From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

How to be successful starting out

From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

How to be successful starting out

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- Your first day as a CIS admin will be exciting and you may be full of nerves, but relax, everyone in the room has gone through the same experience as you. Your first days will be all about learning. Make sure you have a pad of paper and pen, or tablet, or computer to take notes. Unless asked for your opinion, it's a good idea to just listen for a bit. The person training you has a lot of information to get out and maybe not a lot of time to do it. One of the first things I like to tell new CIS admins to do is to find out who's in charge. The reason for that is you'll want to know who to prioritize when calls come in. A user may have a more pressing issue than an owner, but the owner gets taken care of first, unless told otherwise. If you get a key card, make sure they work in all the doors that you'll need to access. It may be the only day the physical security team will be easily found and will respond. You'll be handed new equipment. Be sure to look it all over prior to signing for it. You'll be responsible for the return of it at some point, so make sure to scrutinize it like a rental car before leaving the lot. When you meet with the hiring manager, you may need to slow down a bit. During the hiring process, you might not have gotten all the information needed for days off and other important info. The hiring manager is on your side, so feel free to ask the hard questions without worrying about breaking protocol. Later on, you'll have some sort of meeting with your new boss. Besides taking notes, prepare some intelligent questions ahead of time based on what you see around you. Also ask who would be the go-to person to ask for help on legacy information about passwords, software, backups, or anything else you'll need to know. It may be your boss or it may be another coworker who has the most institutional knowledge. Soon you'll meet with your entire team if the company is large enough. Be sure to prepare some remarks about what led you there and what excites you about being at the organization when asked. Find out from some of the team members the best place to park or what type of transportation to take. There may be a carpool that can be great for team building. After that, it's time to meet the people you'll be assisting with computer issues and deployments. Depending on the size of the company, this may take several weeks to fully memorize. I like to counsel new CIS admins to write down people's names as they give them to you, along with where they sit and their department. It will be much easier to look up when they call for help. You'll likely have a server room tour. That is the time to ask what servers are new and what may be scheduled for replacement or cloud migration. What applications are the various departments using? Are any applications custom or proprietary? If so, find out the name of the developer. Get a handle on the cloud resources being used and have someone log in and show you how they're being deployed. And ask about the long-term plan for cloud. Your first day will be exciting, and with planning, may be a little more comfortable for you.

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