Saturday, May 30, 2020

Are You Accountable To Anyone In Your Job Search

Are You Accountable To Anyone In Your Job Search Do you have someone you report to?  Not your spouse or your mom or dad or someone emotionally close to you and/or the outcome? If you do, Ill bet you are 10x more effective than the person who doesnt. If you are self-motivated, and driven, like ME I didnt have anyone I was accountable to, you are well, 1/10th as effective as the person who has a coach (or someone they are accountable to). This is serious stuff.  Dont think you are too good to be accountable, I dont care how driven you are.  Get someone who you will report to, weekly. More info in a post written by Kirby Cole on RecruitingBlogs: Job Search Accountabilty Coach A Partner in Your Job Search Are You Accountable To Anyone In Your Job Search Do you have someone you report to?  Not your spouse or your mom or dad or someone emotionally close to you and/or the outcome? If you do, Ill bet you are 10x more effective than the person who doesnt. If you are self-motivated, and driven, like ME I didnt have anyone I was accountable to, you are well, 1/10th as effective as the person who has a coach (or someone they are accountable to). This is serious stuff.  Dont think you are too good to be accountable, I dont care how driven you are.  Get someone who you will report to, weekly. More info in a post written by Kirby Cole on RecruitingBlogs: Job Search Accountabilty Coach A Partner in Your Job Search

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

What to Look For When Looking For a Minneapolis Resume Writing Service

What to Look For When Looking For a Minneapolis Resume Writing ServiceIf you are looking for a Minneapolis resume writing service then you should know that this type of service has its advantages and disadvantages. While the advantage of using a resume writing service is the fact that it can get your resume into the front of the right people, there are disadvantages to it as well. You must understand how to pick the right Minneapolis resume writing service in order to get the most benefit from it.One of the first things you should look for when choosing a resume writing service is whether or not it is accredited with the Better Business Bureau. When looking for a Minneapolis resume writing service, the B.B. Bureau will give you a free consumer credit report to see if the company has any complaints with them. If they do, you should avoid the company.Also, a consumer credit report is an important tool for a company that wants to work with the Better Business Bureau. The B.B. Bureau wil l help you determine if the company has actually settled with the consumer and would be willing to take back their services or not.As with anything else, you should also check the work history of the company. It is no good if you use a service that has had any lawsuits, problems, or poor customer service on its record. The Minneapolis resume writing service that you use should have a clean record and should provide excellent customer service.Also, you should consider the reputation of the Minneapolis service before actually paying them to write your resume. You want to be sure that the company you are using has a good reputation with the federal government. You want to make sure that you will get the job you want and you will be hiring someone who knows what they are doing when it comes to writing a great resume.Of course, the best way to find out if the company has a good reputation is to check the references they provide to you. You want to get the experience of the past customers before you commit to working with them. The Minneapolis resume writing service that you choose should not leave you with many questions about the company.Sometimes, even after having gone through a few companies, you will have doubts about one company because it doesn't quite make sense to you. One reason a Minneapolis resume writing service may not seem like the best choice for you is because they have been used for many years. Sometimes you just don't know what you are getting with a company that has been around for so long. You want to be sure that you are dealing with a professional company that is going to provide you with outstanding service.When you are looking for a Minneapolis resume writing service, there are many things that you need to look for. Keep in mind that you need to feel comfortable when you are dealing with a potential employer and you also want to be sure that you are working with a professional company that is able to provide you with excellent customer serv ice. Keep these things in mind when you are trying to find the best Minneapolis resume writing service.

