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Am I Really That Unemployable?
Frustrated Programmer asks: "I'm a programmer with seven years of experience on various platforms/languages. The past few years, I've primarily freelanced, building my expertise in C/Unixes/Oracle, dabbled in Perl a bit. Since my last contract, I haven't been able to find any work at all. I've learned Java2 to update my skills, I know C++ from university, however, I can't seem to get a break from any companies. I get the same response, no Java experience, or no OOP experience. I'm wondering if this is a problem systematic of Canadian companies (specifically here in Montreal), or do any of my American cousins have run into the same problem? Anybody care to share their experiences?"
I have less than a year exp. and no college classes or degree. I have a high school diploma and an intimate knowlege of Linux and UNIX. I put my resume on some of those internet tech job finders, and I got DOZENS of calls within the first 2 weeks. I had to CHOOSE which interviews I wanted to go to. I'm in the Wash DC metro area, and making good money (just bought an expensive new european sports car). job finder boards are your friends!
It may not be a programming skill problem, but a job hunting problem. Universities will teach you how to program (sort of), but I've yet to see a course called Job-Hunting 101.
A few things you may want to consider:
1 - You may be over-estimating your abilities. 7 years is considerable experience, but it may not be enough to land the head engineer job for SuperSoft Inc.
2 - Your job hunting skills may not be on par with your programming skills. I've seen pretty crappy resumes come from amazing programmers.
3 - You may be applying for unavailable positions, or mis-representing yourself during an application to make it seem that way. Most people write up one resume, and send it out to a bunch of different companies. You really need to custom-tailor your resume for each company you apply with.
Have you contacted the people with whom you've applied to discuss why you weren't hired? I mean really talk to them? Your ego may take a hit, but you can usually find out exactly what went wrong, and improve your resume/interview/job choice during your next attempt to find a job.
Considering that programmers get 2000$ and 8000$ for successful referals in various companies here in Ottawa, it's definitely NOT because of a lack of demand.
bh
Well, I'm not the frustrated programmer, but I could use a critique of my resume, if someone would be so kind. I recently had one recruiter say that it needs to be completely redone and sent out in Word, basically, and sent me a 4 page example in Word (which of course I couldn't open until I found the MS Word Viewer, since I don't have a copy of Word)
Herbert Wolfe
hwolfe@inetnebr.com http://www.inetnebr.com/~hwolfe
Objective
To obtain a position developing applications or web pages in
Java or C/Unix or administering Unix or Linux systems
Employment
FIRST DATA RESOURCES 1997 - 1999
Associate System Engineer
Worked on the upgrade to the Warehouse Inventory Management
System, using FoxPro for Windows. Designed and maintained reports
written using FoxPro and FoxFire Report Writer. Responsible for
weekly reindexing of the database files. Provided primary on-call
support. Assisted in the initial design of a three-tier Inventory
Management System to be developed using Java. Responsible for the
development of a client-side GUI to interface, via RMI, with the
middle tier.
IDELMAN TELEMARKETING 1996-1997
List processor
Loaded calling lists from various clients into FoxPro databases
and prepared them for dialing. Wrote and used various FoxPro
programs to process the data, including parsers and programs to
populate fields from other tables.
BRANDON SYSTEMS 1996
Contractor
Worked at MCI, using tape machine to copy old backup tapes to
newer ones
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA AT OMAHA
Lab Monitor 1996
Assisted students working with Linux and Windows NT software
Computer Consultant 1992 - 1994
Assisted students working with software on IBM PCs running
MS-Windows in a Novell network, with some also running Linux, and
Apple Macintosh computers in an AppleTalk network. Answered
questions regarding local software on the IBM and Macintosh
computers, as well as on the VAX-VMS and Unix servers. Monitored
printers and print servers
Data Entry Specialist 1993
Entered test scores into database, printed weekly reports, and
graded tests as necessary
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant 1990 - 1992
Tutored students in College Algebra and Pre-Calculus, monitored
tests, graded and filed tests, did other office work as needed.
Skills
Installation and use of RedHat and Slackware Linux distributions,
MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, 95, NT 4.0, OS/2
Hands-on experience with Apple Macintosh and various versions of
Unix
Proficient in Java 1.1 and JFC, working knowledge of IBM Visual
Age for Java, with some knowledge of Java 2 and Borland JBuilder
Proficient in C, Pascal, AppleSoft Basic, FoxPro for DOS,
MS-Windows and SCO, Borland Turbo C++, HTML and vi and EMACS
editors
Knowledge of Perl, AWK, SQL, shell scripts, Unix programming tools
Proficient with various web browsers and other Internet tools
Installation of software on various systems
Use of MS-Word, Corel WordPerfect and various graphics tools
Building, upgrading and maintaining PCs, including installation of
new devices and updated drivers
Awards And Certificates
1998 Certificates of completion for ZDU courses "Introduction to
Java Programming, Part I" and "Introduction to Java Programming,
Part II"
1998 Certificate of completion for Priority Technologies Inc.,
course "Object Oriented Programming and Design with Java"
1998 Award for "Outstanding Support" from First Data Resources,
Card Services Group
Education
Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science, 1996
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Thanks for the comments/suggestions. I have moved the skills to ahead of the employment section, and updated the copies on my web page.
