John Looney is a site reliability engineer for Google Ireland. “What does that mean? Basically, if Google goes down, I fix it!,” he explains.
At the Higher Options event in the RDS last week John shared some career advice with second-level students. Here, courtesy of the STEPS team, are just some of his career tips…
Keep your options open
“Keep your skills broad, generic and up to date. Consider switching jobs if you need an opportunity to learn new skills. When the world changes, you will want to be able to roll with it, and enjoy it.”
Real-world experience will make you stand out
“These days you have to up your game, especially if you want a high-end job with a big salary. Do extra work and try to impress. If you can say, for example, that you’ve built a flying robot or contributed to open source software, that will put you ahead of other candidates.”
Careers are a marathon, not a sprint
“You will take all sorts of wrong turns, where you think you know what you want to do for the rest of your life, but you will have many careers – some lasting a few months, some lasting 20 years.”
Check out the full list of John Looney’s top 10 tips on the STEPS website, plus a video from Engineers Ireland in which he talks about his career, life and work.
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