There is a career fair happening at PWTC KL at the time I’m writing this blog post. It reminds me when I was still unemployed, really missed those good old days while doing job hunting. Anyway, my job hunting experience is rather different than any one else. I never attended any proper interview, one day I set an appointment to meet this person in charge of the company, the next thing I knew, I was offered the job. So far, I never rejected any job offering and I’m not looking for a new one at the moment.

After a week of learning all there is from the SOA/ADF Oracle training, I found this job advertised by a big multi-national company that matches what I have learned so far. Before I write about it more, I wanted to share with you some screenshots of what I’ve learned from the Oracle training I attended, here you go:

What you see above is a screenshot of Oracle Jdeveloper tool in designing a work flow of a credit card process. At first, following the step by step instruction in the tutorial was easy. Not until the end part when you have to test to see if the work flow application you’ve just created could run or not. It was sort of a relief when it run successfully. But when you see an error message appears, there is where you start to scratch your head opening up every little components which you’ve thought was so simple and realized it has become so complex. It’s like doing math problems during school but with some visuals added to it. For those people who loves the challenge, this is an ideal job for you. I can’t really say it is for me although I do like it once in a while.

This is a view of Oracle Enterprise Manager. It’s a heavyweight application which I believe involves BEA Weblogic application server. My laptop couldn’t take that application therefore I had to connect to the instructor’s laptop to view. If you are familiar with online dashboard, PHPmyadmin or others, you’ll get the hang of it. All of these activities I’ve shown to you requires a lot of ‘experiencing’. It’s not something you could just read and digest. So if you are lazy ‘doing’ but love to just ‘read’, this is not something for you. I love experimenting (up to a level where I don’t see too much disappointing error messages) so this might be a suitable task for me.

Alright, enough about my ranting, here is the job description of a Oracle BEA Weblogic Portal Consultants:

Job Description

Systems Integration Consulting professionals are responsible for delivering large-scale, complex programs that marry processes with technology to help our clients achieve high performance.

Oracle Weblogic professionals design, implement and deploy Oracle Weblogic Portal and Oracle Weblogic Integration solutions to achieve defined business goals. They maintain skills in Oracle Weblogic Portal and WLI solution architecture, design, configuration, development, integration, testing and deployment; and Oracle Weblogic Portal and WLI technical architecture.

Key responsibilities may include:

• Supervising functional and technical design activities
• Creating functional requirements as an input to application design
• Developing and testing detailed functional designs for business solution components and prototypes
• Supervising application build, test, and deploy activities
• Planning and executing data conversion activities (e.g., test data)
• Driving test planning and execution

Qualifications

Well versed with Oracle Weblogic Portal skills.

1. Portlets, Page Flow, Web Flows
2. Weblogic Portal Configuration, Administration and Performance Tuning
3. Weblogic Portal Clustering Design and Implementation
4. Web Services Integration
5. Portal Content repositories
6. Content integration and management
7. Access Management Integration or Single Sign-On
8. Rules-based personalization
9. RIA technologies such as AJAX / Adobe Flex

Well versed with Oracle Weblogic Integration skills.

1. WLI Clustering Design and Implementation
2. WLI Configuration, Administration and Performance Tuning
3. Human Workflow Design and Implementation
4. Process Integration Design and Implementation
5. Synchronous (e.g. SOAP, Web Services, EJB, RMI, CORBA) Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation
6. Asynchronous (e.g. JMS, MQ) Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation
7. Batch Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation
8. Canonical Data Model and Data Transformation including XML, XSD, XPath and XQuery
9. Service Orientated Architecture
10. Oracle Database Integration (JDBC, SQL)

Other Related Skill Requirements

• Knowledge and experience in implementation of Oracle WebLogic Server based solution
• Knowledge and experience in implementation of Java Open Source Framework (e.g. Spring)
• Knowledge and experience in full application development and implementation lifecycle
• Recognized Degree from good universities

