IT Insights Blog

The NBA draft will be taking place on Thursday and, as you may have noticed from past installments of the IT Insights blog, there are a lot of NBA fans around the office. Many of us will be watching or listening with interest, hoping to see (or hear) our favorite team draft a coveted college basketball star, or swing a big draft night deal, or grab some prospects for the local NBA G League team, or at least find a EuroLeague guy with an unpronounceable name who will maybe be ready to come over in a couple of seasons from now.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were expected to chitchat with another person but you didn't know what to say? Of course you have! We all have. As you probably already know, one safe and rather universal topic for such situations is the weather. No matter where you are, there is always weather happening there, and people are usually aware of its effects. There are even online tutorials to help you learn to converse about the weather.

In the modern business world, many people communicate via text, or by using any of a variety of different chat apps. It's often more convenient than a phone call, and usually quicker (if inevitably sloppier) than sending an e-mail. It's likely to be a long time, however, before e-mail entirely disappears as a means of communication and sharing information. And as long as e-mail continues to exist, if not precisely flourish, it will remain a potentially dangerous point of entry to your workstation and, more problematically, your employer's network.

Let's have a show of hands: Who out there remembers being an elementary school student and going back to school each year in the fall to have one of your first assignments be a picture/show-and-tell/report/essay about how you spent your summer vacation? "This is me, my sister, my brother, my mom, and my dad standing next to Old Faithful in Yellowstone." "I got these Mickey Mouse ears when we went to Disneyland." "For my summer vacation I played Little League baseball and hit a home run."

An oft-debated question among aspiring IT professionals is: Which will help me better land a job? Should I focus on one specific domain, or on developing a broader range of skills? Like so many of life’s questions, there is no one-size-fits-all answer, and frequently the solution is a combination of both options. While the decision is very important, and will influence the sort of jobs you will land in the beginning of your career, here are a few thoughts to consider when deciding between a targeted or shotgun approach.