Posts Tagged ‘Email’

IT has never been about learning a skill and then generally sticking with it for a large part of your career. If you plan to do that, pretty soon you won’t have a career because you’ll be left behind with outdated skills. The IT business changes faster than most and so you need to learn up-to-date skills to keep you employable. Knowing the ones that are really going to be in demand means you can gear yourself up for the best paid jobs.

Communications is a big issue, with many companies moving towards phone systems based on VoIP rather than the traditional PSTN technology. At the same time, various communication methods are becoming more unified, with users expecting to access everything (email, text messaging, voice mail and so on) through a single interface and from various devices such as laptops, PDAs and smartphones. All this makes networks more complex, so skills to manage them and implement the various services will be increasingly in demand.

Networks are also getting more complex for other reasons, often having to support PCs running under Windows as well as various versions of Linux, with Macs often thrown into the mix. Added to this is a tendency for employees to work at least a part of their time at home and an increasing need to access company systems remotely. Not only that, but access is by a variety of devices as well as from different locations.

All these developments will require skills in supporting mobile users on different platforms, configuring mail servers and implementing wireless networks. This increased access puts much more emphasis on security aspects, with the need to authenticate users and prevent access by those who don’t have sufficient security measures to meet minimum criteria. A thorough knowledge of VPN technologies, authentication methods and the security implications of various devices will be in demand.

Software as a Service is something that’s been hovering around for some time and is likely to grow. If applications are accessed remotely rather than being installed on the users’ own machines, this may move job opportunities away from the user sites and more towards application providers. The likely increase of large data centres will require changed skills, with the need to support multiple customers and plan resources. This may also lead to a rise in virtualisation to make best use of servers at the centres.

Being aware of what’s happening and keeping your skills up-to-date will improve your job prospects. Contacting UKContracting.net to sort out the way you’re organised will also increase your business efficiency.

If you’ve used email for any length of time, you’ll know that messages coming into your inbox seem to be on the increase. Most of them are unwanted and a lot probably result from signing up for various deals over the years. The problem is that there are so many of them that you can’t give them all a lot of attention and you might easily miss the important ones. This, of course, is a problem shared by others and so you need to make sure that the emails you send aren’t overlooked.

One way to try to get your messages noticed is to set them as high priority. However, if you do this too often, the impact will be quickly lessened. Even worse, if all senders set their messages as high priority, the effect is totally lost, so be very selective. The same goes for asking for a read receipt — if you always do it, people will ignore the request. Always make sure your message has a subject that clearly identifies what it is about. This allows the recipient to prioritise the important ones and helps to get your message across.

Ensure your message is clear and to the point but covers everything it needs to do. Missing out important information results in emails bouncing backwards and forwards, which wastes a lot of time. Cover the main topics first and use numbered lists and bullet points so things stand out and the message is easy to follow. Send your emails only to people who have a direct interest in the subject rather than using a scattergun approach to include everyone you can think of.

Lastly, check your message before you send it. If it’s sloppily written and contains many obvious errors, people might easily dismiss it as not being worth reading. If you gain a reputation for sending messages that are relevant, concise and easy to understand, they’re more likely to be read.

Check the effect by sending a message to UKContracting.net. If you’re interested in using our services, you can be sure we’ll respond.