A quarterly newsletter for clients and friends of Chenault Systems
The public relations firm Dykeman Associates has nominated Chenault Systems for the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce 1998 Small Business of the Year Award. We appreciate the positive notoriety:
"The principals of Chenault Systems, Inc. certainly personify the criteria needed to win the Small Business of the Year Award. We have worked with them for more than a year now, and we have observed first hand their high ethical standards, high quality product, leadership and activity in the community. I have talked to some of their clients and we know they deliver an excellent service, saving their clients millions of dollars." - Alice Dykeman - Dykeman Associates, Inc.
We have a new web site address www.chenaultsystems.com. We have added several enhancements to the site, such as a guest register and access to press releases, which includes the article about Chenault Systems in the Dallas Business Journal back in January. Our Web site is an ever changing and growing process.
One of the biggest challenges in our business is scheduling, i.e. matching personnel with projects, especially when projects may be postponed or moved up in time by the client. Putting together the right team to match a project is also an art. What is best for the client is paramount. Too often, the corporate philosophy is to put too much emphasis on paper certification. This is the easy way out in evaluations. Personality, character, good communication skills and the work ethic are also very important and standardized certification techniques do not evaluate these characteristics. The free marketplace has an interesting way of overruling artificial affirmation. Yes, "good people are hard to find" and must be well compensated, but we still must maintain a rigorous interviewing and reference process.
The following article appeared in Network Magazine Journal issue of September 1997.
Having identical problems and concerns surrounding "paper CNEs" in recent letter to the editor (see "A CNE Who Was MIA," Network Magazine, June 1997, page14), I feel it is equally important to offer one possible solution to the problem. As an MIS director, I am confronted with the paper CNE issue not only from a customer perspective, but from an employer's prospective.
Often, when I need to replace a LAN administrator or increase the number of CNEs in my department, I am barraged with resumes from candidates proclaiming they possess not only CNE certification, but also all the knowledge and, in many cases, all the years of experience I am looking for.
But resumes can be very misleading. Typically, these candidates list numerous areas of hardware and software "expertise," while in reality they have little down and dirty, hands-on experience. It's one thing to baby-sit a network and get lulled into believing you are building a solid knowledge base; it's another thing to actually create a network form scratch, maintain and support it, and continue to expand it as users' needs increase.
Calling and questioning candidates' previous employers about their quality of work and overall attitude can be misleading if you do not take the time to ask the appropriate questions or read between the lines. Sometimes you can't even speak with the employee's manager or supervisor. Instead, you are directed to speak with someone in human resources - a conversation that leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you're interested in the person's technical aptitude.
To work around this problem, ask applicants for personal references from individuals who can vouch for their technical expertise - it is entirely appropriate to do so. You can learn a lot by talking to clients for whom the applicant has worked - not to mention save yourself a lot of time, money, and effort.
In talking about the challenge of researching a prospective employee's background, a particular incident comes to mind. While discussing an applicant's background with his former employer, I was told he performed well and did what was asked of him in a timely fashion. His interview went well, and I hired him. To my dismay, I ended up having to let him go nine months later.
I became close friends with one of his former co-workers, who did work for us on the side. When he learned that I had dismissed his former coworker, my friend called to apologize for misleading me. He confessed he had been instructed by his human resources department not to say anything that might cast an unfavorable light on that particular employee. Needless to say, a good portion of this employee's work at our site needed to be reviewed and corrected by a qualified CNE at a cost of several thousand dollars. This incompetence not only inconvenienced my end users, but also put me over my budget for the next several months.
So how can you protect your network and yourself from paper CNEs and misleading recommendations from companies afraid of being sued for telling the truth? I think the answer exists within the interviewing process. We need to expand it from a mere verbal exchange to a scenario where applicants are required to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. When you consider the money and resources your company has invested, and the fact that a downed network can cost thousands, if not millions, of dollars in lost revenue, I don't think you should treat the issue of testing prospective applicants lightly - especially if you are ultimately responsible for the flow of information through and availability of resources on your network.
You can test applicants in two ways. First, you can use a test server to gauge a variety of skills, such as mapping network devices, setting up printers, and assigning rights. Follow this by giving candidates a series of written questions that depict issues and problems pertaining to your particular environment. This approach will not weed out all the paper CNEs, but will demonstrate, to some degree, the applicant's ability to perform and deliver the required level of expertise.
Another way to test the strength of an applicant is to create a test environment on the network. You should prepare in advance a specific list of tasks - for example moving users from one organizational unit to another. It is important that this form of testing remain fair to all, and that each applicant take the same test - otherwise, it could be construed as a form of discrimination. Be sure to check with your human resource department to ensure that this form of testing falls within the guidelines of your company's policies and procedures.
In this day of instant certifications and read-the-book/take-the-test mentality, it is important that we protect ourselves and our investments. If you do not actively weed out those paper CNEs, you may one day find yourself surrounded by a highly paid, but poorly trained, staff.
Stevenjames M. Meikle, CNE, is director of MIS at Columbia Hoffman Estates Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, IL. You can reach him at meikles@buckshot.ornet.med.umich.edu.
Reprinted with permission of Network Magazine copyright 1997 Miller Freeman, A United News & Media publication. All rights reserved.
We would like to congratulate the advancements in technology with some of the private and public schools in the Dallas area. It has been a long time coming, but educators have come around to understanding that excellence can mean service to the customer (parents) with the Internet.
For the past 200 years, one of the biggest problems parents have with their school children is missed assignments. Kids forget to do their homework or study for a test resulting in less credit than their intellectual capacity aspires. Most young children are poor administrators and always will be, but for some reason, the education community expects them to be as responsible as adults. To better plan for future assignments, frustrated parents will call the school and hope a teacher or counselor will call back in a timely manner. The school will issue reports to the parents by sending them home with a child. If the progress report is bad news, the parent may never know there is a problem until it is too late. Sometimes the school is as disorganized as the students are because teachers are overwhelmed by paperwork.
Today's Internet technology can help with these problems. The schools will have web sites with different pages assigned to different classes or teachers. Instead of waiting for returned telephone calls or trying to interrogate their children, parents can visit web sites to see current schedules of homework, projects, future exams and grades. The parent can point this out to the child and demand timely results. Learning is enhanced because more assignments are done and the parent is involved from the beginning. This will save a lot of time for teachers and facilitate better organization on their part. For those parents who do not have access to the Internet, they will have an easier time getting in touch with teachers because they no longer have to compete with the parents who do have computers.
"It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry...It is a grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty." - Albert Einstein
"When told you cannot see the 'big picture,' ask to see that big picture." - Anonymous
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