than the immediate impact of starting a new job is the future potential, both for the company and for the employee, says Bryant. Starting as early as the interview process, candidates should focus on how the company will contribute to their professional growth and development and make sure that aligns with their career goals. “During the interview process, candidates should probe for details on how the company will contribute to their professional growth,” says Bryant. “Not just the raw skill sets, but learn what you can expect in terms of continuing education, personal growth, travel. If you’re going to pour your passion and devote most of your waking hours to a company what will you get in return?” he says. [Related: Inside the Changing Role of the CISO ] “You want to ask, specifically, how your own personal and professional objectives fit in with those of the company, and how that ties into your compensation, too,” says Bryant. “If you get a ‘deer in the headlights’ look in response, that’s a red flag and there most likely won’t be that much room for personal growth and advancement,” he says. As an example, Azzarello Group’s Patty Azzarello describes an interview she had for a position that was described as “strategic.” “Everyone I interviewed with was saying they’d be thrilled to have me on board to drive this ‘strategic position’ and help grow the business in a certain direction,” Azzarello says. “But when I talked to the CEO, and I delved into the ‘strategic’ aspects of the role, he simply nodded and didn’t seem to be on the same page. He didn’t understand what I was talking about!” she says. Azzarello adds that it’s important to make sure your own expectations and objectives fit with those of the company, and that candidates are very clear about what’s important to them, both personally and professionally, she says. “Make sure you’re not the only one talking about these objectives, and the interviewing team isn’t just ‘nodding along’ to placate you,” she says. “That’s a huge red flag, and you’re not going to be happy or successful if you’re feeding them lines and they’re agreeing just to get you into the position,” Azzarello says. Make sure you ask about performance reviews, mentoring programs and other on-the-job training and support relationships, adds Bryant. These are more important to your success and happiness than most candidates realize, and are often overlooked. Observe and Interact With Your Potential Colleagues Your powers of observation can be critical when scoping out a potential new job or career path, says Cleverbridge’s Johanna Aiken. Plan to arrive at the interview location early, and simply sit and observe, she says. “I recommend arriving at least 10 minutes early; sit in the lobby and just observe, because you can gain a lot of insight just by watching the employees interacting with each other in a non-professional way,” Aiken says.”Take note of the general ‘vibe’ in the office. Do you see people coming and going frequently? How do they talk to each other? What’s their tone of voice? Their body language? How do the employees seem that differs from what the company claims is their culture?” she says. “If you see behavior or overhear conversations that make you uncomfortable, don’t ignore it. This is one of the best ways to gauge what the working environment will be like,” she says. Azzarello suggests going out to lunch or for a cup of coffee with the interviewing team, if that’s possible, to get an inside look at how your potential supervisors and colleagues handle their ‘power,’ either real or perceived. “If you can, to out to lunch and closely observe how they treat the waiter,” she says. “People who are otherwise smart and competent can turn into narcissistic, controlling jerks when in a position of power, and you need to gauge how they treat others who they perceive as being in a ‘lesser’ position. If you can’t go out to lunch, notice how they treat their assistants, their office staff, and people who walk into the office,” she says. Kin HR’s Bryant suggests asking to spend some time with the people who could become your colleagues, too. “You can talk to — or at least request of the interviewing manager — to spend some time with the folks who are your peers at the job,” he says. “Ask them what expectations they held coming into the job and whether or not those were met. Ask them if they have the tools and resources they need to do their job effectively. Ask what the biggest obstacles are to success, and why those aren’t removed,” Bryant says. “If you’re looking for specifics about the person who’ll be your immediate supervisor, ask things like, ‘How does s/he communicate? What are her/his methods for holding people accountable? Can you describe a typical decision-making process? Do you feel like you have the support and freedom to do your job or are you micromanaged?” says Azzarello. But remember, Aiken cautions, to take some of this information with a grain of salt. Since the interviewing team will be selecting the folks you’ll have access to, you may not be getting the entire, unblemished picture. “Now, you must remember that management is going to select the people you’ll be talking to, and they’re going to choose employees they feel will give the most positive view of the company,” she says. “So, just remember that there will be a bias,” she says. ‘At-Will’ Employment Goes Both Ways If you do end up in a situation with a bad boss or a poor working environment, it can be helpful to know if your state supports the idea of “at will” employment, says Bryant. While “at will” statutes empower employers to hire and fire as they see fit, employees can also benefit, especially in a booming tech industry market where employment’s plentiful, he says. “If you’re in an at-will employment state, you’re not bound or beholden to the company to stay, or even to give two weeks’ notice if you decide to leave,” Bryant says. “Especially in IT, it’s a bustling economy and you can walk away; with a low unemployment rate, it can be much more productive to find another situation than to stick it out under a bad boss or in a bad work environment,” he says. “Always remember to ‘run to’ a job for the ‘right’ reasons,” says Cleverbridge’s Aiken. “Even if you’re currently in a bad situation, make sure you’re taking a job opportunity because it’s the right thing for you, not just because you hate your current situation,” she says. That said, it can happen that sticking it out under a bad boss or in an otherwise less-than-ideal job situation is worth it if it opens doors and clears the way for even greater professional and personal growth and advancement, says Azzarello. “From my own experience, I worked under a boss who was a walking red flag,” she says. “But that position and the experience I gained opened up so many more opportunities for me later — jobs with global scope, with increasing external responsibilities, rapid advancement. So, you should always gauge the pros and cons and decide what’s the best for you and for your future,” Azzarello says.

