The document provides information about pursuing a career in SharePoint. It discusses common SharePoint job roles like administrator, developer, business analyst, and project manager. It also provides details on the typical responsibilities and skills required for each role. The document aims to help readers understand the different paths they could take in a SharePoint career and determine if this field is a good fit for them. It emphasizes that gaining hands-on experience through training, user groups, and test environments is important for career development in SharePoint.

1. A Career in
SharePoint
HOTCOE
August, 2013
Matthew J.
Bailey, MCTS

2. I consider myself a “SharePoint All-Rounder”. My job tasks vary including
Administration, Development, Training, Analysis, UAT and Project Management.
My job changes daily based on the crazy life of an IT fellow in corporate
America, but it keeps things interesting!
I am have worked with SharePoint for almost six years. I do not consider myself
an expert but have a fair amount of knowledge with the technology and currently
use it daily in my career.
If I don’t know an answer to one of your questions, I will try to find it out or point
you in the right direction!
SharePoint Business Analyst &
IT Project Manager
JDSU
Matthew J. Bailey, MCTS
Me, me, me…

3. You, you, you!
What do you want to be
when you grow up?
• Who is at the beginning of their career in either IT or SharePoint
(either new to the IT industry completely, new or returning to the job
market, recently graduated or changing from a different career) ?
• Who has already started exploring or has a career in IT but are new to
SharePoint ?
• Who is already involved with SharePoint and looking to enhance their
skills or change job roles ? What have you done so far?
• Who does not fall into any of these categories ? Do tell…

4. What is SharePoint?
“A web application platform
developed by Microsoft” - Wikipedia
• Swiss army knife of technology for content
management, websites, search, etc.
• A mixture of “OOTB (out of the box)” functionality with the option to
build upon this with and integrate with other systems
• Built upon the Microsoft .NET stack of technologies, although
changing to a more open source approach with JavaScript, CSS &
HTML5
• More information can be found at: http://www.discoversharepoint.com/
?

5. Common Uses of SharePoint
What can I do with SharePoint?
• Company intranets
• Document management
• Team collaboration portals
• External customer portals
• Workflow scenarios & document approval
• Search
• Project Management
• Public internet sites where publishing / multi-authoring is needed
√

6. Companies Using SharePoint
Over 78% percent of Fortune
500 companies used
SharePoint in 2011
• Usually larger companies
• Insurance
• Financial
• Manufacturers
• Healthcare (some)
• Government – (Usually requires clearance, time for the “Snowden
story”)
• Office 365 can be used by smaller companies, but work is usually
limited to smaller amounts vs. long term or permanent job
opportunities

7. Why Choose a Career Using
SharePoint?
Umm… cause I like need a
job
 You enjoy consistently learning new technologies and enjoy IT
 Job security & stability, a lot of openings and probably will be for at
least 3-5 years minimum
 Opportunities are usually with larger companies that have good
benefits & pay
 $$$ – because mortgage payments don’t pay themselves!


8. SharePoint Job Roles /
Functions
Current typical SharePoint
job roles *
• Administrator / Engineer
• Developer
• Business Analyst
• Project Manager
• Power User
• Architect (Solution Architect or Infrastructure Architect)
• Other (Designer, Trainer, etc.)
* interpretive, find example job descriptions from job websites

9. SharePoint Job Roles by Percentage
Administrator / Engineer
Developer
Business Analyst
Project Manager
Architect (description varies)
Support / Help Desk (entry-level, not
dev or admin support)
Power User / SharePoint Knowledge
Other (trainer, design, random)
* Estimations based on job postings from web sites in August, 2013 for the USA only

10. Job Descriptions Can Vary
The following are guidelines of job descriptions
but not definitive rules. Each company has unique
needs and different people involved in the process
of posting the job requirements so job listings can
vary.

11. Before We Begin Our Demos
& Review of Detailed Job
Descriptions…

12. Patience is a Virtue
SharePoint may seem overwhelming at
first but remember we all started learning
it somewhere.
StudyTime Help

13. SharePoint Power User / Skills
• Will usually be a part of another job function such as:
• Department Manager
• Administrative Assistant
• Team Leader
• Legal profession
• Analyst
• Understand how SharePoint works from a workflow, repository, data
storage & collaboration tool

14. • Lists
• Libraries
• Term store / managed metadata
• Search
• InfoPath
• User Profiles / My Sites
• Page Layouts
• Publishing
• Pages
• Security / Permission levels
• Web parts
Demo – SharePoint User / SharePoint Skills

15. SharePoint Help Desk / Support
• As with many help desk positions, opportunities are shrinking due to
offshoring and IT budget cuts
• In most cases these jobs will only include some SharePoint job
functions and require supporting other technologies a business uses
as well
• You will need a strong understanding of all end user functions as well
as some basic administration skills
• You most likely will be often forwarding questions to more
experienced SharePoint professionals
I will be skipping over a demo of this job description.

16. SharePoint Business Analyst
• Job growth is starting to increase
• A newer job role to the SharePoint industry
• Job title can be quite varied and not always mean the same thing
• Usually will include job functions such as:
• Understanding what SharePoint can do as a technology
• Understand the difficulty of creating different types of solutions
• Meeting with end users and stakeholders to understand their
needs and how SharePoint can help them
• Being a liaison between developers, end users, administrators
and others to work with projects
• Create documentation such as test cases, functional
documents, technical documents, process flow charts, cost
savings analysis, etc.