Saturday, May 23, 2020

15+ Best Data Warehouse Interview Questions To Get Hired With - Algrim.co

15+ Best Data Warehouse Interview Questions To Get Hired With - Algrim.co If you are looking for data warehouse interview questions and answers, look no further. I’ve got the best way to prepare for any upcoming technical interview that you might have where the company you are applying for has a data warehouse. Before we get into the interview questions, I want to provide you with some knowledge on what and why a Company might have a data warehouse for. Its important that we start from the beginning of the equation, so that you know why the company values this asset. This will ultimately help you speak to the manager who is interviewing you with more clarity and be able to hold yourself in a confident position while discussing the data warehouse as a whole. Lets go through the basics. A data warehouse is most commonly used by technology organizations who are dealing with heavy data analysis. For example, lets think about Google for a moment. In Google’s scenario, they are constantly indexing a large number of Web sites, inside of those Web sites is a large amount of information which they ingest and analyze. They perform a number of complex functions on the data itself in order to understand it more clearly, which ultimately comes back out to you. In this example, as I’m sure you could imagine, I’m talking about the core search engine behind Google. Now in Google’s case, they would absolutely use a data warehouse. Why you might ask? Well because having all of the data combined with the database information used to keep track of and/or service a single users instance of the application seems like a heavy workload and incredibly inefficient. The data needs to be stored separately, analyzed separately and then accessed by the core functioning application. This in theory and in practice is the benefit of having a data warehouse as part of the technology stack. Increasingly, we are seeing data warehouses being used. That’s because the amount of data and the types of functions being performed by applications and computers is increasing. We are starting to trust them with our financial information, which is expansive. As well as many other types of jobs which are computationally intensive without heavy amounts of data analysis. Thus the needs of the sources of storage has also increased with our reliance on these technologies. Before we jump into the interview questions, you may want to start with this helpful youtube clip about data warehouses. In my opinion its helpful to hear how others describe them, so that way when an interviewer asks you a question related to the topic you’ll have something to reference in terms of explanation and delivery. I hope the video below is helpful for you before we get into the questions and mock answers. Data Warehouse Interview Questions & Answers Table of Contents 1. Can you tell me what a data warehouse is? 2. Can you tell me why a company might use a data warehouse? 3. Why would a company use a data warehouse for data? 4. What are the common methods a data warehouse is analyzed? 5. What is a data warehouse commonly built on? 6. What is data warehouse management? 7. How does the data warehouse communicate to the core application or core database? 8. How do you treat data which needs to be archived? 9. How do you handle data which needs to be backed up? 10. Can you explain to me what ‘cold storage’ is? 11. What are some of the cons to having a data warehouse? 12. What types of programming languages do you need to know to work within a data warehouse? 13. What is a production database? 14. How would you secure a data warehouse? 15. How would you describe a data warehouse to a non-technical colleague? 16. Can you tell me what metadata is? 17. What are data relationships? 18. What are single and multi source data warehouses called? Data Warehouse Interview Questions & Answers 1. Can you tell me what a data warehouse is? Absolutely. A data warehouse is a database. But it is a special kind of database that is separate from the database that we use for everyday applications and everyday functions of our software. A data warehouse is usually used as storage or large amounts of data sets. These data sets can be organized, unorganized, classified or not classified. Because of this random nature to the data inside the data warehouse and the potentially large size to the overall database, it becomes quarantined from our production database. Data inside the data warehouse can be analyzed, organized, accumulated and/or archived. It is the store of all data related to future analysis and decision making for our functional products and/or services. 2. Can you tell me why a company might use a data warehouse? A company might use a data warehouse if they require the storage of large data sets. This could be from consumer applications, which require the consumption of consumer data in a large manner in order to get any pattern recognition or signals from the large amounts of data to business applications which need to store data for their clients. A business usually uses either one or many data warehouses to find protection as well as the ability to analyze and determine the best paths forward from the data that sits inside the warehouse. 3. Why would a company use a data warehouse for data? Combining data that was ingested, collected or imported into the core database which powers either business or user functionality creates incredible risk. Risk of failure of the core features or services which users or customers may depend on. A company would use the data warehouse for this type of data so that it can remove those potential risks yet still collect, analyze and determine what they’d like to do from larger data sets with significant ease. 4. What are the common methods a data warehouse is analyzed? There are a few ways that a data warehouse is analyzed. First, the analysis may happen on a manual level. That means an administrator inspecting the directories or levels of which the data is stored and performing some type of manual analysis on top of that set of information. The second would be the programmatic analysis of the data. This means that the engineering team has developed some type of way of sorting through the information inside of either a single or many data warehouses to be able to determine the common patterns for which their applications need to move forward. In that case, the data warehouse is being used as an ingestion system with the analysis being put on top it programmatically, to power some type of software. 5. What is a data warehouse commonly built on? A data warehouse is going to be most commonly built on large scale databases. That means either NoDB infrastructures like Mongo or scalable table based systems like MySQL. 6. What is data warehouse management? Data warehouse management refers to the software and process for which data is commonly analyzed and determined for next steps. These next steps sometimes include the archiving or removal of the data inside the warehouse. Data warehouse management is sometimes a single piece of functionality that is programmatically built for the data warehouse itself. When these types of cleanup functions happen on a persistent basis, the engineering department of a company will try to build solutions for which the data management can happen more frequently, without human intervention. In more unique scenarios, where the data must undergo a human eye, the data warehouse management software usually lets the administrators sort through what they need to and determine what they’d like to do with the data at that point. 7. How does the data warehouse communicate to the core application or core database? When two applications need to speak with each other and provide data either back and forth or from one to the other, the applications are often connected by secure connection and authentication of a single server IP address and another single server IP address. In some cases, API endpoints may be built on the data warehouse via small applications that allow another application to access the data stored within the warehouse. This is also not uncommon. Though, in scenarios like that one, you may expect that application to also be performing the cleanup/tidy/analyze type of functionality as well before it is ready to be ingested by the production application during the point of which its being called. 