Question

One of the most critical activities that I was involved in my Current IT job was migration of a total data platform of the organization to a New Platform. The client organization we were working for was an insurance giant and the task was to migrate the system that was already in place to a totally new platform. We were aware of the criticality of the issue and the biggest challenge was that the complete responsibility was given to me to execute this alone and then the review would be done by the client. Individuals who have worked in data analysis and business intelligence should be able to understand the pain what they have to go through in such cases because the amount of data is huge and we cannot afford to lose any data base because the history is more important and that needs to be safeguarded and protected. The process took weeks for me to complete and after this was done there were various issues related to compatibility as the form of the data was different, existing methodologies started to fail and each and every functionality was reviewed and again enhanced.

            I will highlight the task in the resume because I have used around 5 new technologies in the process like SQL, Informatics, Unix Scripting, Data Stage, Power BI, etc. and this gave me a lot of exposure in handling critical tasks. I took the sole ownership of the piece and any issue arise was reported to me which was taken care by me. There were a lot of communication each day regarding the change and once it was deployed live, the issues started to increase because many applications started to fail as the owner of the applications did not conduct proper impact analysis of the migration and hence we again had to make provisions as live applications cannot go down. I believe that I have been benefitted from this activity as well because it helped me learn a lot and earning client appreciation as well.

Question: Describe why this experience stands out as an important one for your career. How would you present that experience in your resume?

Please answer in 350 words and in word format only.

Answer 1

As mentioned in the case, platform migrations are a huge and critical task which can make or break the organization`s data hierarchy and structure. Being the sole owner for such a critical task shows the leadership qualities you have to take the initiative and the responsibility for such a mammoth task. Major issues one faces while data migration is data loss. To prevent such issues, one has to take great effort to ensure the compatibility between both systems is present and in sync. This shows that you explored new options and came up with creative solutions to ensure data security. Also by providing the end user support, you have managed all stakeholders well.

The risk assessment which you must have done, and the proactive measures you have taken have ensured that such the migration was successful. Even though few users had issues with the applications your prompt support ensured that they were live again. This shows the customer centric approach you have to ensure that in spite of others not doing the feasibility impat analysis well, you put extra effort to complete the tasks. These are few underlying skills of great leader and so you have all the making of a great manager going ahead.

In Resume you can add something on the similar lines the following:

• Designed the migration approach for XYZ Insurance firm from ABC platform to ABC123 platform
• Led the pre and post migration activities including data security, data migration, data authentication, data validation and usability and end user support with minimal downtime
• Designed integrated solution architecture using SQL, Informatics, Unix Scripting, Data storage and PowerBI