That's What Jenni Said

I've had the opportunity lately to offer some career coaching to others in our industry and I've really enjoyed the experience. I don't promise to offer all the answers to success but I can speak to what has worked for me that I've identified as potentially reproducible in your career planning to obtain your desired outcomes. I've transitioned from one industry (counseling and mental health services) into a completely different field (IT Consulting) during the course of my career and there are several specific skills I have honed and principles I have embraced that afforded me the ability to identify, pursue, and "win" opportunities that have come before me. General Tips for Career Success: 1. KNOW WHAT YOU VALUE. Self-discovery time. Figure out the qualities that are important to you with regard to job tasks, general industry/nature of the work, and work environment. For general industry give thought to the current and pro...

I promised more details on my new job and so here we are. I work for CSC as a Senior Consultant for their Federal Consulting Practice (FCP). In some instances, I may consult on projects the FCP has negotiated directly with the US government, but typically I am asked to step in on federal govt projects that CSC’s North American Public Sector (NPS) is already managing.  This means at a practical level that I consult to one division of CSC on behalf of another division of CSC. CSC is a very large company (92,000+ employees) and it has fashioned itself into several divisions to handle different market segments. For example, it has a large division devoted to commercial work both domestic and abroad. It also has a major division devoted to US government work. This division or entity provides services to the US government under contract. The FCP division was created to maintain a pool of expertise to drop in to NPS projects as needed. This benefits the company to keep a supply of tec...

Last Weekend I finished the upgrades to my consulting website. You can view the new site layout and content at http://www.parjen.com . Please pass on the site link to any of your friends/family/colleagues locally and out of the area who may be in need of IT services. ParJen Consulting services clients nationwide. I appreciate it very much.

It's been another productive week. My days were filled with solving problems at work and my evenings were filled with socializing and a few select ParJen Consulting appointments. Saturday was the busiest day of all. In the morning Jon and I ventured to DC to lead the NoVA walkers on a stroll around Southwest DC on the waterfront. We did 3 miles and then enjoyed brunch at Phillips. Immediately following we headed to Alexandria where Jon dropped me off at a client's home to perform some consulting work while he browsed home depot for our new kitchen appliances. After that we headed to my friend Rho's house for the monthly NoVA Supper Club dinner. The theme was Italian and the food was great. Met some new people who were very nice. Today Jon and I finalized our kitchen appliances purchase at the local home depot. We are going with all stainless steel and picked out an oven, over the range microwave, dishwasher and fridge. I'm excited to finally have a convection oven. ...

I got a lot accomplished this week. I did some solid work on my consulting business (ParJen Consulting) and am working hard to build my client base again. I let it dwindle when I took on my latest full time job as the challenges of the new position were pretty overwhelming and needed my full attention. However, now that I'm settled into the role and have a handle on managing things I have more time off hours to devote to consulting again. I got our financial records closed out for 2007 and up to date through the end of Jan 2008. We use Microsoft Money for financial management and I really feel good when everything is organized and we have a clear picture of our financial outlook. I filed our state and federal taxes. We have a hefty refund coming back this year. This was due to the fact that 2007 was my first full year at my current job and I didn't do a good enough job at estimating what our final taxes due were going to be and had too much withheld. We will adjust our w2 fo...