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Horrible bosses are all too common — there’s even a movie about them. Here, three experts weigh in on how to spot a bad boss before you accept a position and offer tips on how to make sure you’re making the right employment choice.

Everyone suffers under a bad manager – morale sinks, productivity tanks, absences increase. Even those above a bad manager in the corporate hierarchy feel the impact; executives must dedicate time to resolving conflicts, and often end up assuming the role and responsibility for those who aren’t adequately doing their job, says says Patty Azzarello, CEO of Azzarello Group, and a business advisor, author and executive.

But there are warning signs, red flags to look out for when searching for a job and while interviewing that can identify a bad boss or an untenable work environment before you accept a job.
Do Some Early Detective Work

Your first step should be researching the company online – but go beyond the obvious corporate Web site and Facebook profile, says Craig Bryant, founder and product manager for Kin HR, which provides human resources software solutions for small businesses.

[Related: How to Write a Job Description That Attracts Top IT Talent ]

“Before you even start the interview process, research the company online. Go to Glassdoor and other feedback sites to see what current and former employees have to say about the company,” Bryant says.

While the comments on sites like Glassdoor aren’t entirely objective, you can get a good sense of whether or not employees are happy with the company, their management hierarchy, whether or not there are advancement opportunities, says Johanna Aiken, human resources director at ecommerce solutions company Cleverbridge.

“Especially in the technology arena, it’s critical to use social media to your advantage,” Aiken says. “Use sites like Glassdoor, sure, but don’t discount LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn to do keyword searches and connection searches; reach out to current and former employees and ask if they’re happy with the company, do they like their job, that sort of thing. If they’ve left, ask why,” Aiken says.

What you’re looking for are patterns of behavior: Does every junior programmer leave that company only to reappear as a senior programmer at a different company? That could be indicative of a lack of advancement or promotion opportunities, says Kin HR’s Bryant.

In addition, find out as much as you can about the company culture and work environment, says Bryant. Finding a good fit is as much about character, culture and personality match as it is about hard skills, and it’s important to make sure you’ll mesh well with the company.

“When we hire, we’re looking for character and cultural fit, not just hard skills,” says Bryant. “We’re looking at who and what that person will eventually become at the company. Are you a freewheeling, work-anywhere night owl? You might not perform at your best for a company with strict nine-to-five hours and not a lot of flexibility, for instance,” he says.
Look to Your Future

Even more important than the immediate impact of starting a new job is the future potential, both for the company and for the employee, says Bryant. Starting as early as the interview process, candidates should focus on how the company will contribute to their professional growth and development and make sure that aligns with their career goals.

“During the interview process, candidates should probe for details on how the company will contribute to their professional growth,” says Bryant. “Not just the raw skill sets, but learn what you can expect in terms of continuing education, personal growth, travel. If you’re going to pour your passion and devote most of your waking hours to a company what will you get in return?” he says.

[Related: Inside the Changing Role of the CISO ]

“You want to ask, specifically, how your own personal and professional objectives fit in with those of the company, and how that ties into your compensation, too,” says Bryant. “If you get a ‘deer in the headlights’ look in response, that’s a red flag and there most likely won’t be that much room for personal growth and advancement,” he says.

As an example, Azzarello Group’s Patty Azzarello describes an interview she had for a position that was described as “strategic.” “Everyone I interviewed with was saying they’d be thrilled to have me on board to drive this ‘strategic position’ and help grow the business in a certain direction,” Azzarello says. “But when I talked to the CEO, and I delved into the ‘strategic’ aspects of the role, he simply nodded and didn’t seem to be on the same page. He didn’t understand what I was talking about!” she says. Azzarello adds that it’s important to make sure your own expectations and objectives fit with those of the company, and that candidates are very clear about what’s important to them, both personally and professionally, she says.

