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In this issue
Interviewing for Success... (Smith Hanley)
A review of a SAS BI training course, Viewing Results and
Running Stored Processes Using the SAS Add-In for Microsoft
Office (D.J.Penix, Pinnacle Solutions)
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Interviewing for success...
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Bridging People, Technology and Knowledge…
Specialty Contract Staffing
Smith Hanley Consulting Group is a national recruiting firm
specializing in business intelligence, technical, data management
and statistical opportunities. We've been bringing People,
Technology and Knowledge together for many of the country's
leading companies for 25 years.
Quantitative Analysis and Programming
SAS and Statistical Programmers, Statisticians, Direct/Database
Marketers, Marketing and Data Analysts.
Information Technology
Data Warehousing/DSS, OLAP/Report Developers / ETL Specialist,
DBAs/Data Architects and Administrators, Programmer/Analysts
and Software Architects, ERP/CRM/HRIS/Web Systems.
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Interviewing for Success...
Smith Hanley has had the opportunity to share our thoughts
with the BISUG members on dealing with recruiters and how
best to design your resume in the past two newsletters of
BISUG. We hope you've gleaned useful information from these
articles.
We'd like to move to the next stage: interviewing. One very
successful industry professional once told me his success
hinged on his candidates' ability to interview well. He focused
his time and energy on educating his candidates on how to
win the job in the interview, and his success of offers extended
went through the roof! I like to tell my candidates, their
"job" in the interview is to get make that company
want to extend an offer and have you join their company. Easier
said than done!
At Smith Hanley we do our best to cover the high points of
interview success with all our candidates and subsequently
provide a four-page "instructions booklet" prior
to the interview. Four pages!!! Now, if that doesn't tell
you there is an art to interviewing, I don't know what is!
Below are some of the items we cover with our candidates.
You're in the driver seat. They requested an interview
with you based on something YOU possess (at least according
to your resume and/or phone screen).
Be prepared to answer the famous question: "Tell me
about yourself!" What does that mean and what does
the interviewer really want to hear?
Business casual attire. With the very common "business
casual attire", what do people wear to interviews today?
How well do you know the company you're interviewing with?
Besides the general research, we can show you how to learn
more information about the internal situation at a company.
Remember, you're interviewing the Company as a prospective
employer just as much as they're interviewing you as a prospective
employee!
Salary history. Should you divulge your salary history
or your salary expectations?
Standard questions. Although standard questions in
most interviews, "Tell me your weaknesses" and "Tell
me your strengths" most candidates fail to answer these
questions effectively.
Finishing the interview is sometimes awkward... closing
effectively can make all the difference with a company or
interviewer.
Follow-up? Is it important, and how should it be done?
Should you find yourself in an interviewing situation, and
would like advice from one of our three SAS recruiting specialists
(Steve Palmer, Diane Owens or AJ Hernandez) to help you bring
an offer home, please call (800) 797-8287 or email at spalmer@smithhanley.com,
dowens@smithhanley.com,
ajhernandez@smithhanley.com.
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Review of a SAS BI training course
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D.J. Penix, Pinnacle Solutions
dj.penix@psiconsultants.com
D.J.Penix (he is the one at left) is the President of
Pinnacle Solutions,
Inc, a SAS Alliance Member. He has been building
custom SAS-based solutions for more than 15 years. D.J.
created and launched the BI portal www.datagister.com
which offers online demo versions of various SAS BI
Server tools.
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Viewing Results and Running
Stored Processes Using the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office
This course, Viewing
Results and Running Stored Processes Using the SAS Add-In
for Microsoft Office, is geared toward the business analyst
with little or no SAS experience, focuses on using the SAS
Add-In for Microsoft Office to run SAS programs in either
Word or Excel. For those that aren't familiar with the Add-In,
visualize your standard Microsoft Word or Excel program with
additional menu items that allow you to directly generate
SAS reports -- all without writing a single line of code!
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This particular course focuses on executing Stored
Processes to generate the report results. Stored Processes
are kind of like procedures or snippets of code. They are
packages of SAS programs or SAS macros intended to be deployed
throughout an organization to maintain consistency and standardization.
Users are allowed to specify run-time parameters to customize
reports or output. The training material does not go into
creating the Stored Processes -- that is covered in a separate
course.
Like other e-Learning courses offered by SAS, this course
uses various interactive elements to help you understand the
concepts. Slide shows, step by step directions, interactive
questions, guided practices, and a short quiz at the end allow
you to get familiar with the tools. Although the interactive
flash elements will never replace getting your hands on the
real tools, I felt that I clearly understood the concepts
and primary purpose of the tools.
The course contains 40 pages of material and SAS suggests
planning to spend 1 hour on the course. I went through the
lessons at a moderate pace and completed it in less than 40
minutes.
The inexpensive cost of the e-Learning course makes this a
very attractive alternative to other training options. Although
this is a beginner level course, I believe all levels of experienced
business analysts and executive level personnel could benefit
from this course. Excel "power users" would also appreciate
the ability to extend the SAS functionality without having
to learn the inner workings of SAS code.
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