I'm fairly open to what I want to do. I'd really like to get into application development in Unix, and preferably database or GUI stuff, but I would feel comfortable with system administration or working on web pages.
I did a lot of programming in Unix in school, in C, which is why I list it as my preference. I hadn't been able to get an entry-level position working in Unix, so I was stuck with using Foxpro. I happened to get a copy from a friend, and played around with it a bit, and that's how I got my first "real" job after college. That experience led to my previous job, where I did Foxpro development exclusively, until we learned Java.
Also, my employment is listed in reverse chronological order, as is usually suggested by resume guides.
I'm also wondering how or where to put the fact that I've been using and programming computers, for approximately 20 years, albeit starting in the 5th grade, programming on Apple II's.
This is not always true. At my last job, we were trained in Java. For my team, it was not an option, as our next project was going to be done in Java. We also had access to ZDU and CBT (computer based training) courses beforehand, but our main training in Java and IBM Visual Age was the consultants who came in and taught a class.
My boss has 3 positions open. he has 80 resumes on his desk. As a company we have 12 tech positions open, and 8 offers outstanding. (Resumes are shared between all engering managers, and yes, these are real numbers)
So you ask, how do you get from a resume to a job? The answre is knowing someone who already works here. My boss and our HR department is traned in interview technichs. However their best bet in finding a good canadate is to ask a former co-worker of the canidate who already has a job here what they think. And it is easy to find that former co-worker, because that person is the one who did the referal, and will get the referal bonus!
In other words almost nobody is hired here unless some current employee gets the referal bonus. This means that you need to know people, hard for some folks, and easy for others.
I assume that your in the catagory where it is hard for you to deal with people. Thats okay - for the last two years one person got most of the hiring bonus money. Managemnt had a position open up, and they automaticly went ot this one enginner and asked him for a recomendation! (He came from Cray, which laid off a lot of people in the last few years - he had an in with lots of people who were looking, and could weed the less desirable people without thought). Things have changed this year, as they always do but many of the people we hire were laid off from Cray.
The point is talk to folks you used to work with. Don't leave a contract without the personal email address of almost everyone, and make sure they ahve your address. Make sure you find out in each orginization who is most likely to do the refering of future emploiess. When you need a job send a small, personal, email asking those folks if they know of an opening. (One per orginization please, since you don't want them fighting over the hiring bonus). Of course it isn't so useful to have that today. Two years from now though, some of those folks have found jobs in other companies, and they tell their boss "I worked with him in the last job. We didn't cross paths often, but he got his work done, and there were no complaints about his work." Not the most glowing report, but to management it is much better then former bosses (there are all kinds of legal implications of giving bad references - you might win the court case, but just the thought of being sued is enough to make these less valuable), or references (which you have hand picked). Of course you choose the person who is going to recomend you, and that person gets a bonus, but that person also has to face working with you, and may not be your first choice. (Its like voting, you chose the lesser of the evils, where as with references you have a larger pool to chose from)
I hate doing everything I said above. That why I'm not contracting. That is why I want my project to succeede, I don't want to find a new job. Eventially I will have to, so I try to keep a list of all the people who have moved onto new jobs.
(If you think of each object as a virtual computer, the methods as daemons, and public variables as SNMP data, then that is =ALL= there is to it.)
"So what?" you might ask. Well, first, employers notice long gaps in resumes. That's a BIG no-no. Now, if you were to write a C++ to Parallel C "compiler", you'd not only "explain" the gap (a huge plus!) but =also= have a product to your credit (another huge plus) AND be able to put down C++, or any other OO language, on your resume as a professionally-used skill (a third, and awe-inspiring plus).
The other thing to remember. Resumes are filtered by people like Stef, long before they reach anyone qualified to understand a word on them. Use key-words and trigger phrases wherever possible. Provided you're accurate, this can turn a passable resume into dynamite.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You do seem to have a rather narrow objective, which could possibly be seen as close-minded and not open to learning new things....
I see a lot of headlines about there being too many tech jobs and not enough qualified candidates to fill them. The real problem is that companies think they can find the perfect employee and not have to train them at all. This is ludicrous. If an employee wanted to keep doing the same thing that she did in her last job, she would have stayed there.