8. How do you treat data which needs to be archived? Archiving data within data warehouses is usually a tricky scenario. Often times owners of these data warehouses never truly want to delete the data because of the steps that may have been taken to ensure they get the data in the first place. So what they may do is actually move any archived data to a particular cluster of the database, one that no longer has any analyzing power going towards it. That way, if at any point, systems need to be restored or data needs to be analyzed in a larger setting, the archived clusters of data can be unpacked, set back into the data warehouse and a much larger index and analysis can occur, allowing whatever problematic that the engineering or business teams are facing to be potentially alleviated. 9. How do you handle data which needs to be backed up? Backing up of data for data warehouses is another very tricky problem, similar to the archiving functionality. Usually, a data warehouse can be set on a distributed number of servers. Because of this, it is possible to ensure that every server is sharing in the backup snapshots of the large data sets. Though, this becomes more difficult as the data gets larger. In those scenarios, master and slave server storage clusters may be the appropriate way to move forward. In that instance, every server then has a particular cluster for which is part of a larger master snapshot and each cluster is consistently backed up to its slave server. This allows a particular part of the cluster to be backed up as well as unpacked in the instance where an engineering event requires the backed up snapshot. The way to think about this is like a puzzle, each piece playing a role to the broader picture. 10. Can you explain to me what ‘cold storage’ is? Cold Storage is most commonly used for data warehouse which contain information that is extremely secure and that needs the ability to be backed up for certain. Even in the event of a well architected system of smaller data warehouses that feed to the master snapshot, there’s chance of catastrophic failure. Cold Storage is when there are recurring events when the snapshot is stored onto a physical drive or other type of storage device and then placed into a physical and secure vault. These devices are then collected and stored over time to serve as the ‘cold storage’ device. Cold Storage simply refers to the fact that the storage of information is not connected to the internet and that the place of the storage is in a completely secure situation, like a bank vault. 11. What are some of the cons to having a data warehouse? The biggest cons to having a data warehouse is the fact that is needs to be managed on a regular basis. The large data sets that engineers have to deal with can be time consuming to handle. Mostly because of the computational power that may be required to query or execute on local development machines. The amount of time that an engineering team can spend on this can be detrimental to the progress that the team could be making building more features and facilitating the requests of customers. 12. What types of programming languages do you need to know to work within a data warehouse? You really should know SQL if you are going to be dealing with data warehouses. Any type of database programming language is a must. But SQL is the most common and the most powerful. 13. What is a production database? A production database is the core database that is used to power the products and services that may be more customer facing. It should be lightweight and ‘close touch’ with the things that support our value proposition as a company or service of software. Some people would call this an operational database, this refers to the fact that this database provides all of the core operations that are part of the main value proposition and/or product/service. 14. How would you secure a data warehouse? Data warehouses need be secured by SSH keys, encrypted passwords and potentially VPN networks if that’s a must. This means that only certain locations and IP addresses are able to attempt to login to the master machine. This is usually the best way to secure a data warehouse, though there are many other ways that are less common as well. 15. How would you describe a data warehouse to a non-technical colleague? In order to explain a data warehouse to someone who isn’t technical, I would probably try to help them understand via a fantasy or imaginary scenario. I would tell them to picture many hundreds of people standing in a field. All of these people have various colored tee shirts on. They are also all mixed together, so that there’s no clear grouping of the people, their tee shirts, or any other pattern. And that the problematic attempting to be solved was to group the people in the field together by their tee shirt color. The way you would do that is by first trying to take a chunk of the people who are standing in the field and telling them to stand together but by the side, you then may break the group of people up into smaller chunks, maybe of four. Then, through those smaller groups you would ask the people who have the same color tee shirt to start grouping themselves together. You would do this because you’d be able to see that group of people more clearly and could provide them better direction. Then, you might do that with the initial groups of people you set aside. Finally, you may have sets of people who now all have their tee shirt colors coordinated but need to be merged together into one final grouping. This would seem like a very logical and organized way to deal with such a large number of people, correct? If you can picture this scenario unfolding, then are picturing the need for a data warehouse and the analysis that must be performed on top of it to make for successful computational events. 16. Can you tell me what metadata is? The best way to describe what meta data is as information regarding data. For example, if we had an MP3 file, inside of the meta data may be information regarding the producing artist as well as the company which produced the song or album. 17. What are data relationships? Data relationships is when groupings of information are then labeled as similar. This allows data to be clustered, analyzed, labeled and then propelled into the potential operational database. Relationships are nearly exactly how they sound, similarities or patterns between the information that may be within the data warehouse. 18. What are single and multi source data warehouses called? Generally speaking, there are two types of abbreviations which help to describe how many sources and what types of functionality can be done within a data warehouse that either has a single or multi-ingest type of core functionality to it. This is OLTP and OLAP. The differences between these two things is that OLTP is when there is a single source for the data ingestion, which usually defines a very strict usage of that data. And then OLAP means many sources may be used to ingest and/or collect data, where the functions that can be performed on that data set is much more vast. Conclusion and preparation I hope this guide was helpful for you going into your interview. It's important to recognize that most of your knowledge with regard to regular programming and database development as well as management, will take you very far in the process. Generally speaking, most data warehouses are simply large groupings of databases which are connected together and managed in a more unique fashion than a production/operational database. As long as you feel confident about your abilities in this field, which is SQL and database programming, then you should be absolutely fine in your upcoming interview. Be sure that you spend the time to go through these questions and answer them in your own way, you’ll need to be sure that you are delivering the answers to these questions in a confident, secure and concise manner. The only way that you can do that is simply by practicing before the interview. If you have any other questions that you’d like to see part of this guide, by all means please email me. Also know that all of my questions above are simply mock questions.

