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. Finally, I 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.
• Put a comprehensive list of keywords somewhere on your resume covering all your technical skills.

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 you're unemployed (see hollenback.net).

Another great self-marketing tool is the business card. You can get them made up at any print shop, but if you are particularly poor (because you don't have a job), get them at Vistaprint. In exchange for a small ad on the back of the card, they will send you a box of 250 business cards for $9.00 (including shipping). There's no need to put your address on the card, instead include your cell phone number, email address, and web site (see how it all fits together?). Carry a big stack of these cards around, because you are going to be giving them to everyone you know.

Keywords are also important for your job searches. Pick one or two that best describe what you do. My work revolves around Linux, so that's the keyword I use most often. Don't just search one job category on craigslist, search them all because some times jobs pop up in unexpected categories.

The other job sites are a mixed bag, tending towards junk. Don't waste your time with monster, it is completely and absolutely full of suck. I never got a good job lead from monster, and I don't know anyone else who did either. I did get a lot of spam through them. For example, after I posted my resume on monster, I recieved several unsolicited phone calls from companies wanting to sell me job training. Hotjobs probably goes in the trash bin too.

Dice.com appears to be somewhat useful. That's where I found my current job. Again, don't post your resume here. The only place you should post your resume is on craigslist and your own web site. That's it. Again, pick a few keywords relating to what you want and search on them. Dice and most of the other web sites allow you to construct "search agents" which take your keywords and email you the results once a day. Use that feature on Dice. I think craigslist has something similar, but I never used it. A good routine to get in to is to review these emails every monring when you get up and put together a list of jobs to apply to.

I ended up using criagslist and Dice about 95% of the time during my job search. A couple of other sites worth emntioning are Mojolin.com and Brassring.com. Mojolin is just Linux jobs and I found their listings very useful. I still don't know if Brassring is any good, but its at least not as crappy as monster.com.

This gives you a basic structure for unemployment. Every morning, get up and read the web sites and email listings to obtain a list of jobs to apply for. Oh, by "morning", I really mean "noon". Take advantage of one of the perks of joblessness by staying up late and getting up late every day. Its not like you are going to miss that important job at 9 am, this sis the computer industry.

If you don't hear anything back on your email in three to five days (and you probably won't), send a followup email. I landed one phone interview where the interviewer specifically told me I got the interview because of my persistence and followup emails. Too bad I didn't get the job too, but job hunting is all about interviews. Just like in acting, if you go to enough auditions, eventually someone will cast you.

Networking is another very important component of the job-seeking process. Although the job I landed I found on Dice.com, I did manage to score several interviews through begging my friends. The first thing you need to do is

notes:

networking w/ friends and colleagues

structuring your day

unemployment pay