“Make sure you’re not the only one talking about these objectives, and the interviewing team isn’t just ‘nodding along’ to placate you,” she says. “That’s a huge red flag, and you’re not going to be happy or successful if you’re feeding them lines and they’re agreeing just to get you into the position,” Azzarello says.

Make sure you ask about performance reviews, mentoring programs and other on-the-job training and support relationships, adds Bryant. These are more important to your success and happiness than most candidates realize, and are often overlooked.
Observe and Interact With Your Potential Colleagues

Your powers of observation can be critical when scoping out a potential new job or career path, says Cleverbridge’s Johanna Aiken. Plan to arrive at the interview location early, and simply sit and observe, she says.

“I recommend arriving at least 10 minutes early; sit in the lobby and just observe, because you can gain a lot of insight just by watching the employees interacting with each other in a non-professional way,” Aiken says.”Take note of the general ‘vibe’ in the office. Do you see people coming and going frequently? How do they talk to each other? What’s their tone of voice? Their body language? How do the employees seem that differs from what the company claims is their culture?” she says. “If you see behavior or overhear conversations that make you uncomfortable, don’t ignore it. This is one of the best ways to gauge what the working environment will be like,” she says.

Azzarello suggests going out to lunch or for a cup of coffee with the interviewing team, if that’s possible, to get an inside look at how your potential supervisors and colleagues handle their ‘power,’ either real or perceived.

“If you can, to out to lunch and closely observe how they treat the waiter,” she says. “People who are otherwise smart and competent can turn into narcissistic, controlling jerks when in a position of power, and you need to gauge how they treat others who they perceive as being in a ‘lesser’ position. If you can’t go out to lunch, notice how they treat their assistants, their office staff, and people who walk into the office,” she says.

Kin HR’s Bryant suggests asking to spend some time with the people who could become your colleagues, too. “You can talk to — or at least request of the interviewing manager — to spend some time with the folks who are your peers at the job,” he says.

“Ask them what expectations they held coming into the job and whether or not those were met. Ask them if they have the tools and resources they need to do their job effectively. Ask what the biggest obstacles are to success, and why those aren’t removed,” Bryant says.

“If you’re looking for specifics about the person who’ll be your immediate supervisor, ask things like, ‘How does s/he communicate? What are her/his methods for holding people accountable? Can you describe a typical decision-making process? Do you feel like you have the support and freedom to do your job or are you micromanaged?” says Azzarello.

But remember, Aiken cautions, to take some of this information with a grain of salt. Since the interviewing team will be selecting the folks you’ll have access to, you may not be getting the entire, unblemished picture.

“Now, you must remember that management is going to select the people you’ll be talking to, and they’re going to choose employees they feel will give the most positive view of the company,” she says. “So, just remember that there will be a bias,” she says.
‘At-Will’ Employment Goes Both Ways

If you do end up in a situation with a bad boss or a poor working environment, it can be helpful to know if your state supports the idea of “at will” employment, says Bryant.

While “at will” statutes empower employers to hire and fire as they see fit, employees can also benefit, especially in a booming tech industry market where employment’s plentiful, he says.

“If you’re in an at-will employment state, you’re not bound or beholden to the company to stay, or even to give two weeks’ notice if you decide to leave,” Bryant says. “Especially in IT, it’s a bustling economy and you can walk away; with a low unemployment rate, it can be much more productive to find another situation than to stick it out under a bad boss or in a bad work environment,” he says.

“Always remember to ‘run to’ a job for the ‘right’ reasons,” says Cleverbridge’s Aiken. “Even if you’re currently in a bad situation, make sure you’re taking a job opportunity because it’s the right thing for you, not just because you hate your current situation,” she says.

That said, it can happen that sticking it out under a bad boss or in an otherwise less-than-ideal job situation is worth it if it opens doors and clears the way for even greater professional and personal growth and advancement, says Azzarello.

“From my own experience, I worked under a boss who was a walking red flag,” she says. “But that position and the experience I gained opened up so many more opportunities for me later — jobs with global scope, with increasing external responsibilities, rapid advancement. So, you should always gauge the pros and cons and decide what’s the best for you and for your future,” Azzarello says.

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Microsoft, Tech

What the cloud really means for your IT job

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As companies adopt cloud services, is there more or less of a need for IT workers?