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Stop Striving for Perfection! - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Stop Striving for Perfection! - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career In  Debora Spars book, Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection,  the Barnard college  President writes  that striving for perfection is a futile goal and it will only lead to frustration and unhappiness.    Debora Spar never thought of herself as a feminist. Raised after the tumult of the 1960s, she presumed the gender war was over. As one of the youngest female professors to be tenured at Harvard Business School and a mother of three, she swore to young women that they could have it all. “We thought we could just glide into the new era of equality, with babies, board seats, and husbands in tow,” she writes. “We were wrong.” Spar says it’s time to change course and for women to recognize that in order for us to achieve real progress we’ll need to integrate a dose of realism into our life goals. Spar persuasively argues that the best and the brightest people can’t achieve it, including her.    In a recent speech, she shared a personal story about her own aspirations, successes and failures. Debora says that despite holding a PhD in Political Science and making it to the top of her field in education as a tenured professor at Harvard, she still struggled  as a working parent.  She was unable to meet her childrens needs and maintain the quality of her work.  The frustration and stress made her feel inadequate; things spiral out of control when you think you need to be ‘perfect.’ Drawing on extensive research and personal knowledge she’s gleaned as president of Barnard college-where she observes young women striving for perfection every day as well as a working parent and former professor she calls on all women to “kill the myths” that make them feel inadequate.  â€œFeminism,” Spar says, “was meant to remove a fixed set of expectations; instead, we now interpret it as a route to personal perfection. Because we feel we can do anything, we feel we  have  to do everything.” The dilemma that most working women and many men feel as well today is that we’re expected to be everything; smart, ambitious people who can have a career and manage our family life. But Spar says that women have an especially difficult challenge. Many working women still feel more pressure than men feel to make sure their kids are cared for, educated, and that they have a clean house and also maintain an attractive appearance.    For men this isn’t as much an issue. No one asks them about who cares for their children while they’re at work and no one expects them to be good-looking, smart and maintain a shiny home with well-mannered children. Spars says that “We have to stop assuming that we can be like the woman in the Charlie ad who’s a super model smiling while carrying a light briefcase and pushing a stroller on her way to work.” That woman is a myth and we delude ourselves if we think it’s possible to have it all and to do it all. The way Spar says she manages balancing family life and her professional life is through outsourcing. She says “if you’re a working mom, working at a Dunkin Donuts, you don’t have the ability to outsource, but you still have to find other waysâ€"whether it’s childcare that’s not as good as we all would like it to be, or it’s living next door to your motheryou cannot do it all.    You need to get help with your children and with cleaning.    Also she quips don’t expect that you’ll be able to make every ballet recital or every flute recital. You can’t! The challenge for women today is to remember we aren’t meant to be superwoman but real women who make mistakes, fail and then bounce back and continue to keep trying. We could become social activists, professionals, homemakers and caretakers.    Some of us will choose to stay home and work part-time, others will work full-time and then some will be full-time stay at home moms.    There is no one right way for all women. There’s a spectrum of choices and you need to assess what makes the most sense for you in your unique position. While women are known to multi-task better than men, no one can do everything simultaneously and perfectly.    It’s important for women to recognize your abilities and your limitations. The best way to insure happiness is to avoid trying to be perfect and instead strive to be insightful about your own personal needs, abilities and limitations and find a path that allows you to feel in your element at least 80% of the time. Try to roll with the punches in life, be flexible and adaptable, and above all try to laugh about the things that don’t turn out to be ‘perfect’.    The true wonderwomen in each of us will come out once we figure out what we’re meant to contribute to the world each day. It may be doing the laundry, caring for children or elderly parents or fighting global poverty.  While sometimes we can’t choose the role we want we can choose how we play that role. Each of us could strive for excellence in our pursuits. But striving for perfection usually results in disappointment. Each person may have a different mission but the message to every woman is the same:  Find happiness in the search for your unique purpose.  Be a wonder woman by being accountable for your choices, never, never giving up and know that it’s perfectly OK not to not be perfect!

