IT Demystified - Book Review
From ukrecruiter
One of the key issues I face in staff development
is turning eager young graduates, fresh to the recruiting industry, into
credible IT recruiters – someone who can ‘speak the language’ and who a
candidate can have confidence in. Even
our more experienced recruiters find it hard to hide the nerves that creep in
when faced with recruiting for a new technology or an area within IT that
they’re not familiar with.
That’s
why I was intrigued to read this book.
I have 7 ½ years experience recruiting within IT and I read IT
Demystified in tandem with one of my new recruits whose 3 months into the job.
The
book covers the basics of IT, Hardware, Operating Systems and Application
Software. It then focuses on what the
author calls “the real value in IT” - Application Development. The next section is Architectures, which
reads like a history of computing.
Section 4 describes the structure of the IT Department, what they do and
how they do it. Finally, the author
looks at Hot Technologies of today and tomorrow.
Strengths
- The book is
written in a very clear and easy to understand way. Unlike many books on IT, even those
I’ve read aimed at non-technical professionals, it has a very clear
presentation with good use of diagrams, pictures and bullet-point lists.
- The chapters are
logically arranged and we found it easy to dip in and out of specific
sections.
- It really does
take you back to basics and assumes no prior knowledge of IT. This is great for my new recruit, but
also for people like me who can perhaps talk the talk, but lack sometimes
a fundamental understanding of what they’re talking about. People assume that I know and often
they’re wrong!
- It focuses on the
real commercial world. As a
recruiter, I have no real interest in the technical differences between,
say, one operating system and another.
That’s for the Computer Science textbooks. I am interested, though, in the
commercial merits and applications of them and the trends within the
market. This for me is one of the
best things about the book – it talks about the issues my clients are
talking about, and does so in real language that I can understand.
- It provides ways
of describing IT concepts and technologies in plain English, e.g. “[A
Firewall] can be thought of as an e-bouncer…like a nightclub doorman does
let people in, but only those that meet the criteria”. This is important in demonstrating our
“inch-deep, mile-wide” knowledge of IT to candidates and clients.
Criticisms
- At the end of each
chapter there is a “Test Yourself” section. I agree with the concept of these, and found these ones a
handy way to recap the information in the chapter to make sure I retained
it. However, there were no answers
provided to the questions, so I was never 100% sure I’d understood the
chapter as the author intended me to.
- We both groaned at
the quality of the “jokes”. To be
fair, the author is self-depreciating enough to point out that they aren’t
funny in the introduction! Some of
them I’m sorry to say re-enforced my stereotypes about techies trying to
be “cool”!!
- The text makes
many references to “today”, “recently”, and so on. Read in August 2004 it was totally
relevant. My concern is that the
book runs the risk of looking dated unless there are regular revisions.
On
the whole we both enjoyed the book, and both learned a lot from reading
it. I would recommend it whether you’re
experienced or whether you’re starting out in IT recruitment. It will supplement the recruitment-specific
systems, techniques and skills you learn, develop and maintain.
Steven Maule
Sales Manager (Ireland)
Allegis Group
