The Field Guide

The Field Guide A career guide by field employees, for field employees

The Global Services Career Center http://bit.ly/GSCareers

The Field Guide

2 http://bit.ly/GSCareers

About This Book Over the last few months, we’ve talked to employees around the globe about what it takes to be successful in the field. This guide is a collection of insights and best practices for building a great career… by field employees, for field employees. You can find more tools like this on the Global Services Career Center on EMC-ONE at bit.ly/GSCareers, or on Slideshare at www.slideshare.net/EMCCareerCenter.

http://bit.ly/GSCareers

http://www.slideshare.net/EMCCareerCenter

The Field Guide


Contents

Networking 4

Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone 8

Being Visible 11

Learning & Development 13

Owning Your Career 16

Resources 21

The Field Guide


Networking

The Field Guide


You need to build up a network of contacts within the business. You need to reach out to different parts of the business in different regions, get to know people, and maintain relationships with those people. That can be more from a personal point of view of dropping people a line on email or communicator, participating in conference calls – just really trying to know different people in different parts of the organization, different parts of the world, and maintaining those relationships, because you learn a lot from those people. What's tended to work for me is finding mentors – someone who I trust and respect, and someone I can work with to help guide me in my career. It might be someone who's currently doing the role that I'm doing, but they've been doing it for a lot longer than I have and they're someone I can learn from, or I might aspire to do a different role and I've developed a mentor who can help me do that. Brad Gordon Melbourne, Australia

While I do not have a formal mentor at the moment, I find that I can learn from so many people, especially from people who are not from my department or area of responsibility. What we tend to do sometime is see the world with Technology Services shades, so to say, and we forget to have a different point of view. One of my mentors is a Regional Sales Manager. It's not a formal mentorship, but I learn a lot from him about how our sales folks are seeing the world, and that helps me a lot in my day-to-day business. Bernhard Grueling Vienna, Austria

The Field Guide


I try to be in the office and be present and be around, because although we don't have the corporate community feel, we have our own community out in the field. Our office is pretty tight-knit. Try to form your own community in your own area and feel apart of something, even in the field. Amanda Walker Pennsylvania, USA

If there's any area in the company that you're interested in going into, it's good to find someone in that area to talk to. I've never met anyone here that isn't interested in helping you if you want to learn more about their role or what you need to do to get there. It's just communication, but you have to make the effort yourself to communicate. Michael Ball Melbourne, Australia

The Field Guide


The face-to-face is so crucial. I can't tell you how many times I've thought, "Well I don't really need to go to the customer site this week," or even the office. And I'll still do it. And I can't tell you how many times I've built relationships and found out additional information that makes things go much smoother. Getting in front of the customer or in an EMC office as much as possible goes a long way to building those professional networking opportunities. Tony Penn Florida, USA

You're going to work with a lot of people in your career, and you're going to try to figure out which ones you should listen to. Don't try to figure that out. Look at everyone you work with and figure out what they're really good at, and learn from that. Craig McQuilkin Florida, USA

The Field Guide


Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

The Field Guide


Often times opportunities do not present themselves in your local area. There are a lot of different organizations within a geography, but often times if you're looking to advance your career it involves relocating to an area where there is an opportunity. It presents a blended, mixed bag of good and bad. The good is a new set of people that you're interacting with, a whole different set of management, and the opportunity to re-impress everybody. But once you're in that new geography, you're just expanding your influence further and further. Josh Norige California, USA

If you look at the European situation, it's not very common that people leave their home country. One of the points that I thought was most interesting in my career was when I decided about ten years ago to move to Ireland for a while. I lived there for four years, and it was one of the best things that I've ever done. I would encourage people to do something similar. Live abroad for a while, get to know other cultures, and see how things work elsewhere. Bernhard Grueling Vienna, Austria

The Field Guide


For you to break out of your current role you have to go above and beyond what your current job responsibilities are. Your manager may guide you, but he's not going to put goals on you to say, "Go do this." You have to go outside your comfort zone and do other things. Timothy Haydon California, USA

The Field Guide


Being Visible

The Field Guide


From the field, you have a lot of opportunities to be visible to the right people at the right time. Often we have new products, new betas, and new opportunities for field employees to specialize into new product areas. One of the very first things that I started out in my career was getting involved in some betas of Invista and ESRS, and that actually helped me dramatically because it put me in front of decision makers. Josh Norige California, USA

Make sure the people around you know your good work... without bragging. You've done a good job. If you want to advance, you need to let people know. It's a delicate balance. For example, if I'm in a conversation with my boss I may say, "Last week in a similar situation I did this." Timothy Haydon California, USA

The Field Guide


Learning & Development

The Field Guide


I have a subscription to Get Abstract. They actually provide me with a lot of very valuable summary information about business books. Like many busy professionals, it's not easy to sit down and read an entire book. So when you get the condensed version, you really get the key points. You're not going to find a book that tells you how to do your job better. You're going to find books that help you tweak pieces of your job and understand how other people work and operate. Josh Norige California, USA