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Tips on How to Create a Resume Writing Form

Tips on How to Create a Resume Writing FormIt is sometimes difficult to work out what kind of resume writing form you need to use in order to create a document that impresses your prospective employer. The content of your resume needs to be striking and eye-catching. The search for a convincing cover letter and a strong resume can be quite daunting for a lot of people. Fortunately, there are some clear cut methods that can help you get the best out of your writing efforts.Writing a great resume is not something that is achieved by chance. It is something that needs careful planning and work. The writing of a resume needs to be an intelligent and well researched project which has been designed by an experienced professional.There are many professional resume writers who offer their services. These resume writers will help you draft a resume that reflects your strengths and the skills that you have, but not necessarily your specific achievements. They will also take into account any ot her relevant details such as any prior work experience, previous education and any other relevant facts which may be required by the employer.Your resume will need to highlight your strongest points, but it should not be so focused on highlighting your weaknesses that the prospective employer will overlook them. It is very important to provide the employer with a clear picture of the quality of work which you have done in the past. The actual writing of the resume must be written by someone who has knowledge of the skills and the requirements of the position.One of the key elements in creating a strong resume is to make sure that you list all of your achievements in a chronological order. If you can, do try to break down your employment history into those which were completed for the same company and those which were performed by an independent contractor. This will help give you more flexibility when using your skills and those which were performed independently.It is also very imp ortant to mention the jobs that you had before you started your own career, as this gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your self-sufficiency and provide references for these jobs. A useful tip when submitting your resume to a job agency is to focus on your skills and accomplishments over the past ten years. The potential employer will look at this in the same way as they would if you had listed all of your work experience, including any information that was not relevant to the job.Resume writing forms should not be rushed, but neither should they be disjointed. Make sure that your resume writing form contains a list of your accomplishments. A good resume should be able to provide a good overview of your past achievements. Also, make sure that the format of your resume matches the job which you are applying for.Resume writing forms that contain information which is irrelevant to the job which you are applying for are likely to be deleted by the employer. You do not want to alie nate the prospective employer when they are looking for someone who is qualified for the job. Once your resume is complete, the best way to ensure that it is seen by the potential employer is to maintain a copy of it for yourself.