Experience Preferred

1. Manager: 8 years and above of relevant experience including Project Management and Solution Architect roles
2. Consultant: 4 years and above of relevant experience including Team Management and Web Architect roles

Professional Skill Requirements

• Proven success in contributing to a team-oriented environment
• Proven ability to work creatively and analytically in a problem-solving environment
• Desire to work in an information systems environment
• Excellent leadership, communication (written and oral) and interpersonal skills

Phew!! That’s just too much to handle for me. I can’t imagine myself learning all those skills just to become an Oracle BEA Weblogic Portal Consultants. I know that this job can offer triple or more the salary I’m earning right now. However, I am missing a lot of requirement in becoming one for instance, a degree. So I guess my only option at the moment is to work closely with my company to maybe provide services for this role. Although my boss would not probably give me triple salary earning, at least I can still make use of what I have learned so far.

By the way, the product line my company is selling can be used with BEA Weblogic server. I think I’ll try and find some time to fiddle around with that one first. Hope you get an insight of what my job is at the moment.

Have a nice day everyone.

Since doing sales job is not one of my strongholds, I’ve always been interested to become a systems analyst. It may sound geeky but it is something that I like to look upon. Nevertheless, since I don’t have a diploma or degree in IT or Computer Science, I’d better stick with becoming at least an engineer role such as a web engineer role.

I just wanted to share with you some notes that I’ve gathered on what a job of a systems analysts is all about:

What are the responsibilities of the systems analysts?

Here are some of the responsibilities that System Analysts are expected to deliver:

• Provide creative source of ideas, solution to address problems to the existing implementations.
• Perform internal testing and debugging.
• Produce project progress reports, including project details, schedule, milestones and resource allocation.
• Ensure projects are implemented and completed successfully within schedule.
• Conduct technical feasibility studies, evaluate user requirements and recommends solutions and resolve issues.
• Prepare functional and technical specification and provide production support.
• Design, analyse and code programs for system development according to user specifications.
• Support user testing and be responsive to user queries, request for assistance.
• Participate in the full software development lifecycle (SDLC) including requirements study, analysis, design, coding, testing, documentation, implementation and user training.

What are the types of knowledge and skills possess by the systems analyst?

Knowledge and skill needed to be possessed:

• Up-to-date with the latest IT in specific areas of their scope
• A keen determination in problem solving
• Excellent communication skills with various level of management level

How are these knowledge and skills acquired by the systems analyst?

Knowledge and skills is normally acquired:

• During on-going job, tasks and projects
• Daily routine of work and communication internally and externally
• Internal training by senior personnel and top management
• Own effort of obtaining the latest information

Are the knowledge and skills possessed by the systems analyst adequate for him to perform his responsibility effectively?

Knowledge and skills are hard to be determined whether it is adequate or not. It is all depend on the individual performing their responsibility and the motivation and drive that they have.

If you are a job seeker, hope this information would be a good guide for you.

Yesterday, I had the privilege to be part of a sales training at Sunway Resort Hotel next to Sunway Pyramid. The event was organized by ECS Pericomp together with Oracle. I did some Googling and found out that ECS Pericomp was just appointed as Oracle’s Value Added Distributor last month. Since the company I work with is a partner in some other products they are representing, they’ve invited us to come for this event. Becoming a business partner is not an easy task, my guess is they are looking for alliances with the others for them to achieve their sales target. Basically, leveraging on other people’s contacts, time and energy is the best way to kickstart their venture I supposed.

I wished the event was held after the fasting month, this was because I could have enjoyed the drinks and meal that were provided. ;-) Anyway, since I arrived at the place early (The event was supposed to start at 9am but the majority of the people invited only came in at around 10pm), I’ve gotten myself one movie voucher at Cathay Cineplexes (Thanks ECS).

