Cathleen
My name is Cathleen and I need to contact someone who is a Computer and Information Systems Manager to interview. I am interested in this career and I am majoring in Computer Information Systems. The interview will take 20 minutes or less and can be done in most any fashion at any time available. This is for my college course and it is due by March 26th. Thank you!
Informational Interview Questions:
1. What is the title of your occupation?
2. What kind of skills do you need for entry into your position?
3. What kinds of education/credentials are needed to do your job?
4. Did you need any special or additional training to do your job?
5. What aspects of your occupation most appeal to you?
6. Describe your current working conditions?
7. Describe what a typical day is like?
8. What are the tasks that you preform?
9. Do you mostly deal with people, data, or things?
10. What tools and equipment are used?
11. What are the physical and psychological demands of your occupation?
12. What are the benefits of your occupation?
13. What types of institutions/companies employ people in your occupation?
14. Does the occupation offer you the opportunity to acquire skills and responsibilities that would have room for advancement?
15. Are these skills transferable?
16. What are some of your interest? Are you able to satisfy them presently at work?
17. What did you have to give up in order to pursue your occupation? Was it worth it? Why?
18. What advice would you give someone wanting to enter this profession?
19. What kind of interview tips would you give to someone preparing to enter into you field/occupation (name 5)?
Answer
Cathleen - bless your heart. CIS teachers come up with this interview assignment for their students and then the students find it is a pain in the neck to find anyone who will help them. I'm not a manager but an CIS graduate who has worked in the field for 16 years. You mentioned you wanted a manager. You need to keep in mind that many managers today are non-technical Business school graduates. They can't answer many of the questions you asked because those questions are geared for IT workers and not managers.
I will try to help you with basic answers but, of course, Yahoo has a maximum length on these responses so these will be short.
1. Title: Computing Operations and Security.
2. Skills: Computing Security, Operating Systems and Active Directory expertise.
3. Degree: CIS Bachelorâs Degree is what I have â some coworkers have CS degree. MCSE and 20+ other certs.
4. Training: All Windows OS training, MCSE, Computing Security training, Security+ CISSP.
5. Appeal: Good pay, weekends off, challenging.
6. Conditions: Normal office environment.
7. Typical day: No such thing - Varied tasks based on needs.
8. Tasks: Reporting, monitoring and auditing.
9. Deal with: Data and people.
10. Equipment: Laptop and report processing servers. Others use specialty network monitoring equipment but this is outside my area.
11. Demands: low on physical demands. Can be high stress. Must not cause user interruptions of service. When you start out in IT you will likely not be allowed perms that can result in outages. When you have been around for a while you will eventually be given perms that improperly used can cause 1000âs of users to be offline. Yes there are careful steps to be made like change board approvals and sanity checks but ultimately you may be making a configuration change that can make you a hero or a zero. This can still be very stressful.
12. Benefits: Vacation, educational, training, health coverage.
13. Occupation: Almost all companies have dedicated Computing Security Professionals
14. Advancement potential: All better companies have advancement paths available to employees.
15. Transferable: Of course â as a subject matter expert we are all involved in training or mentoring someone.
16. Interests: Technology interests can be satisfied at work. It is important to have non-IT hobbies to relive stress from work..
17. Give up: No downside here. Formerly owned a sporting goods store for 20 years. IT a much better field.
18. Advice: The Holy Grail for IT employment is a 4 year computer related Bachelors degree with a 3.0-3.5 minimum GPA, some industry certifications and some work experience. Also another optional thing that may help is some skill and training in a specialization area like Scripting, Database Administration, Computing Security, Virtualization, Networking or other similar topics. If you have all 4 of those (Bachelors degree, Certs, Experience and a specialization) you should be good. If you have only one element that will help but you may be competing with other people who have two, three or perhaps all four elements.
19. Interview tips: You know I donât have much info for you on this. If you are enthusiastic, friendly and a good communicator, I think you well do well. Remember that many questions like the dreaded âWhat are your weaknessesâ question, are all there just to see how you react and respond â there is no truly right or wrong answer.
Best wishes!
Cathleen - bless your heart. CIS teachers come up with this interview assignment for their students and then the students find it is a pain in the neck to find anyone who will help them. I'm not a manager but an CIS graduate who has worked in the field for 16 years. You mentioned you wanted a manager. You need to keep in mind that many managers today are non-technical Business school graduates. They can't answer many of the questions you asked because those questions are geared for IT workers and not managers.
I will try to help you with basic answers but, of course, Yahoo has a maximum length on these responses so these will be short.
