One of the things I’m most proud of at our company is our team.You can see some of our team below taking down our booth at PASS this year.

I get asked a lot of the same questions so I thought it was time for some Pragmatic Mythbusters to dispel some myths about our team:

 Myth #1- You have to be a rock star already to work for us.

We bring on folks at all levels, but like any company our needs fluctuate. We understand that the normal world doesn’t prepare you fully to be a superstar SQL Server consultant. There will be gaps but we’re going to challenge you and support you to get you to where you need to be.  You’ll invest the time, and we’ll invest the support and mentoring where needed.

Sometimes we need more of a certain skillset than others but that shouldn’t discourage you from reaching out to us. We keep everyone in our pipeline for 12 months in case we can reach back out to someone we enjoyed speaking with but didn’t have a home for that particular week.  We have a diverse and motivated team and we are always excited to meet folks who share our passion and goals.

Myth #2 – Learning all this new stuff means I’m never going to see my family.

We ARE YOUR NEW FAMILY. Just kidding (sort of, we are like a big family). We do our best to structure client scheduling, mentoring growth etc… to provide for work life balance. With consulting this can be difficult and sometimes you’ll be busier than others, but I’m confident your current job in IT has the same scenario. The nice thing is the time your spending is usually on learning and building something new instead of repairing some environment your boss won’t let you fix .

Myth #3 – I’ve never done any training or public speaking.

The number one fear in the world is Public Speaking. More than death, which seems silly and dramatic to me, but such is life. We will get you speaking to people. As a professional you need to be a good communicator and while many technology people are good written communicators, they struggle with the spoken word. We have had many of the folks you see at SQL Saturdays and SQL Rally some in to our world with no speaking experience. It’s part of the job and part of building your credibility in this industry. It will help you meet interesting people and you’ll never forget the first time someone tells you they can to a SQL Saturday just to hear your session. It’s when they follow you to the parking lot that you should get nervous. .

To show that even the most experienced of us get a little nervous before a new presentation here’s a picture of Brian I took when we were prepping for our session at the Summit this year.

Myth #4 – I’m going to be a road warrior.

Many of you see my travel itinerary and balk. Keep in mind that my primary job is helping us grow this business, working with clients and building and developing a world class team.  I’m not your typical employee. Most of our folks rotate in and out of travel projects and are only on the road 50% of the time, the rest of the time they are working from home or in the office helping our clients virtually or working on internal projects.  Those who travel are gone during the week and home on the weekends.  Most folks don’t find it problematic once they start. The beauty of this travel is you’re getting to see how other companies are succeeding and failing and how you can help them be the best they can be!

Myth #5 – You must relocate to Jacksonville.

I want to be clear on this one. You don’t have to live in Jacksonville to work for us. However we have invested heavily in our new office space and capabilities to enable mentoring to be more immediate and dynamic in the office. We do offer selective relocation assistance and housing location assistance. Our new office is outfitted with mentoring and training rooms, new networking infrastructure and a floor plan that is conducive to collaboration. Plus we’re a fun group and we play basketball weekly. Yes, look around we’re definitely all IT guys but we give it our best! We work had and then play hard (then sometimes fall down gasping for air, oh wait that’s me ).

Myth #6 – I’m not well known in the community.

Well neither were most of the people you know in the community. Even Paul Randal will tell you his wife pushed him into it and now he loves speaking and blogging, etc..  I’m not looing for how many SQL Saturdays you’ve attended. I’m looking for your passion, your desire to learn new things quickly and apply them and  desire to help others understand things you struggled to learn the first time.  I’m looking for folks who want to be the best they can be and then redefine that and get better. I would encourage you to speak at your local user groups and events to try it out. We recruit from a lot of these events because being there show you have passion.

Paths to Pragmatic Works

IF you talk to our team, they will tell you that many of them started off reading a post like this. They came through our foundation, or were a great DBA with some BI curious in them (Jorge and Patrick).  They were excited by meeting up with us at an event and kept in touch. Some of them didn’t have the right skillset but worked with us and studied on their own and came on board later. All roads can point to Pragmatic Works if you’ve got the right attitude and drive.

Growing and Keeping the Best in BI

Mentoring  – We are focused on helping you grow and helping you help us grow. Did you follow that? If so we need you!

Rewarding – As you grow, you’re rewarded. We are launching new benefits later this year above our already innovative growth reward programs.

Feedback – I’m big on constant feedback. You’ll know if you’re doing good, bad or ugly and we expect the same thing from you about us, our software, processes, etc.. Sometimes we can change and sometimes we can’t but we believe we’ve hired smart thoughtful people who deserve to be heard.

Stay tuned for the next segment in my Pragmatically yours series where I’ll talk about our culture. As always if you’re interested in applying for a position with us, please take a look at our job listings at http://pragmaticworks.com/company/jobs/Default.aspx or message me on twitter @adam_jorgensen with any questions.