Free Career and Job Search Advice

wjgray · Newbie Joined: 20 Oct 2009 Posts: 2 Career Advice: +0/-0

I'm going on 6 months without valid nibbles. I tend to modify my resume and tailor covers for every position. Here is a general resume that serves as my starting point for positions like Solutions Architect, Business Analyst, Sales Engineer, ... Any advice??

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William J. Gray
xxxxxx Riverton, UT 84096 (801) nnn-nnnn xxxx@xxxxx.com

QUALIFICATIONS
• Successful career leading, building, and implementing global business solutions for Hewlett-Packard as a Business Analyst, Programmer, and Solutions Architect
• Efficient and effective at developing a deep, intimate understanding of problems being solved through interviews, shadowing, and other extractive techniques
• Extremely capable in leading stakeholders and management teams through requirements gathering and prioritization
• Demonstrated ability to quickly learn and utilize new methods, systems, and technologies and leverage them into sound, complete solutions
• Strong, proactive abilities envisioning risk areas, determining risk acceptance criteria, and developing contingency plans
• Produced clear, concise documentation, procedures, and risk assessments for consumption by multiple audience types
• Confident working across organizational bounds to develop shared solutions and ownership
• Proven skills managing and delegating multiple tasks, projects, and assignments simultaneously and maintaining management visibility to status
• Solid leader able to build and direct highly productive, motivated onsite and virtual teams
• Able to draw on many years of programming and software development experience easing transition of requirements into technical specifications
• Creative troubleshooter able to identify and resolve problems at all levels
• Passionate about customer satisfaction and solving the right problem correctly
• Effective communicator able to clearly present complex information to diverse audiences

PROFESSIONAL HISTORY
Hewlett-Packard Company - February 1984 to June 2007

TECHNICAL/SOLUTIONS ANALYST VI – Snoqualmie, WA / Scottsdale, AZ / Fremont, CA, 1996 to June 2007 Performed wide range of global technical solution development and project management functions supporting HP business groups like Marketing, Sales, Distribu¬tion, Customer Service, Executive and Consulting.

Conferred with representatives/stakeholders of business groups and other IT professionals to identify needs, requirements, specifications, opportunities, and problems. Led development and architectural design processes. Created and implemented project scope and milestones. Delegated tasks and responsibilities to team members. Monitored activities for quality and timeliness. Immediately resolved problems at all levels.

Synthesized project results into overall solutions assuring alignment with HP IT strategies. Managed development, implementation, and evaluation of final products. Recognition gained for exceptional vision in conception of solutions as well as technical and leadership skills.

Representative Projects
Sales Library: Problem was HP had at least five programs with similar charters concerning content asset dissemination to Sales and Technical Consulting representatives around the world. Each program owned its own infrastructure (hardware, software, processes, and people) and vendor contracts. Led a global, virtual team of project component leaders in successful design, development, and implementation of a single content management repository accessible to all business and stakeholder organizations, not just Sales and Consulting. Gathered proper requirements through survey, interview, and shadow techniques of users and stakeholders around the world. Specifications translated from results with help from vendor consultants and offshore developers. Development activities monitored and results compared to requirements. Worked with HP content providers (internal and external) from around the world to publish and syndicate pertinent content assets. Provided structure to unstructured information with creative technical and human processes. User acceptance testing designed, performed, and signed off. Expanded technology beyond HP proprietary applications. Researched, selected, and negotiated with vendors like Vignette and Autonomy to combine and extend licensing and, with others, to end contractual obligations. Product's consolidation improved efficiency, productivity, and ROI. The product reduced sales and productivity costs by $250 million annually.

Electronic Sales Partner (ESP): Problem was that HP's Sales professionals had difficulty locating sales collateral and documentation in an expeditious manner. Add to this the fact that when content assets were found they were outdated, incorrect, or non-authoritative. Created a taskforce of accountable Sales Representatives and led them through a series of seminars designed to create requirements and success criteria for the problem solution. From the results, co-led the design, development, and implementation of a proprietary content management solution developed solely in Perl. Negotiated with Verity to purchase licensing for enterprise search capability and built this into solution. Rollout and training was staggered throughout the world to introduce the worldwide Sales force to the application. Program success led to rollout to HP channel Partners outside of firewall. Risk involved overcome by working with firewall and security consultants. Worked with various content providers throughout HP to map content assets and enable availability through ESP. HP Sales professionals used this product for a decade until rolled into Sales Library.

Executive Sponsorship Program – Problem was that HP's Executive Staff was not tracking contacts, relationships, and goals with premier clients and accounts. This led to management difficulties for Enterprise Account Managers. Worked with EAMs to create requirements for a simple solution that could roll into the company's full-blown CRM solution due in 12 months. From the requirements, designed and developed a Global Relationship and Strategy web solution that enabled EAMs to track and to monitor relationships. Tracked hundreds of relationships using this c#.NET application with a SQL Server back-end. Estimated productivity savings of replacing the old spreadsheet based process is $25 million this year. Due to proper planning, this stopgap solution was successfully rolled into the CRM solution in two days.

