Page created 30 Jul 2007 by inkblot
your rent hangs over your head like a lead pipe waiting to fall. you look at your savings, that money you hoarded for a rainy day, and wonder how you thought that little levee would hold back anything. the phone rings and you wonder whether it's an offer or a demand. welcome to the ranks of the unemployed.
tomorrow's my last day of work. the guys at the office are taking me out early for a heart felt sayonara. i really think they all wanted to get me drunk, but i've got a five hour drive after i leave work tomorrow. things aren't bad yet - looking optimistic, actually.here's the score so far...
resumes sent: 9
resumes ignored (3 wk threshold): 1
referrals in progress: 2
initial interviews: 1
interviewer rejections: 1
offers: 0
offers rejected: 0
offers accepted: 0
... is my first day as a department of 1.
"Today is my first day as an ARMY of 1!"no doesn't that sound more insiring? :)
But seriously that sucks. I hope you don't go crazy doing all the work by yourself. I was like that for almost a year here, and let's just say I was a little burned out by the time someone else was hired.
You can read way too much about what's going on here: www.parkrecord.comI work for ASC. It's kinda a long story, both what's going on with the company and what's going on with my job, but it's not exactly the most stimulating environment right now. On the plus side I have about 3-4 side projects going on right now. Maybe one or two will even pay me eventually.
any leads yet?
lukas, i am still unemployed. honestly, i have not worked very hard this last week at finding a job, but that was due to outside factors (a funeral, and an out of town guest for the funeral). i have two headhunters (a friend referred me to them) working for me, but they're just getting started.i don't want to name names here, but i turned down one job. the company has been, to date, a distributed company with everyone working from home whereever. however, the three current employees are all in some stage of migrating to new jersey, where the guy in charge will open the company's first office. new jersey doesn't work for me. this is unfortunate because i think i really would have liked working for this company. i talked with the guy in charge on the phone the other day and his agenda for the company sounds really really awesome.
three companies have now turned me down. two of them because i didn't fit what they were looking for, and one because they aren't actually currently hiring. all of the rest of the resumes that i've sent are still floating.
so a friend of mine and perennial job hunter took a look at my resume last week, made a couple of suggestions regarding the text and one absolutely fantastic suggestion regarding what to do with it. he suggested that i create a public profile on monster.com, which i did. that was at about 1 pm on thursday. within 24 hours, six recruiters had contacted me. yesterday three more did, and so far today i've heard from five new ones (it's not even noon yet!).this is seriously the best suggestion anyone has made yet.
You should also check Dice.com -- they're all tech jobs and you can select the geographic area you want.Is your recruiter getting paid to help you? I had good luck with Robert Half Technology; they're a recruiting firm that gets paid above what you make (which could affect your salary bargaining power since they're also going to affect the bottom line for the company until you're on full time with them), but they were very nice people to deal with and had some cool job opportunities. Some companies use "temp-to-fulltime" places because it makes their hiring process easier (they don't have to fire you if it doesn't work out on the 90-day trial). I probably would have worked for ICANN (cool!) because of them if I hadn't worked for $SCARY_FIRM.
Anyway, RHT temps out a lot of kinds of people, paralegals, assistants, accountants, etc., but they also do tech stuff (in some markets?). I know there's a Chicago office... you should give them a call. They don't know much about Linux, but that actually makes them excited about you especially if they have any jobs in that field.
Good luck!
so i left my first ever job, Panera Bread, after a dozen years at the company and felt a bit content to sit at home for awhile before attempting to go on my first job interviews in the last decade. Of course, my wife and I learn a few weeks later that we're having twins, so it kinda forced the issue of me finding something good and lucrative enough to sustain us and our new mortgage and a one income/three child family (after wife takes maternity leave).That crap is kinda scary.
I never really looked at job websites before, but Monster is crazy. It's like asking to be put on a telemarketer's list so you can be solicited endlessly. I can't imagine what job hunting must have been like 10, 20 years ago.
I've been at Wow Bao, a newer Lettuce Entertain You restaurant, for three weeks now. It was just the right opportunity, and something that i feel safe with locking into for the next several years. There aren't many chances for quitting/re-job hunting with the kids on the way.
Chicagoans should check out the new location that I'm being slated to open and run on State and Lake downtown. It's kind of a high pressure store opening that sorta _has_ to succeed...Maybe a bye-bye-to-job situation if i screw it up...but that's the fun part. October 16th...mention tastytronic and Ill hook you up! Help me feed my kids!
Article ran in the suntimes yesterday here: Lettuce Article
i'd post more often, but damn it's been a busy week.ok, so... the score:
resumes sent: 32
resumes ignored (3 wk threshold): 3
referrals in progress: 13
initial interviews: 6
follow-up interviews: 3
interviewer rejections: 2
jobs rejected: 4
offers: 0
offers rejected: 0offers accepted: 0
after about a week and a half of using monster i've had about 25 recruiters contact me. one has even had me take a brainbench test (on which i scored very well). my interview schedule for the last week has looked like a normal office monkey's meeting schedule. it's like having a job, but with a lot less coding. i haven't had any offers yet, but i am optimistic that a couple of last week's initial interviews will culminate in offers within the next week or two. one of them is in california, and one of them is in chicago.
i live in the bread line. essentially, anyway.
Inkblot, What kind of stuff do you do? I do web work (design/dev/server stuff) and having a hard time fending off work. Can I help by sending some your way? I know strange people in a few different places. I also used to work with the company that did all of Monster.com's e-mail marketing (which is terrible). I'm not sure about that site, never seemed very useful to me. Drop me a line if you think I help.On a personal note, I'm still working at the same place, ASC, but I've started doing contract work for a few other companies. I think this will work well, at least financially, but I have no idea about being an independent contractor. It's making my head hurt a little.
Fook, wow, that's pretty exciting and scary all at once. good luck with your new restaurant.smax, i am the all-singing, all-dancing writer of computer software and administrator of network services. 5 years of java development (largely desktop application using awt, some tomcat-based server side, a dollop of axis and not much else), 5 years of vb6/vb.net (ugh... i run screaming, but hey, at least the .net clr is, um, "modern"), and 10 years as master of all things open sourcey / linuxy / internety (user, admin, developer). i will keep your offer in mind, but my job search is actually going really well. i've been really busy with interviews this week and i think i'll be working full time again within six weeks.
so the update is that the company in california which has now interviewed me by phone twice has invited me to fly to the bay area on their dime for an in-person interview at their office in san jose. they want to see me next week, which might be possible, or the week after, which i know i can definitely do. i would say that that's my first in-person interview of this job search, but it won't be. that one is today, actually in about two hours, for a company here in chicago.
here's hoping....
I'm glad things are going well. Good luck with both interviews.
1: i have an offer on the table from one company
2: i have an all-morning on-site interview in 1.5 hours (i.e. pre-offer check-out) with another company
3: i have an all-morning on-site interview tomorrow morning with another company
4: i am flying to san jose for an all-day interview on friday.that's one offer made and three possible within this week. i've also been letting recruiters know that i have an offer standing and the next few days are their window if they want to get any of their clients in the running.
life is good.
resumes sent: 37
resumes ignored (3 wk threshold): 3
referrals in progress: 15
initial interviews: 6
follow-up interviews: 5
interviewer rejections: 2
jobs rejected: 6
offers: 4
offers rejected: 3offers accepted: 1
i'm taking in the paperwork tomorrow. i will begin working on the 54th floor of the sears tower next week.
i wasn't worried, btw. knew it would heppen fairly soon for you.glad to hear it though...