1. Title: Computing Operations and Security.
2. Skills: Computing Security, Operating Systems and Active Directory expertise.
3. Degree: CIS Bachelorâs Degree is what I have â some coworkers have CS degree. MCSE and 20+ other certs.
4. Training: All Windows OS training, MCSE, Computing Security training, Security+ CISSP.
5. Appeal: Good pay, weekends off, challenging.
6. Conditions: Normal office environment.
7. Typical day: No such thing - Varied tasks based on needs.
8. Tasks: Reporting, monitoring and auditing.
9. Deal with: Data and people.
10. Equipment: Laptop and report processing servers. Others use specialty network monitoring equipment but this is outside my area.
11. Demands: low on physical demands. Can be high stress. Must not cause user interruptions of service. When you start out in IT you will likely not be allowed perms that can result in outages. When you have been around for a while you will eventually be given perms that improperly used can cause 1000âs of users to be offline. Yes there are careful steps to be made like change board approvals and sanity checks but ultimately you may be making a configuration change that can make you a hero or a zero. This can still be very stressful.
12. Benefits: Vacation, educational, training, health coverage.
13. Occupation: Almost all companies have dedicated Computing Security Professionals
14. Advancement potential: All better companies have advancement paths available to employees.
15. Transferable: Of course â as a subject matter expert we are all involved in training or mentoring someone.
16. Interests: Technology interests can be satisfied at work. It is important to have non-IT hobbies to relive stress from work..
17. Give up: No downside here. Formerly owned a sporting goods store for 20 years. IT a much better field.
18. Advice: The Holy Grail for IT employment is a 4 year computer related Bachelors degree with a 3.0-3.5 minimum GPA, some industry certifications and some work experience. Also another optional thing that may help is some skill and training in a specialization area like Scripting, Database Administration, Computing Security, Virtualization, Networking or other similar topics. If you have all 4 of those (Bachelors degree, Certs, Experience and a specialization) you should be good. If you have only one element that will help but you may be competing with other people who have two, three or perhaps all four elements.
19. Interview tips: You know I donât have much info for you on this. If you are enthusiastic, friendly and a good communicator, I think you well do well. Remember that many questions like the dreaded âWhat are your weaknessesâ question, are all there just to see how you react and respond â there is no truly right or wrong answer.
Best wishes!
Does studying computer science as a major qualify me to be a computer systems manager?
MMM
if not what does?
Answer
Computer Science (CS) is generally a major involved with programming. Many employers will hire CS majors to work in other areas of IT and that may be true of a manager position that you asked about. Management jobs where you manage people are becoming more the MIS degree which I'll describe below.
To give you the background â There are a number of viable IT majors. You need a 4 year degree. If all you have time for is a 2 year degree then that is ok for starters but you will still need to complete years 3&4. Don't get a certificate type degree or a Devry or ITT Tech degree- not recognized by many employers and credits may not transfer in the future. There are several main Computer majors and their associated career categories and you need to know these just to get the lay of the land. These degree titles are often found in Associates, Bachelors and Masters degree programs. Generally most IT employers are looking for a 4 year Bachelors degree in an IT related major as a minimum requirement. For working people some of these majors are offered by schools in night classes and we are beginning to see online or hybrid online/classroom options available. Depending on the school, a Bachelors degree in an IT field may be a BA or a BS. There does not seem to be any problems for employers with a BA or BS as long as it is a bachelors degree. If you already have a degree in another major, if you have an Associates degree or if you have a bunch or college credits and no degree you can usually find a degree completion program that will allow you to take 14-16 months of classes and graduate with a Bachelors in a computer related major.
Now some of the titles colleges use may consist of different course curriculums. As an example one school may have more programming classes in the same major while another school has fewer. Schools may call their general IT program Computer Information Technology, Computer Information Systems or Computer Information Science. To really tell what the major is about you should look at the courses that a particular school offers in that major. Another point of confusion is job titles you will see. For example, I am called a Computer Systems Engineer but I don't do anything associated with Computer Engineering. One job I had I was Systems Programmer but I did not do any programming. So the titles for majors and for jobs in IT can be very confusing. Sometimes I will hear someone say they want to pursue Computer Science or Computer Engineering and once they find out what it involves they realize that is not what they want to do. If this is old info, that you already know, apologies. Here are the majors and some associated jobs:
Computer Science (CS) - A technical degree which usually has a Programming emphasis - people with this major usually are developing application software, web development, embedded code and robotics. Sometimes depending on the college the degree may cover some more general topics as listed under CIS below. CS is a difficult major and may include a number of advanced math courses. Many CS students find themselves not enjoying programming, not being gifted at it or not having the math and logic skills to be good at programming and they will switch out into CIS. CS majors that are able to graduate can also qualify for jobs listed below under CIS.
