In today’s world, cybersecurity is a priority for most companies. As the digital transformation across industries grows, more companies are exploring ways to ensure the protection of their proprietary information and systems. A Security Analyst resume (also known as cybersecurity analyst or information security analyst) has a vast array of responsibilities, including analyzing data to determine security risks, creating policies and procedures, and training other personnel on security issues.

Are you a Security Analyst who is looking to transition to an IT professional career or someone fresh out of college searching for the perfect IT career path that fits your skills? Having difficulty streamlining and optimizing your career documents (Resume, Cover Letter, LinkedIn Profile) with the essential keywords, your relevant accomplishments and experience? Interested in following an IT career path in cybersecurity but not sure how to effectively communicate transferable experience and skills in a way that fits this role?

This month’s Role-In-Review article provides useful information for the Security Analyst’s IT professional career. Continue reading to learn about the top competencies, capabilities, and skills companies look for when searching for this essential IT role. Use these insights and examples provided to begin optimizing your career documents.

Are you an analytical person with a passion for working with numbers and considering an IT professional career? Are you a seasoned data analytics professional who excels in automating data flows and developing business intelligence solutions? If so, a data analyst role may fit perfectly into your career goals. Data and analytics are at the core of making intelligent business decisions. Data analysts are an essential part of any high-performing team because they take static data and transform it into understandable recommendations and communicate what the data means in a way that other non-IT stakeholders can clearly understand.

Interested in data analysis as an IT career path but not sure how to effectively communicate transferable experience and skills in a way that fits entry-level data analyst roles? Having difficulty selecting the appropriate keywords for updating your career documents (resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile)?

​This month’s Role-In-Review article focuses on the data analyst role. Regardless of your experience level, continue reading to learn about the top competencies, capabilities, and skills companies look for when searching for a Data Analyst. Use these insights and examples provided to optimize your career documents.

​Are you a seasoned IT project manager struggling with streamlining and optimizing your career documents (Resume, Cover Letter, LinkedIn Profile)? Having a hard time fitting in all your years of experience, project accomplishments and selecting the right keywords?
Interested in project management as a career path but not sure how to effectively communicate transferable experience and skills in a way that fits entry-level project management roles?
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​This month’s Role-In-Review article focuses on the project manager role. Regardless of your experience level, continue reading to learn about the top competencies, capabilities, and skills companies look for when searching for a Project Manager. Use these insights and examples provided to optimize your career documents.

​Welcome to our Role-In-Review series. If you are in the Information Technology (IT) industry, you are probably aware of the high number of existing IT roles and how quickly new IT roles are entering the job market to keep up with the ever-changing IT industry demand for talent. Specializing in IT, IT Career Transformation has helped improve career documents (resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn/Social Media profiles) for IT professionals and leaders from over sixty different IT roles with different areas of specialties. We continuously analyze relevant job descriptions to identify critical and highly ranked keywords and skills, allowing us to excel at crafting outstanding career documents using relevant keywords for each IT role and specialty areas.

​Our goal in this Role-In-Review series is to provide you with an insight to a specific IT role and useful content recommendations driven by IT industry demand that you can use to optimize your career documents and help keep them up-to-date. The first article in this series focuses on the Business Analyst role. Continue reading to find out what are the top competencies, capabilities and skills companies look for when searching for a Business Analyst.

​Considering a career transition to the IT industry but you have little to no IT experience?
Your existing resume has nothing to do with IT and you feel stuck?
Whether you are working on transitioning into an entry-level IT role (i.e. Technical Support, System Analyst) or working on transitioning into a different role in IT (i.e., Quality Analyst to a Business Analyst) you probably already possess relevant experience and skills that you can leverage to position you in a positive light to your new target IT role. IT Career Transformation has helped many customers with their transition to IT. In this post, we share 10 tips and leading questions that can help you transform your resume and LinkedIn profile to your new target IT role.

The job search process can be a long, arduous journey. Applicants often receive an immediate rejection email or never hear anything about their application. Although optimizing your career documents to the target position is an essential step in your job search strategy, there are other factors that can affect your probability to be called for an interview. First and foremost, be patient and diligent. The old saying “patience is a virtue” has never been truer than when trying to land your ideal role.
 
Depending on the specific hiring company and the position you are applying for, each open position can have more than 250 applicants; of those, only 5-6 are interviewed and only 1 is hired. Many online sources such as recruiting agencies and tech communities suggest that most people spend an average of 2-4 months on their search effort, averaging 15-20 applications/week. Don’t let a few rejections discourage you from persevering!

Below are 5 helpful tips for improving your job search efforts.

Experienced IT professionals generally have a vast array of role-specific experiences and skills. Sometimes it is difficult deciding which details to include on your resume. In fact, many clients come to us with resumes that are six or more pages and often ask: “how long should my resume be?” The short answer is: usually two pages for IT professionals.
​I bet you are asking: How do I fit all my career details into two pages?
​This article provides great tips for optimizing your resume to the ideal length to pass through Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) into the hands of potential employers.
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• Are you aware of what IT hiring managers and recruiters are looking for in a resume?​
• Are you proficient at converting tasks and achievements into effective accomplishment statements using unique terminology?
• Are your cover letters and resumes effectively written to sail through Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) and into the hands of potential employers?

