FindingAJob

A Few Thoughts On Finding Work In the New New Economy

I was laid off from a contracting job at HP in Palo Alto, CA in October of 2002 due to the elimination of my department. I spent the next five months looking for a tech job in Silicon Valley. I finally landed a position in my field of Linux development and system administration at a small network software company called NextHop in Mountain View, CA at the end of March 2003. I learned a few things about searching for a job along the way, including how the process really works and what resources are the most effective. These are my notes. They are most relevant to people searching for work in the wasteland of Silicon Valley early 2003, but anyone looking for a professional career can probably get something out of this.

So, you just got laid off or are about to be laid off. Now is the time to start planning. I don't mean to depress you, but finding a well paying computer job right now is really, really hard.It took me five months, and I have the skills. You can assume it will be equally as hard, barring any major change in the economy over the next few years.

The first thing to do is to have some skills. If you don't have any, stop reading this now and go to school or something. This is not the time to try and find employment based on your enthusiam alone. Better to remove yourself from the job market for a few years and learn something. Plus, then there's fewer competitiors for the jobs that are out there.

Next, get your resume updated. I'm not going to go into detail about this because others have covered that ground many times. Instead, here are a few pointers I've learned:

• Put your name, email address, and city/state at the top of your resume. You might want to include your cell # too. Recruiters like to know where you are in the country right away.
• Consider obtaining a new emal account just for job hunting and placing it on your resume.
• List your jobs first if you have a lot of work experience, otherwise list your education.
• Exactly half of the world thinks an objective statement is a good idea. Do it if you want.
• Don't include references. You can always email them later when a company actually wants to hire you.
• Create text, html, and MS Word versions of your resume.

Now for the biggest annoyance about your resume: everyone has an opinion about it, and everyone disagrees. Recruiters in particular are always suggesting changes to your resume, and their advice conflicts. Get used to making little tweaks every time you talk with a recruiter who wants to submit your resume to a company. Also, recruiters will often wanta word version of your resume, so get it ready beforehand and be ready to submit it when asked. If you are a microsoft-hater, use OpenOffice as it works fairly well and produces decent Word documents as long as you don't get too fancy on the formatting.

Notice above that I suggested creating a html version of your resume. That's because your resume should be on your website. You do have a website, right? If not, go get one, and feature your resume on it prominently. Include links to the text and Word versions of your resume there. This doesn't take much effort and it shows that you are serious about getting a job. Plus, it gives you something to do while unemployed (see hollenback.net.

notes: craigslist.org sites that work and sites that don't how to write your resume networking w/ friends and colleagues structuring your day unemployment pay business cards