Computer Information Systems (CIS) - This may also be called a variety of other names like Information Technology (IT), Information Systems (IS), etc. This is a general technical degree and is the degree that I have. Holders of these degree work in a variety of technical jobs like these:
Computer Technician, Service Center Coordinator, Help Desk Staff, Storage Administrator, Network Administrator, Systems Administrator, Systems Engineer, Enterprise Administrator, Active Directory Administrator, Exchange and Messaging Administrator, Backup Administrator, Disaster Recovery Specialist, Database Administrator and Data Center Administrator, just to name a few.
Computer Engineering - This is a technical engineering and design degree. These degree holders get jobs related to designing and manufacturing computer related hardware. Obviously when you think of hardware you think of laptops and PCs but this might be all kinds of computer devices like tablets, processors, memory, storage, networking equipment and components of computers.
Management Information Systems (MIS) - This is a business degree that prepares non-technically trained people to manage projects, budgets and people. Traditionally, senior IT technical pros would eventually be promoted into management positions after years of technical work. The good news is they understood technical challenges their people were working with but the bad news was that some were great tech people but poor people managers. I have had both types of these managers and the new trend is definitely towards these non-technical managers
Hope this helps.
Best Wishes!
Computer Science (CS) is generally a major involved with programming. Many employers will hire CS majors to work in other areas of IT and that may be true of a manager position that you asked about. Management jobs where you manage people are becoming more the MIS degree which I'll describe below.
To give you the background â There are a number of viable IT majors. You need a 4 year degree. If all you have time for is a 2 year degree then that is ok for starters but you will still need to complete years 3&4. Don't get a certificate type degree or a Devry or ITT Tech degree- not recognized by many employers and credits may not transfer in the future. There are several main Computer majors and their associated career categories and you need to know these just to get the lay of the land. These degree titles are often found in Associates, Bachelors and Masters degree programs. Generally most IT employers are looking for a 4 year Bachelors degree in an IT related major as a minimum requirement. For working people some of these majors are offered by schools in night classes and we are beginning to see online or hybrid online/classroom options available. Depending on the school, a Bachelors degree in an IT field may be a BA or a BS. There does not seem to be any problems for employers with a BA or BS as long as it is a bachelors degree. If you already have a degree in another major, if you have an Associates degree or if you have a bunch or college credits and no degree you can usually find a degree completion program that will allow you to take 14-16 months of classes and graduate with a Bachelors in a computer related major.
Now some of the titles colleges use may consist of different course curriculums. As an example one school may have more programming classes in the same major while another school has fewer. Schools may call their general IT program Computer Information Technology, Computer Information Systems or Computer Information Science. To really tell what the major is about you should look at the courses that a particular school offers in that major. Another point of confusion is job titles you will see. For example, I am called a Computer Systems Engineer but I don't do anything associated with Computer Engineering. One job I had I was Systems Programmer but I did not do any programming. So the titles for majors and for jobs in IT can be very confusing. Sometimes I will hear someone say they want to pursue Computer Science or Computer Engineering and once they find out what it involves they realize that is not what they want to do. If this is old info, that you already know, apologies. Here are the majors and some associated jobs:
Computer Science (CS) - A technical degree which usually has a Programming emphasis - people with this major usually are developing application software, web development, embedded code and robotics. Sometimes depending on the college the degree may cover some more general topics as listed under CIS below. CS is a difficult major and may include a number of advanced math courses. Many CS students find themselves not enjoying programming, not being gifted at it or not having the math and logic skills to be good at programming and they will switch out into CIS. CS majors that are able to graduate can also qualify for jobs listed below under CIS.
Computer Information Systems (CIS) - This may also be called a variety of other names like Information Technology (IT), Information Systems (IS), etc. This is a general technical degree and is the degree that I have. Holders of these degree work in a variety of technical jobs like these:
Computer Technician, Service Center Coordinator, Help Desk Staff, Storage Administrator, Network Administrator, Systems Administrator, Systems Engineer, Enterprise Administrator, Active Directory Administrator, Exchange and Messaging Administrator, Backup Administrator, Disaster Recovery Specialist, Database Administrator and Data Center Administrator, just to name a few.
Computer Engineering - This is a technical engineering and design degree. These degree holders get jobs related to designing and manufacturing computer related hardware. Obviously when you think of hardware you think of laptops and PCs but this might be all kinds of computer devices like tablets, processors, memory, storage, networking equipment and components of computers.
Management Information Systems (MIS) - This is a business degree that prepares non-technically trained people to manage projects, budgets and people. Traditionally, senior IT technical pros would eventually be promoted into management positions after years of technical work. The good news is they understood technical challenges their people were working with but the bad news was that some were great tech people but poor people managers. I have had both types of these managers and the new trend is definitely towards these non-technical managers
Hope this helps.
Best Wishes!
Powered by Yahoo! Answers
Comments :
Post a Comment