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Why Reflection Matters More Than Action Right Now (Podcast)

Why Reflection Matters More Than Action Right Now (Podcast) Happy New Year and welcome  to Making a living Unplugged the podcast!Okay so it doesnt have all bells and whistles of my SiriusXM show but it doesnt come with a subscription fee either.  I have heard from so many of you via my Facebook radio page that you appreciate the positive encouragement I deliver on air.  Well here it is in purest and simplest form!Click here to listen to Making a Living Unplugged!Its my way of testing out new ways of sharing a positive empowering perspective when it comes to you following your dreams.  I also want to keep you up-to-date on how you can get help with your career.  Here are some important highlights this month:Get a Career Makeover with my Follow Your Dreams Giveaway (must enter by 1/31/13):For all who enter before 1/31/13, I will be choosing at random one lucky winner to receive a full 9-session Soul Search, Research and Job Search coaching program (a $5000 value).  All you have to do is go to MaggieMistal.com, sign up for my newsletter an d then use the Contact button to share why you’d love some help with your career.  I’ll randomly choose one winner from all the entries.  You have until Jan 31, 2013 to sign up for my newsletter and contact me.   I’ll let the lucky winner know via email and my blog on Monday Feb 4th, 2013!  Read more about the Follow Your Dreams Giveaway.Get the Work/Life Fit you crave with a free, interactive webinar Im hosting Tues Jan 8th 12pET:To celebrate the launch of her new book, Tweak It â€" I will be interviewing Work Life Expert Cali Yost Tuesday Jan 8th at 12p ET.  Get a full hour of QA with the author along with prizes and giveaways of the new book. You can even submit your own work life dilemmas and get your questions answered directly by Cali.  Check out WorkLifeFit.com for details and to learn about the book.When you follow your dreams its of service to the world.  Why? Because happiness and optimism are contagious. Hang out with an inspired person youll be inspired too ! Its an upward spiral.Comment on my blog right now with your dreams for 2013. Lets start creating our own upward spiral of positive reinforcement. And tell me what you think of this new format. Is it something you feel I should continue?Hope you enjoy  Making a Living Unplugged.  Heres to us all being much more than the sum of our to do lists.Always follow your dreams!

Friday, May 8, 2020

Dont Make The Mistake Of Being Anonymous On LinkedIn

Dont Make The Mistake Of Being Anonymous On LinkedIn Dont Make The Mistake Of Being Anonymous On LinkedIn If youre actively looking for a job or just open to opportunities you need to be on LinkedIn. You need an optimized LinkedIn profile that tells your career story. And you need to make it easy for recruiters and hiring managers to find you. Like it or not, your LinkedIn profile needs more than compelling content. Despite being primarily a business site, its still considered social media. Which means a head shot is essential. As a former recruiter, I know that profiles without head shots raise red flags. People wonder what you are hiding. Some people dont include a photo because they are afraid of discrimination. Theyre afraid theyll be seen as too young or too old or too whatever. And the truth is they might be. However, the advantages of having a head shot far out weights any potential disadvantages. While a professional photo is nice to have. A clear photo of you in business attire, preferably smiling, taken with a smart phone works too. And while youre at it, replace LinkedIns default blue background too. In todays competitive market generic is not the image you want to project.