Hinár's Manager in Training Blog

Ethical Principles

2007-07-22T22:49:00.000-04:00

1. Just because what you do is legal it does not mean it is ethical.

2. Do not do anything that you would not want others to know (about you), or do something to others that would not want to be done to you.

3. The quality of the work you do does not only portray you but the whole company, so keep up a high work ethic.

4. If you have a problem with someone try to resolve it directly or use the appropriate channels if it is not possible instead of going behind one’s back.

5. Respect others to receive respect.

Elevator Speech

2007-07-22T22:32:00.000-04:00

Before I even started to work on this speech, it took me a long time to figure out what I would like to talk about for such a short time. After many ideas, I did stay with the recommended one. I tried to talk about myself, and I tried to sell myself for a position.

First, I figured I try to see what comes out in one minute without preparing. It was a disaster. Nothing really came to my mind, and even what came sounded very confused. I was very surprised, because previously, I had to talk about myself during interviews, and I never really had such a hard time and did well. This time, it was not that easy.

So, I started making a list of things to talk about. I made three main groups of things to sell myself: education, experience and personality. I tried to list many things for each and write some partial sentences.

The next challenge was to actually speak it and keep it under or close to one minute. It tried it and repeated the exercise several times, but it was not great. I cut some of the things to keep it closer to a minute, but even then, it was a little longer.

When I was ready with the content, I asked my girlfriend to listen to me and then record it to me. I told her that I wanted to practice it first, and that I was very nervous and uncomfortable about it, which was very surprising again with my previous interview experiences. She kind of tricked me and recorded it during one of the practice runs, but I was glad. I guess I was still not as nervous as would have been live. I have to keep repeating that during a real interview and conversation I never feel this way… I guess this was just too artificial.

Anyway, it was recorded and was as good as it gets for now. I was still shaky in my voice and was not as confident and concise sounding as I expected it, but at least I learned something about myself and about recording my speech. It was kind of nice to gather some ideas for a short conversation about me and hearing my voice (and my accent) back, too. :-)

Elevator Speech

Personality Testing

2007-07-22T00:47:00.000-04:00

I have not done too many personality tests previously, and I do not really like them anyway. I can see their place in some areas, like where the number of participants is very large, but I believe in a face-to-face approach to learning about others.

This class was not the first time I filled out a test like this. I have taken general and sport psychology classes before, where the same concept came up. I do not remember taking any personality tests before college. Most of the tests I have taken yielded results that were close to what I expected. I think tests results are matching up to what we think about ourselves, because we might be already thinking about the outcome of the test during taking it and try to influence it that direction. It might only be true for me, but I have felt this way before, when I was working on one of these tests.

Mostly because I believe we consciously and subconsciously manipulate our answers, I only see their importance as supplementary sources, and not primary ones to depict a person. I would not solely rely on personality tests to hire or learn about people if I were working as a supervisor. They could be useful in a situation, where many people participate and the outcome will not have any serous effect on them (employment-wise).

On another note, I did have an interesting experience with a personality test before. I filled out one of those Type A versus Type B personality tests. I viewed myself as a Type B, and my results also showed that I was one also. After I did the test, I have thought about it for a long time, realizing that I have many traits of Type A personality, too. I kept recognizing and seeing it in myself during everyday activities. After all, I settled with being a mixed A and B personality, but I found it fascinating that this question stayed in my mind for a relatively long time. I guess these test might have an even more important role in learning about ourselves rather than employers learning about us. Maybe there is also more truth in these tests that I give credit for.

Organizational Chart

2007-07-10T14:21:00.001-04:00

Disaster Recovery Plan

2007-07-10T13:45:00.000-04:00

Scenario

The departmental file server is unavailable due to multiple hard drive failures. The server has RAID 5 redundancy with a hot-spare drive for each volume. This allows one single drive to fail in each volume without losing access to the data. When multiple drives fail in the server, the volume goes inaccessible and unrecoverable by the RAID system.

Severity of Disaster

The departmental server provides file storage services for all department affiliated persons including staff, faculty and graduate students. The server does not store any data, which inaccessibility would cause serious interruption of departmental operations, and the server might be off-line for up to three days under some circumstances.

