To most people in IT, and indeed to all of business, updating and refreshing your CV is, at best a burden and at worst torture. Particularly, if you have moved from role to role on the basis of reputation. This means that long periods can go without you having to sit down to rationalise and justify your knowledge and skill base.
This is a poor state to be in, as for most of us, our skills and abilities are what we are selling and you need the marketing for your “product’s” kept up to date and relevant.
I was once told that you’re supposed to redo your CV every six months, and yes I do normally do that, but I don’t do it with the same vim and vigour that I really should.
I’ve decided to change that. And given that I’m in the middle of looking at new roles I figured a proper sit down review of my CV was worth the effort, and it’s amazing what it turns out you’ve done in your life.
Not only does this point out items that you need to address and learn in the future, but It also gives you confidence in the sheer volume and amount of stuff. you have piled through in your life. I’ve been doing this nonsense for 25 years now and it really has been a busy couple of decades.
Filtering the hundreds of points of view and ideas on writing a CV, a few stood out
Keep it to 2 pages, no one is going to read a 10 page CV.
Companies are not going to read more than a couple of paragraphs before making an initial decision.
Agents, HR and job sites are going to mangle it anyway, so keep the format simple.
Don’t just edit it in place, copy and type it up in a new file, it helps to shake out the useless bits.
I am not a light traveller in general, I tend to carry a lot to cater for all situations and this is particularly true with my work bag, as a long time contractor I always find it best to not rely on anything being present at a clients site and always carry everything you need for a full days work.
Lets start with the basics, After trying lots of rucksacks over the years LowePro has proved to be the most consistent and best padded (they are designed to keep camera lens’s safe which cost more than laptops), their only downside is the constant model change, so when ever your current bag wears out, you have to work out the current equivalent model. Looking at their site just now, if I was buying a new one it would be the Flipside 500 AW II, which is fractionally larger than the one I currently use but still good, in addition to the excellent padding they are very water resistant and stuffed with good pockets and can take a hell of a lot of weight 1, also in the picture is a Totes Eco x-tra strong which is a good work horse umbrella.
Next comes the Laptop(s), when I’m using my own laptop I favour the highest power 15inch ThinkPad that can be charged off USB-C that I can get (which seems to change from generation to generation), but currently I’m mainly using the clients laptop, and for my own work I’m finding a good android tablet + keyboard and mouse is doing just fine, for this you currently can’t beat Samsung, though their keyboards are heart attack expensive (so much so that I would move to an external keyboard and a solid case for the tablet next time)
For years I have proudly been a single monitor person (as a contractor on a laptop it made sense) but working remotely plus having to now manage a calendar from hell, made me move to multiple monitors, now we are back to a lot of office work I’m finding that I miss it, there are a lot of posh recommendations for USB monitors with fancy features but I just want a second monitor that looks the same and is at the same angle as my laptop, after trying a bunch of them I settled on the ThinkVision M14d 14inch, it is like the classic Thinkpad range, solid, well behaved and just does the job (in addition it comes with an excellent case and is light as a feather), So now when I have space I pack this as well (I would have killed for it back in the training and Salesforce days)
Now on to the tech accessories:
For a Power Brick – Omni Mobile 25600 seems to handle all the needs I have, and is about as big as you can easily take on a plane, I also have the Omni 20+ 220v, but found it a bit of an overkill.
Powercube Rewireable – One of the most useful bits of tech ever, a power block that means you don’t need to bring multiple travel adaptors with you and is useable for everyday work, I bring mine everywhere, and the fact that it uses a standard C14 socket 2, means that you can get a wide variety of cables and splitters for it.
Odd Power Cables – As mentioned above, using the standard C14 connector means you can get adaptors and splitters, the one you can see in the picture is a C14 to C5 3
Tech Pouch – Rather than a formal Tech bag I found a wash bag from Eagle creak as done me proud for years now.
