Finished with National SA Training

In case you are wondering SA means Systems Analyst. This is one of the entry level jobs at the firm there are other kinds of analyst that do human capital, strategy and operations, and provide other services under similar titles. Systems Analyst generally work in two different fields: large applications such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft and so on, or Technology integration. We will be doing most of the grunt work for the company for the next couple of years.

Ok so now you know what I mean when I say SA.

Currently I am in flight between Orlando and Minneapolis. This trip I have a much nicer seat then when I headed to Florida. Today I finished SA School – or National Training – and next week I will start technical training on Oracle. I can’t describe in a lot of detail what we actually did in detail – it’s confidential and they do not want it all over the internet – but I can tell you that it was a business simulation. In this simulation we were put into teams to work on a typical project scenario we might face as consultants. It was some what stressful, and vary involved. It was also used to get us to start thinking about time management and what they consider to be work life balance. Meaning every night they kept us up late with social events and expected us to be on site working by 8am every morning, except today when we presented our results at 7:00am. It was a lot of work but it was also a lot of fun.

The events at night differed quite a bit. A regular part of the routine was hospitality (when adult oriented refreshments are served in the open areas of the convention area), with the exception of Wednesday night, this was held every night after a presentation by the Deans of the program; we would work on the simulation all day then get back together in a large mass of 261 analysts for a general session. On Tuesday night this hospitality also included karaoke, though I missed part of it to take a phone call I was told the group from Minneapolis represented well, singing three songs in a row. On Wednesday night we had passes to Pleasure Island a string of 5 – 8 night clubs in downtown Disney a short walk from our hotel. This was the night before our last day of strenuous work on our simulation and the night were most people cut lose to the greatest extent (some spent all day Thursday recovering too). Finally Thursday night we had a large general wrap-up and the firm provided a live entertainment musical! The musical is called The Water Coolers and the show had some riotous sketches about working in big business and office politics – this show also followed a nice formal dinner.

All of these events provided us with a chance to network with other new hires, managers, senior managers, and even a few partners. All in all it was a great time. Though, I have not slept more than a few hours since I started work. Another event that I was glad to take part in during the week was a service event. We loaded all 300 people involved in the conference onto 5 or 6 buses and went to various locations around town to do volunteer work for a day. I went to a YMCA in a needy neighborhood and helped paint, clean, and do general maintenance on the building. I was really impressed that the firm donated so much labor time and took all of the expense to move all those people to volunteer. We are told that the company is very involved in community service and it is an important aspect of the firm.

Well next week I go to vendor training in Chicago… Then who knows. I have so much planned this weekend it should be fun. I just don’t know how much I’ll get to relax!