Effected Equipment

Two Dell PowerEdge 2800 servers with EMC CX-300 storage array unit connected. The server is located in the server room in building x room number y on rack number two.

Contact Information for Support Team

A list of names, home, cell

Preventive Measures

The departmental IT support group will make sure to check logs of the server daily for errors and to physically check the server twice a week for warning and failure lights. Any one individual hard disc failure needs to be addressed immediately to prevent from multiple hard drives to go off-line. The server is backed up daily to backup tapes by the departmental backup server.

Response Measures

Loss of access to data is detected by monitoring service of the IT team or reported by users.

The first available person(s) to investigate severity of the failure
- by remotely accessing the server and checking logs and volumes
- physically visiting the server room to see signals and warning/failure lights
- these tasks might be done by two different support persons at the same time while keep communication by cell phones

Person that discovered or responded to the failure first will contact other team members depending on severity of the problem.

Support person will inform departmental key personnel about the failure (Chairman, Head Administrator and Computer Committee Chair).

Notification email will be sent out to all department members to keep them informed and up-to-date on the issue. Also, clients should be notified about any time periods when the server will be unavailable. Throughout the recovery process, clients should be kept up-to-date of the process and expected time when server will be back at normal operations.

If the team is available (on-site) a meeting will be organized to discuss the situation and assign tasks.

After a thorough assessment of the situation, Dell will be contacted for support assistance.

Support team will troubleshoot and fix hardware problems.

Support team will recreate the volume that failed and was lost.

Restore data from backup to the effected volume.

Double-checking and re-adjustment of security settings on the volumes.

Notifying clients that the server storage is back online, and ask them to test access and report any problems.

After recovery evaluation of procedures and success. Record incident and all of its details and store it with other IT documents.

Report about the incident to departmental key personnel.

Expected Timeline

The response measures steps and recovery of one lost volume should be accomplished within two days of the failure. The troubleshooting of the hardware problem and recovery should be finished twelve hours from the delivery of the replacement parts from Dell (which should be within four hours of support call).

Interviewing

2007-07-01T23:55:00.000-04:00

Probably even about five years ago, interviewing was a dreaded activity for me. Luckily, it has changed positively since. In the last few years I had several interviews and had very good memories about them; almost all of the positions were offered to me that I interviewed for. In general, I think I do well in interviews, but I have much to learn about giving them. I did have a few times that I had participated in giving interviews, but still much room for me for advancement there.

Most interviews I participated in had pretty much the same structure and questions. Usually, I met with the entire IT department in different sessions. Interestingly, similar questions came up among these sessions, so I only had to come up with one good answer and was able to reuse it.

The seemingly hardest question was always my favorite, and it was this time also with the one I had with my friend (who has plenty of experience with interviews). They ask with your biggest weakness, which I love turning around to come out with strength. I think it is kind of expected. Most of my friend’s questions were among the ones from the list and the ones I am used tom, but there is one that I find the most challenging. I have to think hard to phrase my answer to the question about where I see myself in the near future. I want to show interest in growing in my field, but I also want to show that I do not want to leave the work place soon I am trying to get into. It is useful to have a brief understanding of the organizational chart for a proper answer.

Interviewing someone else is a larger challenge for me. I do not only have to focus my thoughts about what I want to ask, but I have to be able to receive, understand, record and react to the answers. It is a lot to accomplish at the same time. I have done some interviewing while I was working as an IT Manager in Hungary, and I had to participate as a co-interviewer in my department when we were hiring temporary help before. It is hard to keep a balance between being general in the subjects of the questions and still getting some specific answers out of the interviewee. Also, keeping to appropriate questions is harder tan one would think. Although, I want to keep the interview kind of personal and somewhat friendly—to represent the kind of environment we have properly—professionalism in the questions and interaction is also an important requirement for a successful interview. It is easy to become too stiff or too friendly.

Both giving and participating in an interview requires a lot of preparation, self-control and awareness. Practice and preparedness are key concepts for success for these activities.

