Certification Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 3)

EDITOR’S LETTER Tools and Techniques for the IT Professional Employment Interface DANIEL MARGOLIS For some time now, Certification Magazine has been accomplishing the task of giving insightful and valuable advice to IT professionals on not just which certification programs to target and why, but also on their careers overall. One way the magazine has accomplished this is with our Interface department, where we’ve visited with companies month after month to learn how they utilize IT professionals and to what end. But we’ve recently retooled Interface to focus on speaking with companies about their initial hiring of IT pros, whether at entry level, mid level or high level. We’re learning what IT hirers look for and why, how they make their eventual hires and whether or not these hires prove effective. We’re hoping this will help prepare you for interviews (whether giving them or getting them) and other aspects of the hiring process and give you a better perspective on what to expect in such situations. This issue also investigates a rather intangible medium: virtual reality. The term itself leads one to think back to films that first suggested it as being possible, such as 1992’s “The Lawnmower Man,” in which a scientist performs experiments with intelligence-enhancing drugs and virtual reality on a simpleminded gardener. That film’s titular character was played by Jeff Fahey, who also played a man who becomes obsessed with a virtualreality game that can resurrect his murdered girlfriend in cyberspace in the 1995 movie “Virtual Seduction.” As absurd and implausible as these examples of virtual reality in film may be, they did prove eerily prescient. Now that virtual reality has found a home on the Internet, a whole host of virtual worlds have cropped up. While no one is getting maliciously experimented on or brought back from the dead in these spaces, they do present an unending series of questions about what is or isn’t legal, or moral, in a virtual environment. Our Job Roles feature speaks with individuals responsible for administering virtual worlds to find out what makes them tick (apparently it’s a lot of coffee). 8 VOLUME 10 ISSUE 3 MARCH 2008 GROUP PUBLISHER John R. Taggart | jrtag@certmag.com EDITOR IN CHIEF Norman B. Kamikow | nkam@certmag.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Mike Prokopeak | mikep@certmag.com SENIOR EDITORS Daniel Margolis | dmargolis@certmag.com Brian Summerﬁeld | bsummerﬁeld@certmag.com Kellye Whitney | kwhitney@certmag.com COPY EDITOR Meagan Polakowski | meaganp@certmag.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS Agatha Gilmore | agilmore@certmag.com Ben Warden | bwarden@certmag.com Lindsay Edmonds Wickman | lwickman@certmag.com DIRECTOR, CREATIVE & PRODUCTION SERVICES Kendra Chaplin | kendra@certmag.com ART DIRECTOR Kasey Doshier | kdoshier@certmag.com PRODUCTION MANAGER Linda Dziwak | linda@certmag.com WEB MANAGER Chris Patterson | cpatterson@certmag.com WEB DESIGNER Spencer Thayer | spencer@certmag.com E-MEDIA MANAGER Kat O’Connor | koconnor@certmag.com VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS Gwen Connelly | gwen@certmag.com EVENTS MANAGER Trey Smith | tsmith@certmag.com EVENTS COORDINATOR Christen MacKenzie | cmackenzie@certmag.com EVENTS SALES MANAGER Tana Johnson | tjohnson@certmag.com BUSINESS MANAGER Vince Czarnowski | vince@certmag.com CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Cindy Cardinal | ccardinal@certmag.com LIST MANAGER Jay Schwedelson | mediatec@worldata.com REPRINTS reprints@parsintl.com OR call David Einziger at 212-221-9595, ext. 407 ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER & ADVERTISING DIRECTOR James R. Yeakel | jyeakel@certmag.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Dave Lienemann | davel@certmag.com Lisa Newton | lnewton@certmag.com PUBLISHER’S ASSISTANT Sarah Ryan | sryan@certmag.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Agatha Gilmore David Coughanour Ben Warden Katherine Spencer Lee Brian Summerﬁeld Kelly Shermach Daniel Margolis Kellye Whitney Ken Wagner Lindsay Edmonds Wickman Matt McGrath Wayne Anderson Norman B. Kamikow PRESIDENT Philip S. Wolin GENERAL COUNSEL John R. Taggart EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Patricia Pierce CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Certiﬁcation Magazine (ISSN 1529-6903) is published monthly by MediaTec Publishing Inc., 318 Harrison St., Suite 301, Oakland, CA 94607. Periodicals Class Postage Paid at Oakland, CA and at additional mailing ofﬁces. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to: Certiﬁcation Magazine, P.O. Box 2083, Skokie, IL 60076-7983. Subscriptions are free to qualiﬁed IT professionals. Non-qualiﬁed paid subscriptions are available at the subscription price of $39.97 for 12 issues. Canada/Mexico orders must be prepaid in U.S. funds with an additional $15 postage charge. All other countries outside the U.S. must be prepaid in U.S. funds with an additional $40 postage surcharge. Certiﬁcation Magazine, CertMag and CertMag.com are the trademarks of MediaTec Publishing Inc. Copyright © 2008, MediaTec Publishing Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reproduction of material published in Certiﬁcation Magazine is forbidden without permission. Daniel Margolis Senior Editor dmargolis@certmag.com Printed by: RR Donnelley Inc., Mendota, IL March 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 3 http://www.CertMag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - March 2008

Certification Magazine - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Mastering IT: Choosing Between an Immediate Job and Higher Education Inside Certification Virtual World Administrators: Service Requests in Cyberspace Interface Boomers in IT: Will the Talent Shortage Affect Techies? Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - March 2008

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