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How to Become an Oracle Professional
10 October
2006
Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting |
For more details, see these important notes on:
-
Oracle in a laissez faire
economy
-
becoming an Oracle expert
-
Oracle
DBA job
Also see how Oracle DBA jobs will be
different in the
year 2020 and Oracle
DBA job duties. Also, many folks ask
how
much is a college degree worth?
Becoming an Oracle Professional
Most beginners start work with Oracle after graduating
from college, and in this tight market, a masters degree (MBA or MSCS) is
advised.
Remember, database administration is not a trade.
Database administration is a mission-critical job role, a professional
career requiring at least a 4-year degree, just like being a scientist,
architect or engineer.
As I turn 50 years old,
I
notice that people half my age are working hard to become an Oracle Professional, and I'm really glad
to see that it's still a level playing field and that anyone, regardless of
background, can make it to the top of the heap. Also see my notes on
how to become
an Oracle DBA and
how to become an Oracle
Applications DBA.
I'm frequently asked
what it
takes to become an Oracle DBA, but these are mostly queries from
vacillating people who are only interested in the high pay and don't understand
all of the years of hard work and perseverance that it takes just to enter the
marketplace.
Trust me, no large corporation
is going to pay you $130,000 per year to manage their mission-critical Oracle
database unless you have a history that demonstrates dedication to a
professional career in database management. Becoming an Oracle Professional
doesn't take remarkable intelligence or a pricey Harvard degree, but it does
take persistence, drive, and a dedication to excellence.
Becoming a Respected Oracle Professional
My company is one of the
highest paying Oracle consultancies, and we have very
rigorous hiring policies
because our clients demand Oracle consultants with impeccable credentials.
Hence, I'm always on the lookout for the next up-and-coming Oracle Professional.
The next Oracle Professionals are not
hard to find. They have the stellar
educations, publish
insightful blogs, snag opportunities to
publish, and
share their research.
They strive for prestigious degrees, awards, publishing opportunities,
certifications and challenging job opportunities. The next generation of
Oracle Professionals are easy to spot because they are characterized by a "can do"
attitude, and they all have polished
communication skills.
You can't stop an
aspiring Oracle Professional
Ten years ago I was giving a
keynote presentation at a conference when I noticed a High School kid in the
front row taking feverish notes and hanging on my every word.
After my presentation, he leapt
up and commanded my attention with question-after-question on
how to
become an Oracle DBA and how to distinguish himself as an Oracle Professional.
He told me that he was only 16 years-old and that he was going to be the next
Don Burleson! He said that he had driven for two-days to hear me speak and
wanted my advice on how to distinguish himself as an Oracle professional.
I was impressed, and I told him that there was no secret to success in Oracle,
and that hard work, above all else would distinguish his Oracle career.
This was not the last time I
would see this young fellow. Since that fateful day, he got a job as a
senior instructor at Oracle University, became the world's youngest Oracle ACE
and Oracle Certified Master, and wrote a book on Oracle technology.
Now I ask you, how could I not
hire this guy?
Today,
Steve Karam has
earned his place among the highest paid Oracle professionals in the world.
This week I sent him to Jamaica to teach a class, and he and his wife and kids
are having the time of their lives. This guy strives to be outstanding in
everything he does, just look at his
instructor comments!
Any Questions?
I don't believe that any
aspiring Oracle Professional would "settle" for second-best, and every day I see the
next generation of Oracle Professionals working long hours to distinguish themselves
among their peers.
If you have taken extraordinary
efforts to distinguish yourself as an Oracle Professional, I probably already know about
you, but just in-case I missed you, please
send me an
e-mail if you are looking for a job or a publishing opportunity. There
is always room at the top, and if you are going to be one of the next Oracle
Professionals, I'd like to hear from you.
Update: 11/3/06
Oracle Professional status:
We need to remember that the terms “expert” and “Professional” are
nothing more than accolades, similar to the vendor-awarded titles:
And the self-earned titles such as:
Robert Vollman (one of my favorite bloggers) just published
some
insightful comments about what it takes to become an “Oracle Professional”. Mr.
Vollman has some observations about the relative value of a university education and
excellent communications skills toward Professional status:
Top College Degrees:
“After all, who is to decide which degree is
prestigious enough, which certifications are necessary, and which awards
qualify?”
To answer this question we need to look no further than
Oracle Corporation, who published
their choices of schools for "top candidates", a virtual laundry-list of the
world's most challenging and demanding universities:
"According to the e-mail, Oracle recruits "top
candidates" for product development from MIT, Stanford, CMU (likely Carnegie
Mellon University), Princeton, Wisconsin, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Caltech,
Berkeley, Harvard and Cornell.
In addition, the e-mail continues, Oracle will consider "top candidates"
from the University of Texas Austin, Duke, Penn, Georgia Institute of
Technology (grad students) and "any top international schools,"
Many large corporations rely on challenging universities to do the screening
for them, and nobody can deny that it takes a great deal of hard work and
dedication to graduate from a highly-selective university. I know engineer
graduates from MIT and DeVry, and while they both graduate engineers, there are
huge differences in the quality of the education (and the number of recruiters
who hire from these schools)!
"I would say
that Don contradict himself with regard to the degree, "doesn't take a
pricey Harvard degree" and later saying that "a stellar education with
prestigious degrees" is a must."
Ah, this is a common teaching technique that I've used for years, presenting
two sides of an argument. It's designed to make people think, and if you
noticed the contradictions, when I've done my job properly. . . . BTW, some of
my best consultants are high-school graduates who work hand-in-hand with Ivy
League grads.
Professional Teaching Skills & Quality
Mr. Vollman makes an interesting point about the subjectivity of the
"quality/quantity" spectrum of communications for an Oracle Professional:
"How do we measure how effectively a potential Professional has communicated
their knowledge? Number of students? Questions answered? The students'
understanding of Oracle? Some combination thereof?"
By my definition, an "Oracle
Professional" is a teacher, and being able to communicate is an essential
ingredient.
I've taught over 80 classes in graduate school, and I noticed that many aspiring
Professionals never learn to "dumb-down" their communications to a level where
they can be understood by beginners. I've successfully presented Oracle
technology to 9th-graders, and it you don't know how to communicate at the same
level as your audience, you are a failure as a Professional.
For example, many top-level IT
managers don't know (or care) much about the relative features of database
products (SQL Server, Oracle, DB2), and it's necessary for a real Oracle Professional to deliberately
over-generalize and explain complex technology with simple analogies and
illustrations.
The ability to over-generalize and
simplify complex concepts with analogies is a critical skill for any Professional.
Check-out the
Google job interview questions where job candidates must
explain computer concepts to a hypothetical 8 year-old:
Q:
"Explain a database in three sentences to your
eight-year-old nephew."
Also see my notes on
Learning by Analogy - Oracle
I use a similar question in my
book "Conducting
the Oracle Job Interview", to tease-out a potential Oracle Professional:
Q: "Explain the
most popular commercial databases, as-if they were cars. Draw a clear
analogy and explain what kind of cars "Oracle" and "SQL Server" would be,
and justify your answer with specific features."