Job Posting

2007-07-01T21:30:00.000-04:00

Job Title: Computer (Desktop) Support Technician
Job location: Biology Department

Description:
The Biology Department has three university buildings with 500+ workstations and 15+ servers. The Computer Support Technician will be offering end-user support for client hardware and software in a diverse computing environment. The applicant will be working as a member of a small team of IT professionals that provides 24/7 support for all information technology services and resources. This position’s main role is desktop support, but includes occasional server support and web site maintenance, too. The candidate will report to the Department IT Manager.

Required Education and Experience:
An Associate Degree in a related field and three years of experience in providing desktop support in a similar position, a four year degree in a related field and two years of experience in providing desktop support in a similar position, or an equivalent combination of education, training and experience appropriate to fulfill duties.

Preferred Technical Skills:
Experience with various desktop operating systems (including Windows, MAC OS and Linux). Basic knowledge of desktop, laptop and printer hardware. Basic knowledge of installation and operation of common desktop applications and software.

Personal Skills:
Candidate must be highly organized, a team player but must be able to work individually without supervision. Applicant must have well-developed customer support, good interpersonal and communication skills to interact and help customers.

Work schedule:
8:00AM-5:00PM with occasional week-ends and non-regular hours.

Benefits:
Please check http://hr.unc.edu for detailed listings of University benefits including State Employees’ Health Insurance, and tuition waivers and assistance.

Contact Information:
Email: jobs@biologydept.unc.edu
Phone: 919-555-5555
Fax: 919-555-5556

Termination Checklist

2007-07-01T15:05:00.000-04:00

Setup a meeting with departmental administrator and human resources person to start the paperwork.
Schedule an exit-interview meeting with the employee.
Inform the employee about the details of the termination of employment, including her/his options for future benefits and rights.
Collect keys for buildings, rooms, labs and equipment.
Collect ID card.
Turn off ex-employee’s phone line.
Reset passwords for shared accounts that the ex-employee had access to.
Check for any backdoor administrator accounts.
Disable ex-employee’s departmental (Windows AD…) and university (Onyen…) computer accounts.
Reset passwords for anything that will be accessed by someone else after departure.
Collect any in-process project information or documentation about things the ex-employee has worked on.
Collect any computer, telecommunication or other equipment that the ex-employee had possession of.

Hinár's Fictional Job Hunt

2007-07-01T14:52:00.001-04:00

One of the first tasks we had to accomplish during this management class is to find a new job. Of course this job search is fictional, and I am not actually applying for the position included in this post, but here it is. I am quite happy with my present job by the way. :-)

Here is the job posting that I picked.
I have also written a cover letter and posted my Resume.

Happy job hunting!

My "Class" Company

2007-06-24T23:25:00.000-04:00

For the class activities, I am planning to use a company that mostly resembles my present job with some imaginary additions. I have decided to do so, because I can imagine myself being a manager in a similar environment in my next job, so it is going to be a great practice and preparation for that.

I am a manager of a small IT group of about four people (including me). The group supports pretty much all information technology needs of a university department. The most important difference in the department’s technology environment from most other department is that the department maintains almost its entire infrastructure. There are servers maintained locally for various services. Besides the server maintenance, my group provides support for three buildings, more than 500 workstations of various operating systems and all software and hardware needs of department’s faculty, staff and graduate students.

Besides the diverse software and hardware platforms and server service needs, the interaction between the group and the varied technology-familiar clientele creates an important challenge for the day to day operations. Also, the group not only maintains, but plans, develops and implements the systems in place to solve departmental requirements. This includes of budgeting and experimenting with appropriate new technologies.

Prologue (or Enterlude :-)

2007-06-24T22:17:00.000-04:00

My hope is that at some point I will be able to land in a position that will allow me to manage a small group of IT people, so this course is especially interesting to me. I have been in positions where I was in charge of supervising employees, but I have not had formal training in management. This opportunity will allow me to bring together my experience with theory. I hope everybody will have as much fun as I expect to have during this class!

Welcome!

2007-06-24T21:47:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my Blog!

For the next few weeks, my Blog will become a repository of thoughts and assignment about Management for Information Professionals, which is a class I am taking at UNC-CH (Inls 585). I hope it will be at least moderately enjoyable for all who wonder on these pages! :-)

Enjoy and have a wonderful time!

Hinár