17. Demo – SharePoint Business Analyst
• Business Requirements
• Meeting with end users
• Workflow diagrams
• Functional documents
• Testing scripts
• Offering suggestions and creating ideas for new projects

18. SharePoint Project Manager
• Be persistent and consistently stay on top of tasks
• Must be able to deal with many different types of people and
personality types
• Handle stressful situations, keep projects on time and in budget (can
be much harder than it sounds)
• Require skills such as Microsoft Project (or similar)
• Balance your dependency on other’s technical talent and your level of
technical skills (i.e., you will become a much better Project Manager if
you understand the technology and won’t always be reliant on others)
I will be skipping over a demo of this job description.

19. SharePoint Administrator / Engineer
• Monitoring, troubleshooting, patching & upgrades to servers
• Possess skills similar to a “detective” to troubleshoot issues
• Cloud & virtualization technologies
• Internet server (IIS) configuration and understanding
• Active Directory and different types of authentication
• Networking experience such as
TCP/IP, DNS, firewalls, security, SAN, routers, backups
• Scripting / programming ability with languages such as PowerShell to
automate manual processes (i.e., server installations, creating
users, etc.)
• Understands some architecture (i.e., how many servers are needed
and what processes should be running on each server)
• Knowledge of complimentary database technologies such as SQL
server
• Security!!!

20. • ULS logs
• PowerShell
• Active Directory
• Security – server
• Permissions - user
• SQL Server Management
• Install solutions
• Monitoring / reports
• Architecture / topology
• Server performance
• Random troubleshooting,
• Azure & Office 365
• Web Applications
• Service Applications
• Term store / metadata
• Search
• InfoPath
• User Profiles / My Sites
• Virtualization
• Storage (SAN, VNS, VNX )
• Claims & ADFS
• IIS
• Microsoft Core technologies
• Backups & restore
Demo – SharePoint Administrator / Engineer

21. SharePoint Developer
• The SharePoint development role is changing toward more of an
open source HTML 5/CSS concept, however most jobs will still
require a good understanding of .net & C#
• Be very good at detailed, analytical, troubleshooting type of work
between different programming languages technologies that work
with SharePoint
• Understand the differences between built in functionality that can be
implemented simply and the need for custom coding
• The ability to test and ensure programs you have developed function
properly
• A varied skill set of the following programming languages &
environments:
• .NET & C#
• InfoPath, SharePoint Designer
• JavaScript (jQuery, mobile JavaScript frameworks, SPServices)
• PowerShell

22. • SharePoint Designer
• Custom page layouts
• InfoPath
• Design with CSS/HTML 5
• Visual Studio
• C# - Web parts
• Creating custom solutions such
as event receivers, web
parts, complex workflows, data
repositories, web services, etc.
• Web Services
• SQL Server Management Studio
• Install solutions
• Azure & Office 365
• JavaScript – Client side
development & app model
• ULS logs
• PowerShell
• Microsoft Core technologies
• Service Applications
• Term store / metadata
• Search
• User Profiles / My Sites
• Custom features / apps
• Farm vs. sandboxed solutions
• 3rd party tools (Nintex, K2, etc.)
Demo – SharePoint Developer

23. SharePoint Architect
• Traits / skills that would be good – detective, etc
• Capacity planning
• Topology
• Integration with other systems
• Define the relationship between the physical and logical architecture
Determine when and how to use custom solutions
Define the deployment process
Subject Matter Export
The best way to create and build custom solutions
Establish best practices & governance

24. SharePoint Architect - Infrastructure
• Best practices in setting up server
farms and deciding which processes
should go where
• Understanding performance and how
powerful your resources will need to
be as well as how many servers will
be needed
Demo – SharePoint Architect
SharePoint Architect Solution Developer
• Offering ideas to solve business
challenges
• Knowledge of best practices on how
to build specific types of solutions
• Mentoring or training others in
SharePoint (usually development)
• Expert level C#/JavaScript
SharePoint & .NET development

25. How Do I Know a Career in
SharePoint is Right for Me?
• You are open to committing a lot of your time to your career
• You are open to always learning new technologies
• You like to be analytical, work hard, work with people (or pretend to at
least – lol)
• You can be highly detailed and learn computer skills

26. Where Are You in the Decision Process of
Pursuing a SharePoint Career?
*NOTE: Wherever you are is OK!
• If you need to think about it, no worries. You can check my slides and
website for more information later: http://bit.ly/1ejNUWH
• If you don’t feel this career might be right for you, that is alright too.
• If you are sure you are ready to get started and commit to learning more
about SharePoint and exploring a career in it let’s get started.

27. Creating our Career Plan
• Where are you at now?
• What is your end goal?
• What is your plan to get there?
• What will your plan include:
• College courses
• Online video training
• Tutor
• Books
• User groups
• In person training & conferences
• Test environment to experiment in *IMPORTANT!
• Create a realistic timelines
• How do you learn best? Immersion, reading, videos, etc. ?
• What is going to make you stand out? (certifications, examples of
work)
• Search job sites such as Dice.com, LinkedIn, Indeed and others

28. Video
User Groups
Tutor
Live Training -
Conferences
College
Job - Real life
Other
Books
Sample Career Plan
Components* This is a sample training plan for myself, create your own based on how you learn best.

29. 
Final Thoughts…
No one became an expert
overnight
 It is ok to reassess things as you go
 Don’t get frustrated and quit
 If you are not able to figure something out, make a note of it, move on to
something else and when you find help ask questions
 Feel free to email or contact me later if you need help

30. Feel free to connect:
@matthewjbailey1
http://www.matthewjbailey.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjbailey1
sharepointmatthew@gmail.com
Download my slides and get started at:
http://bit.ly/1ejNUWH