What I find on EMC-ONE is a variety of information, starting from new marketing campaigns, to customer issues, to PowerPoint decks that I use myself sometimes for presentations. I have a wide variety of things that I can see and find there. I find EMC-ONE a very up-to-date and timely way of communication, and it is very much inline with what people do at home anyway. More and more, this type of communication will spread to our customers as well. Bernhard Grueling Vienna, Austria

http://www.getabstract.com/servlets/Turnkey?u=emc

http://one.emc.com/

The Field Guide


When I first started there was a lot of training to get up to speed on the products that I was supporting. But other than the training, there are plenty of opportunities to go and do things outside of my role. If an opportunity comes up that you're interested in and there's the scope to do it, then you can go and work with someone else from an other team and learn a bit about their role and get a bit of experience outside of your own area. It's a combination of training and fieldwork that gets you were you're going. Michael Ball Melbourne, Australia

You really have to make the time to develop. You have to put it in your schedule, otherwise it won't happen. Also, don't be afraid to bite off small chunks. If you can only carve out 15 minutes this week and not a full hour, that's fine. I see a lot of people put things off because they don't have a full hour, a half-day to dedicate to something. Go ahead, be OK with a smaller chunk of time, because 15 minutes over a few months certainly adds up. Andrew Erickson Minnesota, USA

The Field Guide


Owning Your Career

The Field Guide


Define what success is for you. For some individuals growing into management is success. For others, being the most technical, being the person who always knows the next thing before it happens, is success. So first, define what success is for you. After you've done that, have a plan. Map out where you are and where you want to go. I think the biggest challenge that's often overlooked is the internal career development: Knowing where you want to go. So often, people get an idea of, "This is where I should be. Externally this defines success, so I need to follow these steps to go down this certain path." I think really getting in touch with what drives you, where you’re passionate, then everything is going to be a lot easier. If you lose your passion for what you do, it's going be work. Andrew Erickson Minnesota, USA

We have weekly one-on-one meetings with my manager and myself, so that's the time for me to talk about any challenges or problems I'm having with my projects and anything I need support on. But it's also a time to talk about career, and to talk about what's next for you. If you have those conversations on a regular basis and not necessarily when you want something, I think it's easier to have that conversation when you want something that's outside of the normal. Amanda Walker Pennsylvania, USA

The Field Guide


The one thing I like about EMC very much is that nobody prevents you from learning. Everybody is encouraging you and creating an environment that helps you learn, be it in a self-paced manner on the web, be it classroom-type training, or real, formal training on an executive level. At the end of the day, it's something you need to pull and not so much wait for. Talking about career development with my manager is a very open discussion. We have formalized a plan on where to go over the next 12 to 18 months, and this is something I appreciate very much. Bernhard Grueling Vienna, Austria

I sit down with my manager and map out an Individual Development Plan. And there are things I'll do, CBTs I'll attend, books I'll read, a lot of it on my own time because it's my development. It's like anything at EMC - you get done the things you make time to get done, and it has to be a priority for you. Craig McQuilkin Florida, USA

The Field Guide


You have to make time to develop your career. If you sit and wait for the time to appear it won't. You really have to make the most of your downtime, so when things are quiet, you have to grab that opportunity to work towards your goals. I think having clear goals and making the commitment to put some time every day or every week into that is the only way that you're going to do it. Michael Ball Melbourne, Australia

I have a CE who wants to get out of the CE ranks, and has an excellent opportunity to go into the Data Domain field right now. He's done his Proven Professional certifications, he's done classes in Data Domain, he's come to me and said, "I want to learn more about it." He took it upon himself to see where the company is going, to get that knowledge, and make sure that on his resume, LinkedIn, wherever he may be, he has listed what he can do. And every time he gets and opportunity to shadow somebody he does it. But he took the initiative himself. Timothy Haydon California, USA

The Field Guide


Quite often, the people who have helped me in my career have been my managers. One of the things I always try to do is have a strong working relationship with my manager. One of the things I'll do with them is make it very clear what my goals are from a career point of view. I'll sit down with them and say, "This is where I want to go. This is what I'm next interested in doing." And I work with them to help me achieve that. Once you put out there what you want to do, as long as you're doing well in your job people are going to help you to get there. Brad Gordon Melbourne, Australia

The Field Guide


Resources

The Global Services Career Center

EMC University & Education Services

EMC-ONE Employee Community (internally facing)

EMC Community Network

(externally facing)

EMC Bloggers

Get Abstract Book Summaries

The PodCenter on Powerlink

EMC Careers on YouTube

EMC Careers on Slideshare

http://one.emc.com/clearspace/community/active/gscareercenter

http://edu.corp.emc.com/

http://one.emc.com/

https://community.emc.com/index.jspa

http://www.emc.com/community/

http://www.getabstract.com/servlets/Turnkey?u=emc

http://powerlink.emc.com/km/appmanager/km/secureDesktop?_nfpb=true&internalId=0b01406680418bfa&rnavid=MyTools-2

http://www.youtube.com/emccareers#p/c/326ACF896398CC3F

http://www.slideshare.net/emccareercenter

The Field Guide


Share This

Please download, print, discuss and share this document.

This guide can be downloaded internally at bit.ly/GSCareers or externally at www.slideshare.net/EMCCareerCenter.

http://bit.ly/GSCareers

http://www.slideshare.net/EMCCareerCenter