Depending on which survey or story you read, the cloud can be either a good thing for IT workers and their job security, or it can be terrifying.

For example, a study by Microsoft and IDC recently predicted that cloud computing will create 14 million jobs internationally by 2015. But those aren’t just IT jobs, they are jobs spread around the entire world, across all industries.

For IT shops, the news may not be as bright: A study by IT service provider CSC concluded that 14% of companies reduced their IT staff headcount after deploying a cloud strategy.

As businesses embrace the cloud, experts say there will still be a need for IT staff in the enterprise, but there will be a need for different types of IT workers. Instead of managing infrastructure, tending the help desk and commissioning server instances to be created, IT workers of tomorrow are instead more likely to be managing vendor relationships, working across departments and helping clients and workers integrate into the cloud.

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“The No. 1 reason most enterprises are going to the cloud is cost savings,” says Phil Garland, of PricewaterhouseCooper’s CIO advisory business services unit. The largest line items in enterprise budgets are traditionally labor, so as enterprises deploy the cloud, it will reduce the number of staff needed, he says.

But, this doesn’t necessarily mean that IT jobs are gone with the wind. In fact, while 14% of businesses surveyed by CSC cut IT staff, another 20% actually increased staff.

“It really depends on what the enterprise is doing in the cloud,” Garland adds. “In most cases, it’s a shift of responsibilities instead of wholesale cutting or hiring.”

Take the example of Underwriters Laboratories in Illinois, a 9,000-person company that provides third-party inspection and certification services to more than 50,000 businesses around the world with its trademark UL symbol.

In August, the company transitioned from an in-house managed deployment of IBM communications systems Lotus Notes and Domino, to a cloud-based SaaS offering of Microsoft Office 365. “We needed something that would be much more elastic,” says CIO Christian Anschuetz. The company has executed a handful of mergers and acquisitions in recent years, and it expects more in the future. Anschuetz wanted a simpler way of deploying increased instances of communications systems without the need to add infrastructure to support it.

The migration to the cloud took about eight weeks and it created an almost immediate shift in the firm’s IT needs. UL no longer needed workers to manage its communications platform, email servers and chat functions. Despite cutting in those areas, Anschuetz says his investment in cloud personnel has tripled since the cloud adoption.

“Most people think that with such a deployment we would be drawing down our services to make them more cost-effective,” he says. “Our internal IT is growing.”

The greatest need for services in UL’s new system is for customer-facing employees that can help UL clients integrate into the company’s platform. As a firm that oversees product development and manufacturing, Anschuetz says customers want UL workers to be involved in the product lifecycle as early as possible. A cloud-based system, he says, allows UL to work more closely with customers on product development. Instead of a face-to-face meeting, or emailing documents back and forth, now documents are hosted in a cloud environment that both UL and the customer have access to, allowing for greater collaboration, he says. “UL has realized the elasticity that the cloud provides us is of great value in the marketplace,” he says. “It allows us to develop new applications and regenerate relationships with customers.” Because of the value it creates for the business, UL is adding workers that help manage the cloud integration efforts.

This is the reasoning IDC and Microsoft used in its study claiming the cloud will help create 14 million jobs in the next five years.

“By offloading services to the cloud, you increase the amount of budget you have for new projects and initiatives, which are the things that truly lead to new business revenues,” says John Gantz, an IDC research who studies technology economics.

Three-quarters of IT spending today, he says, is on legacy systems and upgrades, with the remainder on new products. If an enterprise cuts system management costs, that creates additional resources for new projects and initiatives, which drive revenues and can potentially create jobs. Although, Gantz stresses, those may not be in the IT department.

In the short term, cloud deployments can create an increased need for IT staff to manage the transition and monitor the new cloud system and vendors. In the long term, however, the cloud generally creates efficiencies and reduces IT staffing jobs in an enterprise, he says. On a macroeconomic level, Gantz doesn’t see the cloud having a macroeconomic impact. Some of the jobs lost in individual companies could be offset by increases in staffing needs by cloud vendors, he says.

David Moschella, global research director for the Leading Edge Forum at CSC, agrees that IT investments usually lead to a drop in staffing needs for a company.

“Businesses can be run with less people because of technology advancement,” he says.

Traditionally there has been an argument that when jobs are eliminated in one area, they can be increased in another. Moschella believes that will be the case, but he says it’s too early to tell exactly which areas will be the beneficiaries of the job boom the cloud can provide.

What is expected is that traditional IT roles of managing software and hardware will no longer be needed in the new cloud-heavy world.

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