Certification - November 2008 - (Page 52)

advanced and might require certification. Further, a contract position will not include the same level of support, direct contact and mentoring that an internship or more learning-focused position will include. The contracting professional is assumed to be fully educated and capable of performing services for a given project. Open-Source Projects Internships offer young IT professionals the opportunity to work for an organization either on an unpaid or belowmarket-rate basis, often with more guidance and mentoring than the organization may provide to full employees. Unsolicited Offers Another way to build experience through volunteering is by making open-ended unsolicited offers of IT services to a local organization. This is one of the least predictable methods, however. Unsolicited offers are nearly universally unpaid, as the position is not planned for in the organization budget. Also, because of legal considerations in making use of freelance assistance, many larger organizations will not make direct use of unsolicited offers. The starting professional will want to target educational institutions and nonprofits instead. The other element to consider with unsolicited offers of assistance is that the work likely will be limited in scope, as the organizations that make use of these services are smaller and do not have an adequate picture of the volunteer’s set of skills. As a result, the organization may take some time to find an opportunity for the candidate to contribute in a meaningful capacity. The last common way to build experience through volunteering involves open-source project work. In recent years, the expansion of the number and type of open-source projects has led volunteering professionals to have some of the most advanced development experiences available. Developmentfocused professionals may find ample opportunity to volunteer for projects that are used by large numbers of individuals and organizations. However, open-source projects are not without their challenges. They are almost always unpaid efforts with both code contributions and project management coming from volunteers. There is almost never a formal structure by which the starting developer could take advantage of mentoring or working directly with another professional. Also, code contributions to these projects often are moderated by a community at large. It may take some time for the professional to build up a reputation in the community so that code submissions are accepted for important functional areas of the application. The community usually does not accept resumes, nor is there usually any way to otherwise communicate qualifications. As a result, this community trust can be difficult to engender, and the only way to earn it is to be an active participant in the code submissions, bug fixing and discussions related to the particular project. One of the other challenges to be aware of with opensource projects is that because there is no consistent structure and little in the way of formalized code assessment or individual contribution assessment, it can be very difficult to list this kind of volunteer experience on a resume. Often, open-source experience is more easily categorized once the individual has moved into a more formally specified position, such as project lead or code moderator. Or if an IT pro has served as a contributor to an open-source project, it is important to list specifically the systems for which he or she has constructed code. 52 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE November 2008

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Certification - November 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Tech Careers Dear Techie Virtual Village Data Stream Academic Connection Troubleshooting What We Like Look Ahead The Gender Gap: IT Lacks a Woman’s Touch IT for Free: Volunteering Today Interface Technical Architect: Learning, Growing, Innovating Inside Certification Endtag Ad Index

Certification - November 2008

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