Hey everybody,
lets start a thread about any experiences and stories on how your life as a IT consultant started and how it ended up and if not ended up then how its going and all the whole nine yards. I'm thinking of joining a similar field and wanna know how it is out there for IT consultants.
I've heard of some dajusbhais didisbahinis doing pretty good and some not even getting a project yet.
But lets hear some from you.

First of all, lets not please make this a thread about Pritesh Upadhya. Hey..if he is running a business, good for him. If he gives jobs to some of our people good for them. Just like all of us, he just seems like another nepali trying his shot at some business endeavours. Lets keep this thread focussed on IT jobs. How we can get them. How we can excel at it. You can start a new thread for Upadhya with a title of his own.

Me personally, I am also very interested in SAP FICO. But is oracle really taking over SAP in a few years?? Is it worthwhile getting into SAP at this point..AND do you guys know of any companies that provide training in SAP.

Thanks all.

latoboy:

you are indeed one lato boy!!! just kidding! do you have a US IT degree and no work? and you also have a green card? i am surprised. when did you graduate? did you not look for opportunities when you were graduating? are you a computer science student? not only in the midwest but all over the US, freshers do have a tough time getting in compared to pros. unless you're from an ivy league school. your best bet would've been college recruiters.

i repeat what i've always said. go to these consultancies only as a last resort or only if you're a pro. they have the links and will get you a job. it's all about networking. if you go to a desi consultancy this is what you get :-

1. inflated resume with 6 yrs of work experience
2. lots of calls and interviews.

from there on it's all you. LIE well and you'll get the job. since you don't require H1B it might be easy for you and you will get to keep a little more money. but without any IT experience and inflated resume, you might land in trouble if you can't prove yourself at work at once. remember, you have "6 yrs of experience".

the best for you - try to make a really good resume of what you know and have done and move to a larger city where opportunities are a plenty. i lived in kansas and i know the midwest pretty well. gather a few good references and start applying directly to jobs where they don't require more than a couple of yrs of experience. a good resume counts a lot so PRESENT YOURSELF REALLY WELL. - midwestdude

For anyone out there who are interested in BA job.
Business Analyst is not a technical job like a Java programmer. Be very careful what you put on your resume. Main thing for any BA is to really know the domain. Meaning, if you have Banks in your resume, you better know few stuff about banking. If you put Healthcare, you should know something about HIPAA and so on. Every BA job is different since every business works differently.

It's all about your confidence. Anyone can take any training and get a job. I have seen taxi drivers with no IT experience take Oracle ERP training and get a job. I have seen someone with management background take QA training and get a job as Automation QA engineer. So it all depends on you. How good are you in talking during an interview.... How well you know your stuff on your resume. My suggestion to anyone who is interested in taking training and getting a job is, give your 100%, really learn the stuff and think in your mind that you have actually done it.

Where there is a will, there is a way. Nothing is impossible.

BTW...midwestdude...how many years of actual BA exp. do you have? Maybe we can keep in touch and share few ideas.

Lalubhai bro,
Dude theres a big list of companies out there who are willing to give you free training for SAP modules. Try putting your resume on dice.com and I think theres a page where it asks you what job title you are looking for, just type "SAP" there and you'll get literally tens of phone calls from bhaiyaas and behenjis. If you are on OPT, they will provide free training and accomodation.
Again coming back to my previous question, has anyone here worked for solutionone (http://www.solutionone.us/sapience/)? If yes, how are they in terms of training, average bench time, pay, and treatment to employees? They say that they are like a staffing company and that they will place you through other consulting companies in addition to free training/accomodation as well as filing your H1-B for free.

Kaamde,

Looks like the company is recently started if they don't have a preferred vendor and place you through another consulting company. Try to look for a company who is preferred vendor of any Fortune 500 company.
The company started the web site 2006.. here you go
Look here

Midwestdudue:

It is easy to give suggestions but have you tried looking for a job with a master's degree? I have a master's degree and am a good student. Have worked in campus but in a good postion (parttime of course) and have done everythign to get a job but there is hardly any good jobs for internationals these days unless you are from top universities.

My inquiry is only in terms of which of the two trainings is good. I know that if peolp can train themselves and get a job, i can too. I have the confidence and the resume to back myself up. But the fact is i need to go to one of the training and get my first job before anything happens. I know a lot of my friends even IT masters graduate got jobs through the indian consultancies are are earning good salary and working in great organzations.

Just because you have a job now, stop giving stupid long advices which are often useless. I like the other guy who said if we give 100% then we can do it. Yes i beelive in that. You know if they are paying you to take the training and everything, what is the harm not to try??

Anyone who can give me advice on SAP FICO verses Business Analyst, please do. I am willing to learn and put my all in it but need to know which is better.