4 years ago, I had the opportunity to come an Oracle event also at Sunway. You can refer to my blog post here. That was like a long time ago when I was just started off in the technology area. Bringing back the memory, I wrote that I was going to get an IT degree. Well that didn’t happen because it was just too expensive at that time. My mother just last week asked me whether I did think about continuing my studies because my younger brother had plans for it. I replied to her that I wanted to get married first and later on think about it. Then again, what can I gain if I pursue for further studies when all I can get is a better paying job. The question remains, is it a fulfilling one?

Enough about my ramblings, let’s move on to my sales training yesterday. The title of the training was “Oracle Partner Demand Generation Training”. Confused? Me too. It sounded like a name of product but its not. The trainer was a guy from Oracle, Nick Tielman. Before that, we had the Oracle channel’s manager giving a brief of what how Oracle company and product doing these days.

Getting back to the training session. Nick did a great job at presenting his presentation. I really like the first part which is the Goal Setting. That is one aspect that most of us or mainly me neglect the most. The rest is just like the usual sales training but from the aspect of technology industry which I also found is interesting considering I haven’t been on a sales training for a very long time. Anyway, relating this training to my job. I wear many hats in the company that I work with. I can still recall the time when I was a telemarketer and failed badly (this was before I landed at this job right now), it was one of the most difficult job I had ever done. I never enjoyed a moment of it.

Basically what Nick presented was a refresher course for me. However, I love the part where the Customer Relation Management system usage that Oracle themselves are using. I’ve implemented an open source CRM but hardly use it. There’s no harm in trying after learning all of what the sales training has provided, right?

By the way, Nick is from the Oracle application business development unit and what he had said about Oracle’s product is fairly true, with all the 60 acquisitions within 4 years and humongous amount of applications under Oracle’s umbrella, there is no way a salesperson could remember all of them. What they can do is basically get the ball rolling by bringing in pre-sales, consultant and tech-guys into the picture before getting the sales transaction completed.

What I saw yesterday was only just to sell Oracle’s product as if it was a box of software being presented to the customer and we need to close the deal as fast as we can. I am more into looking on how the implementation and services that we can provide because a lot of the clients that I’ve seen doesn’t have a clue on how to operate the software. Apart from that, the services and implementation area are more profitable rather than making a small percentage of profit margins of the product itself. By doing that way, the cash flow business can be sustained longer and the effort can be justified. I am just writing what come into the top of my head here.

Anyway, the sales training is a good approach in knowing what Oracle businesses is. I wonder if entering into Oracle University would be a good move for me. I guess I’ll have to look more into it as I reorganize my own personal goal.

This entry is 6 months behind what I was supposed to blog. Anyway, I just need to get it off my draft page and publish it on my blog. I don’t know why I am so lazy to blog these days but I’ll give it my best to clear off all of my pending writings. Here it goes.

CIDB or the Construction Industry Development Board requires any personnel who is or will be working in any consctruction site to have a green card. This is to ensure every personnel is covered, sort of like an insurance or license to be in any construction site. My company has a major project in one construction site installing network cables and IT equipment. Although I only went there like one or two time only, I still need to be covered. So last January 2009, my HR department sent me to get my own green card just in case if I were needed to be sent to any construction site I supposed.

The class was done on a Saturday. This is where the place is located:

The Akademi Binaan Malaysia

The place is next to the LRT Star Station Chan Sow Lin station. So if you don’t want to drive there, just take the LRT. If you drive there, the parking is free. No sweat.

The Green Card Program

My class speaker

The speaker was fun to listen to. I wasn’t bored throughout his entire presentation. He was interactive with all of his audiences although I am guessing half of the class didn’t really understand his Malay languange (only 5 or 6 people in the class were Malaysian, the rest are all Indians, Viatnamese, Nepal or Indonesian). I really like what he is presenting. The most interesting part is when he includes his past experiences being a safety inspector.

CIDB Guideline Mini Booklet

This book was given complimentary of CIDB. It’s a nice booklet, less text and more illustration. During the end of the class, I received the construction helmet which is now being displayed on top of my closet collecting dusts. BTW, it is an offence leaving your construction helmet in your car.

That’s all for today. Will write again soon.