SetFocus Graduates Discover Success at Infragistics

Fast-paced, Cutting-edge Environment Augments Employees' Skill Sets

After Sung Kim graduated from college he decided to do some traveling. Upon his return, he worked odd jobs but couldn't land that full-time position in fields related to his Engineering degree. That's when he came upon SetFocus, a global leader in selecting, training, placing, and supporting Microsoft professionals worldwide. Through SetFocus .NET courses, Sung acquired the skills and real-world experience necessary to place him on the "desirable" list of many companies. As Sung notes, "During college I studied C++ and other, older languages but I didn't have the .NET experience to qualify for .NET entry level positions. SetFocus gave me the necessary foundation to build on and excel at a career in .NET development."

As a SetFocus strategic partner, Infragistics, the world leader in user interface development tools, was able to meet and interview Sung for open job opportunities. Sung initially started in Infragistics' Developer Support Department where exposure to new technologies and new applications fueled his appetite for additional responsibility.

Today, Sung has become an Evangelist at Infragistics. In this role, Sung travels to client meetings and to trade shows to demonstrate Infragistics' state-of-the art user interface capabilities and functionalities. Sung looks forward to continuing his professional growth at Infragistics and adds, "The sky is the limit for learning opportunities at Infragistics."

Sung is not the only SetFocus graduate now employed by Infragistics. Since joining the program in 2002, Infragistics has welcomed more than 30 SetFocus graduates in various job positions. Renee Conrad is among these ranks.

While Renee had a successful job as a contract systems analyst, she wanted to expand her hands-on coding experience. Her coding skills were waning as she focused only about five to ten percent of her time on coding and the remainder of her time on testing, management duties and many in-person meetings. At the time, Visual Studio® was an emerging platform and Renee wanted to be a part of this promising landscape.

Through SetFocus' night program, Renee developed her Visual Studio coding skills and combined with her previously-learned testing skills became an ideal candidate for Infragistics Quality Assurance team. "Infragistics seemed like a good place to work with a fast-paced and supportive environment," recalls Renee. "My unique skill set seemed a perfect fit for the position and still provided me with a growth path."

Renee continues in Infragistics Quality Assurance department although now she is the Senior QA Developer Team Lead. In this role, she acts as the customer, using NetAdvantage's ASP.NET controls to rapidly build and style high-fidelity, full-featured line of business applications. Through this process Renee identifies bugs and other inconsistencies to ensure that every Infragistics customer can be the most productive with Infragistics' user interface components.

Renee adds, "With the open culture at Infragistics, if we have questions or need to quickly brainstorm, we can walk over to many departments at Infragistics, including Development, Documentation, Developer Support, Visual Design, Program Management, or, just as easily, we can pick up the 'Skype' phone and call our counterparts in Bulgaria or the United Kingdom to ask questions, or bounce around ideas."

Infragistics currently employs approximately 250 people located in offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Bulgaria, France, Canada and India. Infragistics attributes its consistent year over year growth to its employees and their wealth of knowledge. As a company on the forefront of new technologies, such as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight, Infragistics provides an intellectually challenging environment where job advancement is quick and camaraderie is key to overall success. And, no one knows this better than David Negley.

After working with several temporary placement agencies, David landed a full time job doing data entry in a large corporation. He began teaching himself Visual Basic® programming to make the job easier. Always labeled a "programmer," David knew that to advance his career, he needed to add some "credentials" to his name and opted against the college route.

"SetFocus' incredible staff trained me far beyond my expectations and helped me land my perfect job! The curriculum was thorough and challenging. The environment was both professional and personal. I look back at my time there with pride and admiration. Nothing could have prepared me better for my career or helped me reach my goals more effectively than The Master's Program^sm at SetFocus," says David.

After participating in The Master's Program for Visual Basic .NET at SetFocus, David was prepared for a career change. During his first interview with Infragistics, David was attracted to the trophy case in the lobby. "When I saw the many awards and trophies that Infragistics had won throughout the years I knew that Infragistics was a real software company and a place where I wanted to work," said David.

David began his Infragistics career in technical support where within a matter of weeks he picked up several missing skills sets including JavaScript and C#. "Infragistics helped me fill in the missing pieces to work as a skilled developer," adds David. After about six months, David moved into Development working on the Windows Forms and ASP.NET charting controls and now is the R&D Engineer/Team Lead.

Having reached his goal to become a senior developer, David is content in his position and considering a management-focused role in the future. Whichever path David chooses, he continues to be an active participant in a global team that empowers developers to rapidly build and style high-fidelity, full-featured user interfaces for the Windows Forms, ASP.NET, WPF, and Silverlight platforms.

About SetFocus In business since 1997, SetFocus is the global leader in selecting, training, placing, and supporting Microsoft professionals worldwide. Through strategic relationships, SetFocus develops programs that directly source skilled professionals to meet the immediate hiring needs of its partners. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Learning Solutions, SetFocus utilizes a unique combination of services to help organizations grow allowing them to meet marketplace opportunities with speed and agility. SetFocus has won semi-finalist awards for both the 2001 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year as well as the 2004 New Jersey Family Business of the Year.		About Infragistics As the world leader in user interface development tools, Infragistics empowers developers to build and style immersive user experiences and rich data visualization in line of business applications across all platforms — Windows Forms, WPF, ASP.NET, and Silverlight. We understand it isn't enough to make great products so we supply a range of value-added services including UI testing tools, support, training and consulting services.