​If you said no to any of these questions, you may want to consider hiring a professional IT resume writer to work with you on creating your ideal resume.

If you are in the information technology (IT) industry, you already know the importance of keeping up with the rapidly changing IT industry demand, technology advancements, new methods, and tools that you need for your next challenging IT role or project. Moving from one project to another using totally different technologies and methods within less than a year is very common in IT. Keeping track of new learning and accomplishments is essential and should be reflected on your resume.​

​Continue reading to learn about useful tips on how to keep your IT resume up-to-date.

​Your target IT role is in high demand. You possess the right technical skills and experience, but you still are not hearing back from recruiters and hiring managers?
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More than ever before, companies are looking for the right soft skills when hiring IT professionals. Your resume and LinkedIn profile should be optimized to highlight your soft skills and clearly communicate how you fit in to the hiring company’s culture and work environment. In this post we share the top soft skills companies are looking for when hiring IT professionals.

First, it helps you stand out from other candidates who do not bother to send a thank you email.
Secondly, it is your opportunity to show appreciation for the time spent during the interview, and for the opportunity to learn more about the company, the position and being considered for it.
Lastly, it is always important to follow-up. It provides an easy way for the interviewer to simply hit reply and let you know about the position, either way. Hopefully, they will let you know you are moving forward in the recruiting process and providing you with next steps.
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​​When should you send a thank you email?
After the interview (phone interview, in-person or via video conference), ideally by end of day. Hiring decisions can be made fast, you want to show that you are interested in the position as early as possible.  
  
What to include?

• Thank the hiring manager for their time.
• Keep the message short and make it personalized.
• Highlight one thing that you have learned or that excites you about the position.
• Include a short summary of experiences / accomplishments mentioned in the interview that are most relevant and can create value to the hiring company.  
• Close the email with reiterating your appreciation, your interest in the position and that you are looking forward to next steps.

 
Need help crafting a thank-you email? Here is a thank you email template that you can download and customize for your use:

A week went by and still no reply?
Do not give up, send a short follow-up email. Hiring managers can be busy.

​Example for a follow up email:  

“Dear <Name>,
In case you are still considering candidates, I am following-up to let you know of my sincere interest in this exciting position. I hope to hear from you soon with next steps.
 
Best Regards,
<Your Name>
<Your Phone #>”

​Do you or someone you know need help advancing your IT career?
 
Please visit www.itcareertransformation.com for more information and to schedule a free initial consultation to discuss your career goals and how best we can help!

www.itcareertransformation.com | 678.224.8715 | info@itcareertransformation.com
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​Can your resume tell your story in less than 10 seconds? Recruiters glance through many resumes until they find the one that draws their attention. Your resume and LinkedIn profile introduction should standout and be crafted effectively to catch their eye quickly and convince them you are the optimal candidate. In this blog post, we share tips on how to create an effective IT professional profile introduction (Resume and LinkedIn). 

​Optimizing your resume and LinkedIn profile with the right keywords is critical for ranking high in Applicant Tracking System (ATS) search results, and for evaluation done by recruiters and hiring managers to identify top candidates for the job. 

No matter what role you are interviewing for, most likely these questions will be asked, and a good interviewer will follow up with more specific “why” type questions, to make sure your answer is sincere.
 
Tell me about yourself?
This is an open question, the interviewer is not really looking to hear your life story, rather he is interested to see how you communicate and learn more about you from a career perspective. 
Start with an overall statement about who you are professionally.
“I’m a technology program manager with a strong background in enterprise software development and process improvement”.
“I’m an IT professional with over 15 years of global support management. I built global support organizations that operate in very dynamic and high performing environments, supporting global customers with very strict service level agreements.”
Then continue to describe your professional experience in the last 3-4 years that is relevant to the role you are interviewing for.     
 
If you are currently employed, expect the interviewer to ask – why do you want to leave?
If you want to leave because you are looking for a higher compensation, that is fine, but probably not something the interviewer will appreciate much.
You don’t want to be negative or complain about your current employer.
You can start by saying something along the lines of: I have been with company A for 3 years, I gained good experience working with great people on a few challenging projects, but I’m now at a point to look for other opportunities where I can continue my professional growth. 
I’m looking to join a company that is dynamic, growing, invests in their employees and supports opportunities for change and growth.

This is when you want to switch to talk about the organization you are interviewing for and describe the reason that you are interested in this opportunity. It can be a professional area that you are passionate about, industry you want to specialize in, or the organization has values that you appreciate and that align with yours. You can also mention that you have been following this organization for quite some time, and are excited to hear about all the new initiatives, products and services that the company is developing.

Following the introduction questions, the interviewer will have a set of professional questions to evaluate your knowledge and specific experience for the role you are interviewing for.
 
Most likely, at the end of the interview, the last question will be - do you have any questions for me?
Asking questions at the end of the interview is highly important and can demonstrate your understanding of the role, your interest in  learning more, and moving forward in the recruiting process. If you are truly interested in this role you should have at least one question, but try to keep it under three, being respectful to interviewer’s time. 

Example of questions to consider:
What are the key challenges and opportunities the business is facing this year? 
How would you measure success for the team and for this role?
How quickly are you looking to fill this position?
I hope to be considered to move forward, if so, what is the next step?
 
There are different ways to answer these questions, most importantly, stay positive, energetic, and genuinely provide answers that reflect your values and goals.