Decent USB Charger – So many of the apparently “amazing” usb chargers you see advertised on the Internet turn out to be rubbish, they share their full load poorly when multiple devices are plugged in or often even wont fast charge something on their own, the most consistent I have found is the Anker 543 Charger, which in addition is not built into a UK plug which gives me more flexibility.
Compact UK power lead – Used mainly for the USB charger this is a nice compact foldable UK plug cable (they don’t seem to make the UK version any more)
Headset – For my work headset I use a Plantronics voyager 5200, its solid and dependable, easy to get replacement ear tips for and to keep charged when you have 10 hours of meetings in a day, only unusual bit is that you don’t use the built in USB Dongle anymore as Bluetooth as improved to such an extent that it has surpassed Plantronics own standard.
Power supply – huge power supply brick for clients laptop, boooo!
A ton of different cables and misc. adaptors, considering we are all using USB there still seems to be a lot of different sodding cables to carry. I’m not going to recommend brands and such but a few tips have stood me in good stead.
Carry duplicates of the common ones
If you are an Android person also carry a lightning cable and vs. versa, nothing makes friends faster than a charging cable in need.
For USB-C cables the only ones you can REALLY trust for USB-C to USB-C activity are the thick ones with a 4K video rating, all others will have at least one failing (wont carry 100 watts, wont be recognised, can’t be used for external monitors etc etc), remember USB-C is just a connector format.
I favour trackballs over mice, both for shoulder health and for working on the move, so have used the Logitech trackball for the last 25 years, the current version of the ERGO M575 is the best yet and a good external case keeps it protected.
I always work with a physical notepad. It used to be a moleskin hard shell reporter notepad, but they stopped making that style and it turned out that I could actually get 100 custom made at a fraction of the cost that moleskin used to charge. So that’s what I did. I also use the Analog cards by Ugmonk for day to day task identification. Pen wise I always use a Paper Mate flex grip as its a solid workhorse of a pen.
Here’s where it gets a bit weird. I carry a desktop fan as I overheat in the normal 23 degrees of a standard office, for this I use an old server fan modified to run off USB, because they are far quieter and have far less vibrations than normal fans. You may overheat a lot in the office, but if you bring a fan that makes a hell of a noise, vibrates and annoys your clients and people around you, you are not making any friends.
External Keyboard wise, at home I use a full size Logitech MX keyboard, so it makes sense to keep with the same key feel, so I use the shorter MX Keys Mini, with a third party hard case, given the prices Samsung charge for their tablet keyboards and given the option to purchase again, I would purchase this to control the tablet as well, with the easy swap buttons for controlling multiple machines, it means I can use this with machines both at home and on the move.
Corporate Bits
For some reason no matter how posh and well setup the company is, they never have good conference facilities setup when it actually comes time to do a call or brain storm, so I bring a little kit in a bag with the following in it:
PowerConf S3 Speakerphone – A good general purpose speaker and mic. set that can run either via bluetooth or USB off your phone or laptop.
Pen set – A good pack of whiteboard pens, but given the nature of a lot of modern whiteboards, remember to swap at least one of them out for a white chalk pen.
Wipe set – Often overlooked by facilities and always by people, you need something to clear off your work after the meeting, so a small whiteboard wiper, a cloth and most important a cleaning spray, I have never found a travel set for this but Whoosh do a 8ml screen cleaner refillable spray bottle that you can fill with white board cleaner, and its about the size of a pen so can go in the existing pen Pack.
In conclusion: as you can see, I pack for every eventuality, I have found that the slight ribbing you get where it looks as if you’re packing for the world’s end in an office is far outweighed by the satisfaction that clients get when you simply can cope with everything. Nothing makes you stop work. You just shrug and keep going, as well as carrying enough to help other people and keep the team going at a pinch.
the only one I have ever “successfully” damaged was one I was using to carry a 32kg kettle bell, back and forth to a gym[↩]
I have mentioned burnout on this blog before, but you can be utterly exhausted and still not burn out, indeed some people don’t have that option and just keep going come what may, 1 Now many people will give you ways to identify how you know you are exhausted and warning signs and such, but say you take a holiday or a break or even a change, how do you know when you have recovered? not having a firm description will often lead people to think they are fixed when they are not.
