Senior Project: Week 3

Hello! Week 3. This blog post will address more questions pertaining my project and my overall IT skills.

What Are Your Personal Professional IT Strengths (Technical and Soft Skills?

I have various hard and soft skills, with more of a focus on my soft skills and learning capabilities. My skills are as follows:

Hard Skills

• HTML, CSS, and Javascript
• Java (though it has been 2 or so years)
• Basic understanding of CMD, VBA, and Linux commands
• VM and Hyper-V Knowledge
• Hardware installation and troubleshooting
• Software installation and troubleshooting
• Inventory and task management
• Small amounts of game development
• Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) skills and audio/video editing skills

Soft Skills

• Can be detail-oriented if given time
• Easily get involved and "sucked in" to projects
• Passionate about self-improvement
• Always looking for ways to do things more efficiently
• Work well under pressure and stress
• Growing confidence over time
• Proficient writing and reading skills
• Proficient keyboard and mouse use
• Able to think outside the box
• Good time-management skills and still improving
• Works well in small groups and teams
• Friendly to all
• Responsible
• Flexible
• Creative

There are more skills I could list, especially for soft skills, but I think these summarize my skills to some extent.

What Are Your Professional IT Goals?

I'll break this down into two separate sections.

Immediate Goal (0-1 Year)

For my immediate goal within the next year, I primarily want to find another IT related job that will act as my first full-time job. Being in OC's IT department as a student tech, I am only allowed to work a maximum of 18 hours a week and if I am not taking classes, I can't work. This means that I will most likely be done working for the IT Operations Shop at OC after this quarter since I will graduate. With this, I also want to be able to work full-time. This will allow me to gain more experience working since my only two real jobs have been somewhat part-time with my summer camp job only being for the summer. I will also be able to make more money and move on with other goals in my life. 

Long Term Goals (5-10 Years)

For these goals, I have two.

My first major goal in IT is to simply find a position that fits me best. If I am to keep working in the IT field, I want to find my calling. So far, I have been leaning towards web-development, but I still feel like there is something out there that would fit me even better. In the end, I want a job that I feel like I personally enjoy and one that makes me feel like I am doing good work and making a difference. Most likely, this would be a job that allows for more hands-on work or collaboration with others whether that is through clients or teams. With this, I also want to find a position that allows me to be comfortable socially and a position that is not too isolated/solo work. 

My second major goal in IT is to further improve my coding and memory skills. It is very easy for me to learn things on the fly and to apply my knowledge, but remembering and utilizing things to their fullest before they are forgotten is what I want to improve on. There are lots of things I have learned over the years that I wish I would have kept using or learned more in depth instead of just partially. for example, I used to be fairly good at writing Java, but now I can barely even read it. Things like this, I want to be able to practice more and fully allow myself to learn and engage with since I seem to always cheat myself and only learn things partially. Coding is a great example because if I want to be a programmer or web-developer, I would love to be able to code things on my own right on the spot without having to look up things like syntax or templates as much as I do now. The great thing about this goal is that it is accessible both in my personal time and my work time if I allow myself to put the effort into learning and remembering things. I mainly just have to re-train myself to commit fully to what I am interested in since I jump around between things quite frequently.

How Well Do Your Strengths and Goals Align?

In the end, I think my overall soft skills and strengths help in my favor. While I can be shy at times, I like communicating with people, and I am good at keeping relationships. Utilizing this strength can give me leverage in the job market since I can get better connections between people both in and out of work. Another strength of mine is that if I am passionate about a thing I am working on, I will lose myself in it and lose track of time. For things like coding or music and web development, this is great since you can get a lot done without having to take breaks. This could prove to be useful for various jobs I will look for in the future such as programming or developer positions which are becoming more needed as time goes on. Overall, I think all of my strengths and skills allow me to further analyze things from the outside and see where my entry points are. 

The only things I think I need to improve on to help get my foot in the door of IT is to speak up more, continue building my confidence, and try to find work connections through people I know or can become easily acquainted with.

Thanks!

Thanks for checking out my first blog on Blogger and the first to my Senior Project series. Stick around to follow up on how my website and overall research and development progress is going along. You can now view my blog at blog.nickscoolstuff.com as well as my website at nickscoolstuff.com. Also, don't forget to check out my old website at http://nickscoolstuff.co.nf for more stuff about me until I make the switch to my new site.

Thanks! - Nick Messenger