Tag Archives: linkedin

Finished University? Get accredited!

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Finished university? Congratulations! You are now almost employable (if your grades can speak for themselves). You can expect months of job searching while you keep your part-time retail job. On the bright side, you’ve been at that retail job for so long you may even qualify to become an underpaid supervisor.

All cynicism aside… Ok you’ve finished uni and have gained employment in an office job in your career path or at least something interesting. What do you do next?

Whether you are in your desired role or not, the process of developing yourself has not finished, in fact you are probably less than half-way there despite your recent three years at university. Continue reading →

Whether to study a post grad

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After completing a Bachelor’s degree, some students go straight into post-graduate studies, other students declare “school is out” and others enter the workforce to before making the decision.

In my last year of studies, I was so desperate to have a post-student life that I didn’t contemplate going back, not until I had spent a few years in the workforce.

After working in the public service for 15 months, I’m still unsure of when to pursue further formal education. I have been told that it’s best to work for a few years as a career path will become clearer once I have some industry experience. This makes sense as then I’ll be able to decide whether I’d like to specialise in one area or study a new stream altogether. It also allows me to explore what options are available to study while I work.

At this point in time, I’m not sure what area of studies I’d like to pursue. One interest is to learn more about accounting and ensure I have financial knowledge to complement what I’ve already learned. It’s known that once you get to the managerial level of ICT, budgets and cost come in to play much more. Being financially literate is an advantage when justifying expenditure and conveying ideas. The only issue with studying accounting is that I may be planning too far ahead.

So the other study streams I think are plausible would be to pursue project management or business analysis courses. While both are expensive, they would be a step in the right direction. Prine2 or PMP courses would be great to have under my belt. Similarly, specific courses relating to business requirements and business analysis would put me in good stead also.

I’ve seen people complete their Bachelor’s and post grad diplomas all at once before entering the workforce as a graduate. While this would be desirable, I didn’t have any fuel left in me to continue studying at the end of my degree.

I hope to check back in a year’s time to see how I feel about it then. Maybe I’ll have some courses under my belt by then. Here’s hoping.

Business Analysis – my introduction

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For the past few years I’ve been working towards my career aspiration of becoming a business analysis.

The purpose of this blog was to document the concepts I was learning towards the end of my University degree.

Obviously this hasn’t happened but it’s never too late to get things started. As I have other internet profiles of a more social nature, I’d like to turn this blog into a repository of the topics that are of a more professional nature.

Without further ado, I’d like to kick off a series of BA related posts by starting with my enthusiasm for the job title.

So at University, I was first introduced to the position of Business Analyst. “You’ll tell the IT programmers what to do”. This is what some of the lecturers would tell us. There was a gap between the business and IT areas of an organisation. This barrier was perhaps a communication issue or even a cultural issue.

We were told we’d be the problem solvers in the organisation. Understanding the business needs while also being familiar with the technology and its limitations. It was a good fit for me at the time. I was very interested in IT yet I struggled with programming and preferred learning about business. That’s when it all made sense. I didn’t need to be a programmer to work in the ICT field. I could also study business related units whilst having a specific target industry.

So here I am. Graduated from the Bachelor of Business Informatics. Along the way I’ve acquired an interest for Disaster Recovery Planning, information systems, IT project management and Information Security. I’ve also realised there are areas that I didn’t develop so well such as accounting and cost benefit analysis. I have a few skills, a few interests, the desire to learn more still.

Despite my education, I feel that there is a lot for me to figure out. The career path of Business Analyst isn’t clearly defined. While we have thousands of BAs in Australia, the position hasn’t been around long enough to really understand what the specific streams are and what qualifies you to enter this field.

As I attempt to become a business analyst, I look forward to sharing what I learn along the way.

In memory of Mustafa ‘John’ Ilhan

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Image copied from crazyjohns.com

John Ilhan was a late Australian entrepreneur. He was born in Turkey in 1965 and passed away on 23 October 2007. In his 42 years of living  he left his city [Melbourne] and community in a better state than which he found it.

What he was most known for were his mobile phone stores – that made the once luxury item, accessible to the wider public. His desire was for everybody to one day own a mobile phone. He had to take on many rivals, obstacles and giants – to achieve this – but in the end he prevailed at playing the game his way and always  achieving a win-win for the customer and his business.

This article expresses the impact John Ilhan has had on me, a young person and a son of migrants to Australia. I also hope to educate my friends and any readers of who John Ilhan was and why his life is important for all Australians to learn from.

I first heard the news of John Ilhan’s death while working at a desk job when the radio announced the event at around lunch time. At that time, I wasn’t very aware of who he was however, it made me feel for his family to lose this man at such a young age. I live in Canberra so Crazy John’s was more famous from the advertising at sporting events than his local stores (there are only two in Canberra). I remember telling the news to a co-worker who knew more about him as she had seen an interview about him on the programme ‘compass’ on the ABC. I felt eager to find out more and went on the internet to get a view of him on google images. I had recognized the face from a show about businessmen and entrepreneurs (it was Catalyst on ABC). It was at that point that I started to discover more about this ‘crazy John’. Continue reading →