I invite all our Nepalese folks in the IT field to join this yahoogroup (nepali_it_professionals@yahoogroups.com) where we will continuously help each other through various suggestions/recommendations. I'm hoping to create a "support group" where all our Nepali IT professionals can ask/answer any questions when we need to find a solution and cannot find it anywhere else. The group will also have links to various immigration related issues as well as topics of discussion on consulting firms.
Please join me in this shubha kaarya of helping each other and helping ourselves. nepali_it_professionals@yahoogroups.com

To subscribe to this group, please email nepali_it_professionals-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Please be advised that the sole purpose of this yahoogroup is to help each other and bring together all Nepali IT Professionals under one umbrella, and hence any requests for advertisement will be rejected immediately.

P.S. You don't need to have a yahoo email account to join a yahoogroup.

I found this thread interesting with lots of sharing and caring here with few exceptions of leg pulling.
Sheetalb,I do not know much about SAP FICO but I will try to share something about Business Analyst.Please corect me if I am wrong.

Business Analyst : If you have a good communication skill and love to inetract with people,go for it.As a BA, you are required to have domain knowledge,if you target Financial Institution,learn about Mortagage and other financial terms.If you want to join Health Sector,be prepared in HIPPA,HSA and others health services related terminology.
Business System Analyst: You need to have domain knowledge plus Some System Analysis and Design Stuff e..g Writing effective Use Cases,knowledge of RUP aa knowledge of database,SDLC and about how system works.
Programmar Analyst> Person who has progrmming concepts plus System analysis and design Stuff
A few company also call System Analyst for Business and System Analyst.If you want to work as consultant,this job can be ideal one coz company needs BA throughout System development life cycle;that means you will have longer contract period.There are a lots of job,work hard,you will certainly gets one.

Himalayandude bro,
Thanks for that info on solutionone. Now I know to keep away from that Mehta bhaiyaa.

Sheetalb
SAP is one of the major ERP company like Orcale (PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Oracle E-business) etc.
SAP FICO verses Business Analyst... here are my views. I think if some one can train you or somehow you could attain knowledge in SAP FICO, then I think you should go with SAP.
The real problem with SAP is that its a huge product with numbers of modules all the way from HRIS (payroll, time management, career mgmt, vacation mgmt, and lot more etc) to
Procurement Systems (Reqs, Purchase order, Sales order, Inventory Mgmt, Inv. tracking.. and again lot more) to Financial Management (all kind of accounting modules) to Retail Mgmt (this is becoming big with implementation of RFID things..) to SOP. Mastering these all will take upto 10 years, as such you need to pick one of these Functional Major Products (which interests you) and then try mastering it.

Simply learning this product like using is not going to help you, actual "CREAM" of these SAP lies in your ability to become expertise in SAP's R/3 programming language that allows you to customize any of the SAP products. Money is in your ability to Master particular product say HRIS and then using R/3 in customizing default OOTB (out of the box) SAP HRIS. Companies buy SAP HRIS but they don't necessarily need/use default OOTB functionality, however might need few things more that SAP does not provide hence SAP-Consultant comes in picture (hopefully YOU) that will add things that company needs using R/3 to fit the needs of particular company. These expert SAP Consultant makes really really good money. You are talking minimum or starting $80 p/hr and can go upto $200p/hr. Why so much? well if you hire SAP Consultant from SAP, they charge minimum upto $250/ hr with long term contract.

Once a company installs and implements any of the ERP systems, its gonna be there for atleast 10 yrs as it costs a lot people are not going to simple displace this because a new technology came or something.

SAP is not going to dis-appear, example Oracle when they bought peopleSoft, they promise to support PeopleSoft until 2010 (later they promise for life of the product, meaning as long as company keeps).

>>well, How do I know these few things? I work in ERP business. My expertise are in HRIS systems as an Analyst, I do review of HR product for company when they look for which HRIS vendors (Orcale, SAP, PeopleSoft etc) to pick for their company.

Business Analyst, almost same as consultants, except that you don't program, makes less money, no traveling, works in-house for company. I am not for this, thats my choice. I have seen in my experiences that most expert Business Analyst used to be Consultant, and after getting married or having kids, they don't wanna travel as much, thats when they switch to BA. BTW then they mostly have already made good $$.

I hope this helps you and any others about deciding what you want to do.

oh yeah besides R/3 programming you might want to try getting hold Database too. You can start by using MYSQL, SQL Server or Orcale DB these software can be downloaded for free for individual use. Microsoft and oracle have their own development and management tools again its free for personal use for learning purpose.

MYSQL also have PHPMYADMIN tools for management and development, though this will require you to get on hands on and install Apache, PHP, MYSQL and then PHPADMIN.

good luck friend.

THanks a lot, Hi-nanu and quite guy for your advice. Looks like both had its pluses and minuses. I seriously need to make my decision now.

Quite Guy: Does that mean SAP consultants need to design the system like HRIS and make it as per the company needs? i am just trying to broaden my knowledge here. This would also mean that companies that use SAP have larger employees, customer base, or market right?

You don't need to design SAP HRIS, systems, its already there. Mostly comapnies will ask you add few things here and remove this and that. To give you a simple example of hotmail email account.