SurveySolutions – HP needed a way to survey or poll employees, channel partners, and customers and track demography and results. The requirements gathered from stakeholders pointed to a solution far larger than could be easily handled by Sharepoint/MOSS. Researched, identified, and negotiated with software provider to purchase corporate licensing for a third party Enterprise Feedback Management application. Implemented business and technical workflows to support a global team of survey designers and reporting stakeholders. Extended the application to synchronize with corporate Enterprise Directory (AD/LDAP) daily. In addition, extended the application to generate dynamic survey invitations based on business criteria outside of the scope of the base software product. Transitioned day-to-day support activities to HP's internal support organization.

Prior HP Assignments
Software Design/Development Engineer, Professional Services Organization (1993-96)
R&D Software Design Engineer, Manufacturing Productivity Division (1988-93)
MIS Senior Programmer Analyst, Manufacturing Productivity Division (1984-87)

Computer Handyman of Utah / Snoqualmie Valley Computer Handyman – June 2007 to Present
SOLE PROPRIETOR – Snoqualmie, WA / Riverton, UT (http://utcomputerhandyman.com)
Computer hardware and software repair, tutoring and consulting business operated as a sole proprietor. Marketing by word-of-mouth, Google local business listings, and local newspapers. Solved computer problems, challenges, and upgrades of residential and small business customers. My job was to listen to the customer issue and priorities and, then, solve the problem in the most cost-effective manner possible. Well respected and sought after. Extremely high rate of return business and referrals.

TECHNICAL SKILLS
Specialized Skills Content Management, Enterprise Search

Operating Systems Windows (XP, Vista), Windows Server, Linux (Ubuntu), HPUX, DOS, MPE, OSX (Mac)

Languages PHP, Perl, Java, JSP, Javascript, C, Java; CLI / .Net languages like C#, Visual Basic, VBScript, ASP, Jscript; SQL variations; OS shells for DOS, Unix, Linux, HPUX, MPE

Technologies Apache, Tomcat, IIS, LDAP / Active Directory, AJAX, ODBC, XML

Applications Autonomy / Verity K2, Vignette CMS suite (VAP, VBIS), MS Project (Desktop and Server), TeamPlay, SharePoint / MOSS, Surround SCM, Subversion / CVS, Joomla, OSCommerce, SQL Server, MYSQL, MS Office Suite, Visio, Visual Source Safe, Visual Studio, Eclipse

Certifications Hewlett-Packard proprietary equivalents to MCDST, MCSD, MCAD

EDUCATION
BS – Computer Science, North Carolina State University (1983)
Specialized Coursework: Management of Information Systems, Business, Mathematics, Statistics, Accounting

stormbind · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 1:25 pm Post subject:

This forum is all about the blind leading the blind!! Smile

I felt that you have penetrating insight of HP working practices and a wide range of IT skills, as opposed to a wide range of working practices and recently sharpened IT skill. I think the latter is what lazy readers seek.

For example, I recently applied for a HTML/CSS web designer - something that might have been appropriate for me 10 years ago. They instantly rejected me on the grounds that my skills do not match and I'm thinking - but that's absurd!

On reflection, perhaps my experience with audiences; design processes, digital signal processing/waveform manipulation; OpenGL etc. did not make me more impressive, but actually diluted the relevant experience! However, to remove those things would deeply hurt me. I felt maybe you were unwilling to let go of HP working practice.

By the way, you list Java twice. Something that bothers me about listing technical skills is that I am fearful of being lumbered with a speciality that I have not recently practiced and need refreshment. For example, I can write a similar list with Java, Perl, PHP, Pascal, Prolog, Lisp, Max, JavaScript, JScript, C etc. and I do not write everything incase they expect me to be just as quick in one as the other. Once we know a few, we can learn the others in a weekend - right? I don't know... I cannot even land an interview!!

Having said that, I am not qualified to judge your CV as its clearly senior to my experience.

Where can we find proper recruiter assistance? Surely its in their interest to make us more appealing?

wjgray · Newbie Joined: 20 Oct 2009 Posts: 2 Career Advice: +0/-0

Thanks, Stormbind! Really appreciate the "Java" catch <blush>!

Your insight to "working practice" is interesting and I am trying to wrap my head around it. I agree with you statement about "lazy reader" atrracted to recently honed technical skills. I was hoping you could expound on this....

"I felt maybe you were unwilling to let go of HP working practice."

What "HP working practices"?
What made you feel that way?
Examples??

I really appreciate your help. I wish you the best of luck in your search! If it provides any hope, I did secure my second interview in the past 6 months for next Tuesday. They are out there!

stormbind · Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2009 5:18 pm Post subject:

I am often wrong (my emphasis) Smile

When it was first read, your CV underscored your contribution to HP's success. Perhaps that is exactly what a good CV does. What it did not tell me, however, is your style of working.

For example, I am taking the liberty of assuming that HP has a distinctive culture, and that each team has a different dynamic. I felt as though your teamwork interactions, both inside and outside the different teams, did not come across. I have no idea if you motivate your teams by way of inspiration, authority, or charm &c.

However, perhaps my thought is misplaced. After all, you will work on building a rapport during the interview. I hope you enjoy the best of luck on Tuesday! Smile

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