According to USNews.com, Network Architects will see expansive growth going into 2010. Of course, this should leave you with a smile and some hope if you’ve been having trouble finding work as of late. According to their estimates, the occupational section that network architects fall under (computer science) will grow 53.4 percent by 2018.

To couple with this good news, the Wall Street Journal has also written that growth will occur in the computer-network administration field. With this information there’s of course a positive side, but like all things could have unforeseen consequences.

With a highly needed position, competition will undoubtedly grow. This leads to the field expanding, which is a good thing, but it also means you have to appear as more of an asset. Education being your first step in improving your resume. With younger recruits coming out of college, it can seem they might have a step ahead. Network technology is continually growing and changing, therefore staying informed is the key.

There are a slew of options available for keeping informed. Here are a few places to take a look at if you wish to expand your knowledge-base:

Ashworth College
University of Phoenix

While education is a must, experience is more important. Whether you’re out of work or currently have a job, now might be the time to look for an upgrade. With growth going into 2010, jobs with better pay, working conditions, and benefits might be out there lurking. You can search for these jobs by traditional means, classifieds, Monster.com etc…

Somewhere else to keep a look out for networking positions is social media. With LinkedIn being the best example, there’s a huge movement to look for potential talent in social networks. Create a LinkedIn resume, and get your name out there. Before you know it, a new position could present itself all because you took 5-10 minutes to create an online resume.

The networking field expands, and with the right frame of mind, you can stand to profit from it. I’m not talking about money, but expanding your horizons. With numerous amounts of different fields going virtual, they all need an expert.

This led me to start this discussion which is most excellent because it shows how to do password security right. I’ll be honest, I’m going through right now and changing all my passwords because I was practicing several of the bad practices that Twitter’s employees were. I bet many of you are doing the same stupid things too.

While I’m on this topic, last week the hard drive in my Mac died. I lost a few days of videos and emails because I wasn’t backing up as often as I should be. Naughty me. The drive just stopped right in the middle of me working. Apple replaced the drive but that didn’t help me get back the videos and emails. Today I’m setting up my new hard drives with JungleDisk. I don’t care what you use to back up, but I know lots of you aren’t. I bought a couple of 1.5TB drives from Seagate, too. Costs $159 at Best Buy and probably cheaper online. No excuses for not backing everything up now. You haven’t done it, have you? (I know most people don’t back up).

Anyway, just a friendly reminder to pay attention to these things before you get bitten.

Comments

Monster.com and USAJobs.gov have been hacked with the loss of login information, contact information, and in some cases, phone numbers, demographic information and userid’s and passwords. If you have an account there it is time to change your password, and do not make it the same as everywhere else. You might just want to change all your passwords if you use the same one everywhere you go.

As is the case with many companies that maintain large databases of information, Monster is the target of illegal attempts to access and extract information from its database. We recently learned our database was illegally accessed and certain contact and account data were taken, including Monster user IDs and passwords, email addresses, names, phone numbers, and some basic demographic data. The information accessed does not include resumes. Monster does not generally collect – and the accessed information does not include – sensitive data such as social security numbers or personal financial data. Source: Monster.com

What is interesting, and hence the under reporting of this break in was that Monster decided that they would just simply do a press release on their web site rather than letting people know by email. If you do not follow the security blogs, and have not been to monster lately you probably didn’t know about this issue. The good part and for this monster gets many kudo’s they have a warning message prominently displayed on their web site on the right hand side right below the login that there is a new security notice.

While they might not have sent you an e-mail, they are at the very least pushing a good warning label on their home page, and the press release is legible to just about everyone. Monster did ok here, and much better than their first data breech.

Go change your passwords, today.

Comments