By default in hotmail, you see couple of Tabs there ->Today | Mail | Calender | Contacts.
And on left side you see list of default folders -> Inbox, Junk E-Mail, Drafts,Sent Message, Trasch Can and rest of folders that you created.

Now assume that hotmail is SAP's product that this company is using it. And wants to customize it because there are certain things they don't want their employees and on other hand wants to add some features.

Say company don't want employees to create Folder, then consultant like you come in and remove that feature. Or company wants to integrate and add time entry (modules of HRIS) on top TAB so that final look would be
Today | Mail | Calender | Contacts | Time Entry

And yes, most, almost all SAP users are mid-range to large scale companies. Mid-range is often defined as company with at-least $250 mil (it varies)annual business. Some define this as Market Cap of $5 billion or less.

So you should really go for this too, ask Mr Pritesh Upadyay, I heard from people in Dallas, TX that he too started as Consultant or something there. And now trying to start his own business, he knows well where these $$$ are in IT business.

I got it. So it varies with the product. If i take SAP FICO then i would be basically dealing with financial market and maybe with various projection tools within the FICO system that best helps the company.

This really sounds good and doable. One needs to have good knowledge on the subject area as well then.

Sheetalb bro,
Welcome to SAP FICO. I'm taking some training classes on that module starting March. I will keep you updated and hopefully you will do the same.
Have you already joined a consulting company? kaamde@yahoo.com

How To Choose Consulting Company.

1. Inquire about company history.

It is hard to find the company history from Dept of Labor or State employment agencies. But it is good to find about your prospective employer thru Internet, contacts, friends living in the US. It is advised not to seek employers just thru Internet search.

My bad experience: It happened as I was searching for a prospective employer who could file my labor application as part of Green Card processing.

I spoke with his employer in Edison, NJ and emailed my resume. He never responded to me for a year. One fine day, he emails me a copy of my labor certification and asks me to join him so he could file my I-140, eventually asking me to join his company. Most of all, he could not give me his employee referrals to inquire about his Co., so I abandoned my quest for Green Card from such employers.

My sincere suggestion to all of you reading this article is not to distribute your resume and seek labor applications from such employers. If you are in mood of switching to a new employer, please be double sure that the new employer is better than the current one.

2. Inquire about company standing with Labor/Immigration department. Or Search for reviews/comments posted by (former) employees.

There are few states in the US, which provide a company\quotes history and standing with state DOL. However, we do not have list of such states on hand at this time.

You may want to inquire the company standing from your peers over Internet. There are some well established Forum sites like http://boards.immigrationportal.com/

Such web forums have been helpful to my family and lot of my friends. I came to know thru the above said forum that my wife\rquote s company and some other consulting companies operate from a small office suite in Nashua, NH.

3. Inquire about salary offered or payroll schedules

Before you speak to your prospective employers, it is good to know about the market salary in the state/region where your employer resides. Believe it or not, few of my friends were offered salary of 48-52,000/yr in the states of CA, NJ, NY, and CT; they could not withstand the rental, health, childcare and car insurance expenses.

Most of all, Inquire about the payroll cycles, taxation and deductions that will apply to your paycheck at your employer\quote place of business. There have been numerous reports of abuse by employers (so called consulting companies) with regards to not paying salaries on time, or paying salaries with three month delay.

A good number of such companies have been reported to Department of Labor by their employees; and if you choose one of those companies, it is less likely you will have smooth processing of your visas.

4. Inquire about job training/placements and ability to find contracts within short span

It is your right to know how well your employer will help in training and placing you for a job; there has been a trend seeking specialized skills than generic skill set over last few years. You are required to know many skills, but the client might use you for one or two skills at a time. I would suggest you to be on alert to switch to or learn new skills as often as needed.


5. Inquire about healthcare benefits for you and your family.

Medical and Dental insurance will take a major chunk of your paycheck if you are not aware of your choices and it also depends on the provider and region in which you will reside in the US.

It is advised to get healthcare provider and options info in advance from your employer and plan your coverage accordingly.

6. Inquire about temporary accommodation, and travel provided by the company.

This is for people who are coming to the US and not accompanied by their family. Most of the consulting companies provide temporary housing and travel. It is suggested that you know of the situation so you could plan better thru your friends or contacts in the area.

At last, I hope to bring some helpful information/links for our visitors soon.

Contributor: Srini, works on Microsoft platform . Did Graduation from South carolina. Likes to watch sports in free time.

Immigration issues? This link might be helpful!
http://boards.immigrationportal.com/

Kaamde, could you email me the information on your company. I talked to an agency in Chicago called Dynamic, anyone has worked with them??

There was another one i talked named betasoft systems. How do we know now they are good.

Gosh, i am asking too many questions here but really appreciate everyone's input and i am committed to help another fellow Nepali if they need my view after i joined one of them, i promise...

Hi guys
I found this website on SAP FICO and thought it might be helpful to all of you guys. It’s website where you can learn SAP FICO online.
http://www.leadingt.com/?gclid=CJnum76ZxYoCFQlQWAod9zIKkg

La good luck :)

Sheetal bro,
Whats your email address?