MattFancy Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Six Sigma is a few years out of date from being hot. I'd go ITIL. It's hotter right now and significantly easier to get. What is ITIL? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnyderShrugged Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 I'm really thinking about taking Six Sigma training. I have a BS in Business Admin with a concentration in Management. What would you recommend? Hey Matt! I'd look into what the DOD requires for their Six Sigma hires. I'm a bit biased towards the American Society for Quality certification (and they offer training to go with it), but the Juran institute and IQC also have great programs. Personally, I'd stay away from the programs offerred in colleges, they tend to be lacking in much of the practical applications of the methodology, I'd also use caution if getting certified through a your employer. Those programs vary a great deal. Just make sure that their certification requirements are on par with the various associations out there. Also, Lean methodology is gaining a ton of traction outside of manufacturing these days, especially in healthcare and finance. It might be a good option too. If you would like some more specifics, I'd be glad to work with you through PM. Best of luck!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnyderShrugged Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Six Sigma is a few years out of date from being hot. I'd go ITIL. It's hotter right now and significantly easier to get. ITIL is an excellent option for IT related fields. Six Sigma is actually past it's fad stage and is seeing new and exciting applications in many industries, it isnt for everyone and everything though (GE's major mistake). As in most things, if applied properly it's great, if not it gets painted as old hat. I've seen both in my experiences. (btw, I've also been considering adding ITIL to my arsenal of certifications too. Always good to stay abreast of the trends!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMS Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 If I am reading that graph correctly are they expecting employment to drop even further in the IT field? It looks like IT may plummet further according to their statistics?.... Here is the deal on that. America is getting out of the technology business. We don't do most engineering work anymore. We outsources all that. We bring the engineers here on H1B programs, pay them 20-30$ what an American engineer makes, then we send them home after 3-6 years with their job. So for engineers, that severely limits your job markets. Currently IT is hot because the H1B program which went from 60,000, to 180,000 for a number of years is back down to 60k. Which means industry needs technical folks again until congress can pass another increase in H1B's; which is politically tough to justify when unemployment is 10%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMS Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 ITIL is an excellent option for IT related fields. ITIL version 2 was related to specific IT business like DECC's and ISPs, but the new ITIL version 3 is industry agnostic and that's the one folks are looking for consultants in. Six Sigma is actually past it's fad stage and is seeing new and exciting applications in many industries, it isnt for everyone and everything though (GE's major mistake). As in most things, if applied properly it's great, if not it gets painted as old hat. I've seen both in my experiences. (btw, I've also been considering adding ITIL to my arsenal of certifications too. Always good to stay abreast of the trends!) Correct me if I'm wrong though, A Six Sigma Black Belt is like a masters degree. It's a pretty tough one to get..... ITIL by comparison is pretty easy to get. After foundations it's six question multiple choice questions and you have 90 minutes to take the test (and they give partial credit).. It Does require a class after foundations though and that takes about a week for each of the four additional certifications.. after you have all they give you the expert certification for free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
War Paint Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 I'm considering going back to school. I have a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (Operations Management). It's pretty much worthless. Every job I've had since college, I could have had without a degree. The only reason why I haven't gone back to school is because I just got done paying my student loans off for my degree and I'm very hesitant on getting myself back into debt. To the OP, if you are considering going back to school, I would strongly consider going into health care. There are tons of job openings for anything in the medical field. I have a couple of friends who went to community college. One went into nursing and the other into radiography. They are making damn good money. My friend in radiography basically sits at a computer doing whatever he wants, waiting for someone to come to the hospital needing an X-Ray. He said sometimes he'll get only three X-Rays a night, which is about 2-3 hours of work. The other 8-10 hours is playing on the internet. If you go back to school, avoid getting a worthless degree because a lot of degrees are in fact worthless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMS Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 What is ITIL? ITIL is a service delivery framework..... What that means is.... you call whatever product you sell a service, then ITIL gives you templates on how to organize your business in order to more efficiently take care of your customers... Processes and Functions... Processes being