IT Dynamo - ITDynamo - Portal dedicated to career success and improving marketability and entrepreneurship among members of Toronto IT community.

Welcome to the ITDynamo portal! For those who are visiting us for the first time, the portal is dedicated to career success and improving marketability and entrepreneurship among members of Toronto IT community. The portal also features JobExposer, the first Canadian job search engine built on RSS technology.

Here are some tips to help you find your way around ITDynamo:

Career Matters This section contains the description of our services and tools that we offer for helping you achieve success in your career. We are building Career Alignment process for those who are serious about putting their IT careers on the right track. If you would like to "test drive" Career Alignment, please let us know: info@itdynamo.com. First two months are free!
Knowledge is Power! This is your link to Career Success knowledge and collaboration. Here you can do your research, exchange information in public and private forums, and participate in blogs.
Virtual Practices section is dedicated to creating new ways of profitable collaboration among members of the IT Dynamo community. We are building virtual consultancies without overhead and red tape, inspired by the success of the "open source" movement, and finding new innovative channels for delivering valuable products and services. Check us out!
Service with Smile Here you can find more information about our membership services and loyalty programs, and keep your personal information current. We encourage you to participate in our surveys, and post votes in polls which you will be able to find on many pages. The information you provide will help us develop value added services to make your ITDynamo experience productive, educational, profitable and fun!

ITD Master Manifesto

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" - in Shakespearian words is our feeling about state of things in the IT labor market in North America, Canada, Ontario and Toronto where we all happily reside. Who are we? Let’s talk about us later and talk now about IT and IT professionals, in particular.

Aren’t they getting what they are worth? Are they all meaningfully employed? Aren’t they getting through feast and famine, boom and bust over and over again? What about computer techies all over world coming to Toronto just to be caught in Catch 22: no Canadian experience, no Canadian job? Do they always know Job Search 101: how to write resumes, look for jobs and be interviewed? Don’t they shy away and got stuck with mediocre “dead end” jobs? Aren’t even seasoned professionals struggling with professional mid-life crisis? Are employment agencies always productive and HR recruiters accurate and always aware what they are looking for? And how about IT projects everywhere, which are desperately looking for right people or just putting up with understaffing? Doesn’t this chronic staffing crisis cause increases in IT costs and create the reputation of IT amongst business counterparts, as a badly controlled and unpredictable area? “Market”, you may say and add, “Supply and Demand”. “Bazaar”, we say, “Just Mess”.

Is it always somebody else’s fault? Maybe they deserve what they get. Do the Information Technology professionals always fully utilize Information and Technology for their own professional growth and career success? Do even seasoned pros always know how to market themselves? When is the time to jump out a sinking ship and get on the bandwagon or how to completely realize their potential at workplace they like? Do they always know how to collaborate with agents and satisfy HR recruiters? OK, they are overworked, overstressed, overwhelmed and after all, they have families, friends, interests and hobbies outside their jobs. “Get a life”, everybody tells them. OK, but who else can help them but themselves?

Don’t get us wrong, it’s not all doom and gloom. Yes, they are blessed to be a part of insanely interesting and promising segment of modern working life. Yes, they usually make a better living than most of working population and yes, they live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Toronto. However, they can do better!

Now about us. We are also IT professionals from Toronto and, therefore, “us” and “them”– that’s just for a literary metaphor. We are also struggling at times to find decent jobs and contract assignments, squeeze a bit time for families and hobbies, learn new business and professional skills just to survive, keep it going and succeed. We all were born outside of Canada and made Toronto our home. We came from different countries and not all of us started careers inside the IT industry. Therefore, we have a lot of experience you can relate to.

However, at certain moment we said, “Enough is enough, we are fed up” and that’s how ITDynamo was born! We decided that we could find a better way to get employed and be successful, to be more entrepreneurial and marketable, and to use all tools that are literally at our fingerprints, to learn about the IT market we operate in and use this knowledge for our own favor, to deliver IT services that won’t break the bank and, to most importantly, enjoy business!

We would like to share this knowledge. We don’t pretend we know all answers, we wish, but we’ll try our best and hardest! Meanwhile, we’ve developed our Portal that someday, hopefully, will be a single stop for Torontonians that happen to be techies, nerds, geeks, eggheads or whatever funny names people call us. The place, where people who have career aspirations, contemplate a new business venture or just look for a job, would be able to find all they need. Meanwhile, we have launched JobExposer, the first Canadian job search engine based on RSS technology, that allows tapping into hidden job market and getting updates in real time. We are developing Knowledge Bases for various areas of Career Counseling and Personal Growth that may be of interest to you. We have opened User Forums and Marketplaces where you can exchange information with online buddies. We also offer very affordable Career Matters, career counseling services (actually, they will be free for first 3 months), and we are about to start Virtual Practices: consultancies without overhead and red tape inspired by success of “open source” movement. That’s just the beginning, stay tuned!

Make no mistake, guys and gals, we need you, your advice, your help, your collaboration, your participation! We are just a bunch of enthusiasts who are spending after work time on this idea and quite often burning midnight oil (that’s how this manifesto was created). We are waiting for you and wish you to Enjoy Business!

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