How do you feel about branded skills?
(skills specific to a brand name, such as Oracle DBA Developer, IBM
WebSphere MQ, BEA WebLogic Developer, etc.).
Do you highlight brand names of products you worked with in the past
when marketing yourself or your practice?
Depends. My standard signature is Java, Cocoa, and database consulting
for the life sciences.
I can specify further - Oracle, MySql, and Sqlite instead of just plain
databases. I can list Tapestry, JSP, servlets, and now Ruby on Rails
for web applications. I have written two database persistence kits for
Java, as well as a whole stack of tools.
When I talk to Apple folks, I have a similar laundry list - XGrid,
bindings, Core Data, Cocoa, ObjC, etc.
The Apple folk only occasionally care about the specific databases,
while someone looking for MySql and Linux consulting could care less
about XGrid.
Telling most people about my tribulations getting WebLogic to come up on
MacOS X is just not going to be interesting, unless the job involves
either of the two platforms.
So, it really depends on what I think the client wants to hear about. I
have lots of skills, not all of which are going to be germane to a given
client.
Scott