organized steps to accomplish tasks, and Functions being groups of people. Folks who know ITIL are hired as process consultants to stand up the processes and organize function which ITIL calls for. If things go wrong, templates for fixing them based upon how your organization is organized... It's kind of like Six sigma or ISO for dummies. Which is why it's so popular, cause it's easier to be sucessful with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elessar78 Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 About a year and a half ago, I graduated from UMD with a B.A. in Criminology. I decided that I do not want to go into corrections or join the police (I really wanted to be an Analyst in some fashion, but I don't have the experience or the background most federal agencies are looking for). Being that I have a social science degree it's almost impossible to find a decent job right now with my background (i.e no professional experience, working retail, daddy is not corporate big wig, no connections, etc). All the people I knew who got hired out of college had a connection, or neighbor who literally gave them jobs, the rest are in the same boat as me (yes, I figured out quickly that in the real world it's about connections).I have been talking to a lot of people lately and I have been getting different opinions of what to do. A few people I talked to say it's not worth the debt and believe there is a upcoming education bubble? A few people suggested a grad school. I was thinking of going back to school for either accounting or information systems, because those lead to career paths. If you were in my shoes what would do? Thanks, Grant Grant, I think you answered your own question already in your post. Most of your friends got their jobs THROUGH THEIR CONNECTIONS. Time to make your connections. Join some organizations in your field. Volunteer for charity work. I know you need a job in the short term. You may need to suck it up and take a job that's not ideal just to pay the bills. But become committed to networking. Give that a whole hearted shot first before you drop more bills at school. Give it a good year (maybe 2). Half of the people I graduated with got jobs in fields different than their degree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattFancy Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 ITIL is a service delivery framework.....What that means is.... you call whatever product you sell a service, then ITIL gives you templates on how to organize your business in order to more efficiently take care of your customers... Processes and Functions... Processes being organized steps to accomplish tasks, and Functions being groups of people. Folks who know ITIL are hired as process consultants to stand up the processes and organize function which ITIL calls for. If things go wrong, templates for fixing them based upon how your organization is organized... It's kind of like Six sigma or ISO for dummies. Which is why it's so popular, cause it's easier to be sucessful with. I'll have to look into that. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renaissance Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 I looked at internships, however most required that I be in school full time. Also, what did you do in the federal government and what experience did you need to get that job? Even if it's not an official posted internship, a lot of places will let you volunteer. Not everybody advertises internships/volunteer opportunities, but most would love to have someone work for free, especially someone who has a degree. You really have to be proactive about it, and I would start with smaller agencies and organizations. As for my job, I started in the gov't at the equivalent of GS-07 and went up to the equivalent of GS-08 after 1 year. My experience prior to that was two part time jobs in college (retail for 2 years and data entry for 1 year), and 1 year working full time after college. My 1st job after college I worked in the membership dept of a large medical association. I started doing mainly customer service and data work but was able to grow into more project based and higher level stuff. Similar to that job, my gov't job started out with a lot of customer service and general program admin stuff, but within a few months I was moving on to bigger, long term projects. And honestly I really hated my job at the association while I was there but it gave me a lot of opportunities to learn and grow. I was able to create new processes for the dept, train and supervise other employees, coordinate projects, and lots of other stuff that was not even close to my original job description of answering phones and e-mails and entering applications in the database. So when you are looking for a job, don't be too scared off by the entry level ones. Sometimes you do just have to get into an organization then go from there. I'll be the first to admit though that I think I was really lucky to find my two jobs like I did. My first I found on craigslist and the other through avuedigital. I don't think it's that common right now for someone to get a job just because the person in HR thought their resume looked better than the other 100+ sitting on his/her desk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The 12th Commandment Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Go back or be willing to move. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnyderShrugged Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Go back or be willing to move. I have to echo the "be willing to move" sentiment. I never would have advanced my career without some flexibility there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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