To me the best description has always come from the book ‘Kim’ by Rudyard Kipling, after Kim has recovered from both physical and mental exhaustion:
“and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. “
Sometimes the classics are classics for a reason.
I always remember going to the office at 6am for years, watching the shift change at the main post office in Farringdon as I walked past, and seeing the utterly exhausted expressions of those who were finishing a night shift else where and were then moving on to their next job at the post office knowing, they did this week in week out.. so I would shut the hell up and get back to my corporate job knowing it could have been a hell of a lot worse.[↩]
I was recently reading “Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language” by Amanda Montell, and the author was talking about truth. The context that they were talking about was if a man would keep repeating the same thing, time and time again without objection from others, it would become the “Default truth” and in doing so it would become actually true. Again, in this context, they meant it in terms of a men vs women thing, however thinking about the actual corporate world, I realised that everyone does this to each other 1.
That default truth isn’t necessarily male versus female. It’s a thing humans do to each other. How many meetings for how many projects have I been in over the decades, where simply the loudest, most strident voice, the one that repeats their point of view again, and again and again, won.
How many of us when faced with this have muttered to ourselves, “oh, yeah, we’ll just accept it for now and then get back to it when they have calmed down”. But in doing so, you’ve accepted their truth. It’s a human trick, not a magic trick.
There are 2 things to learn here:
Is don’t let people that do this as a standard tactic get away with this without challenge.
On the meetings that you think that the only way you’re gonna get any further is to just accept what the person said and move on or take it offline. Make sure that you actually do that and bring it back up later, keep fighting, or in the end you have let that person become the truth.
Though I FULLY accept that women experience it far more than men[↩]
This year has been my most professionally challenging year for at least the last decade and all in a good way.
Prior to this year, I fixed complex IT problems. I did project management to make things work when there was no good project manager allocated, I did business liaison as a specialist, again just to facilitate the work I was delivering, but this last year its all been very different.
This year each of the 3 core areas of work has been a deliverable in its own right and my competency held to a high standard.
Management: People management on a much larger multi region team with different levels and types of people with different challenges, multiple projects all going on at the same time and not projects in the contract way, where you keep them all separate, projects that merged together, projects dependent on each other. There was an awful lot of plates spinning, In this, delegation has been my biggest challenge the scale of deliverables required has truly meant I have had to “Work Smarter not Harder” 1.
Technical: The normal technical growth continues and technology keeps on changing at its insane pace, so it was all in all absolutely fabulous, a real challenge but one that has been my bread and butter for 2 decades so its just a case of fitting it in with the other learning needs.
Business: The main project I am working on weaves multiple areas of business together and to my knowledge has not been done like this before, so a lot of truly complex business challenges come up suddenly 2, thus I’m expanding my knowledge on a daily basis, indeed I put aside 7 hours a week on training to accelerate this, this is making things that I only saw in the distance before, snap into sharp focus.
2023: My only fear for the upcoming year is it won’t be as challenging, because I’m enjoying it hugely 3. I am learning far more about the people side of project management, dealing with people who are quite frankly not wanting to come onto the same page as you, something that you don’t tend to have with clients when you’re a contractor. From the business side, I am going solidly for my CII certification and full SOX certification, so can reach a point where I can argue with authority with an actuary or with compliance lawyers. The constant technology push I’ve always loved. It’ll just keep going through. I spend my time learning, I spend my time digging through things and having fun. It’s a joy. It’s a non stress part of my job, but thankfully I still have lots to learn.
Bring it on!
Mark makes a retching sounding sound at using such a phrase[↩]
Even with the best planning done by competent BA’s[↩]
My Wife says that its the least unhappy she has seen me in a while[↩]