So even if you're more capable at programming in Java than some people with 2 years experience with it, some companies are too dumb to figure that out. On the bright side, you wouldn't want to work for a company that dumb anyway. Unfortunately, there are a lot of dumb companies out there, making it difficult to get a job sometimes.
The best jobs I've gotten are ones that challenge me to learn new things. I think I do better at those jobs too, so I don't understand why companies just don't get it.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I'm from the Lac-St-Jean, i learn everything i can about unix (especialy perl+linux) in my spare time during my studies. Before i can get my DEC, a Montreal's company hired me. Since then i work like a perl programmer and i'm paid good for someone without a diploma (15$/h to start). So, look the good place, participate in opensource project, do something in your spare time.
Where i work no coders have a diploma, there nothing to learn at school for a programmer.
good luck
This was all two days ago. Imagine my surprise then, to hear of your plight. As far as I know, it's a real bear market for computer jobs right now. Companies really are starving for engineers, especially for University trained OO programmers (this is like the creme-de-la-creme, from what I gather). Either you are not looking far or hard enough. Put your resume up where a lot of people from all over can see it (Monster.com, etc.) and be ready to relocate, and I guarantee that something will come along.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I feel *so* much more reassured about the future of the country and the economy now. :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I look at the way the prospective employee responds to questions.
Some interviewees will answer questions when asked.
Some interviewees will answer questions and use the answer as an opportunity to brag a little.
Some will figure out how your company works and what your responsibilities and problems are, just by the questions asked. They can figure out what I'm after by the questions I'm asking, come to the conclusion that this is a cool place to work at, and manage to take the conversation to a higher level. The interview goes from a question-answer thing to a strategic discussion, with the interviewee asking questions and making suggestions about how to address (on an elevated level) the needs of the company.
I've never gone wrong hiring (or getting hired when I was) the last person.
I hire programmers constantly.
I don't issue a shopping list of the languages, paradigms, applications, etc. that the successful applicants should know. Such lists are a primary indicator that the company you are dealing with is one that just *doesn't get it*. If you go to one of those companies, you will find yourself herded like cattle and dictated to by so-called "Human Resources" types who generally lack any insight into programming or development.
Those in school should also keep this in mind. The content learned during a degree is secondary. What is important is that, for a certain amount of time, you can be put under a lot of pressure, and learn a great deal without cracking.
Here's what I'm looking for:
1) Great communication skills - It does me no good to hire a genius that nobody understands, or who irritates customers
2) Graduate Of The School Of Hard Knocks - Graduates fresh from school generally are pumped full of misguided notions about their worth. While they may be paid handsomely after graduation, they are generally a drain on the company for the first 6 months to a year. I'd rather hire someone who has at least one computer-related nightmare job on their resume. These jobs generally build character and give the employee some perspective about what the work world is really about.
3) Signs of Life - Many applicants are very sluggish during the interview. I'm not hiring you so I can tell you what to do; I'm hiring you so I can give you a domain of responsibility and then not have to deal with it anymore. Take the initiative.
4) A brain - I don't particularly care about the degree, although it's generally a safe bet that a person who makes it through an engineering degree has some intelligence. If the person can show that they're motivated and willing to learn, then I'll hire them.
I thought the problem was it was too diverse! Web page design OR application programming OR systems administration. Three pretty different areas.
My advice is to focus on one area (my suggestion: application development using Java). I'd also drop the web page from your resume. Personal pages are, by definition, not professional.
All IMHO, of course...
Just junk food for thought...
takes self-confidence but relies on a) the lack of testing at interview and b) employers not taking references
You forgot c) a total lack of ethics
Just junk food for thought...
You are not alone.
The market in montreal is extremely saturated.
Everyone wants experience. Believe me, it doesn't even matter if you are good or not. All they want is a few grey hairs on your chest.
The funny thing is that most companies have unrealistic expectations. Take my excompany CAE. I saw some programming jobs require some knowledge of their MAXVUE system. MAXVUE is only known from within the walls of the company. Why bother posting that job outside the company at all. This isn't the only example.
Like two years experience using Java 2.0. Well Java 2.0 didn't wasn't even around for 2 freaken years! I hear complaints from companies stating they can't even find qualified people. GRRR! what lies!
I met large numbers of intelligent engineers that have graduated from the Mcgill (canada's best) even with master degrees working as technical writers. THEY CAN'T EVEN FIND A JOB!
To add to my discouragement:
Only a handful of my graduating class are actually programmers. Most are in some sore of technical support or network administrators.
BTW, I graduated in january of 98 and I finally found a programming job last week. This whole time I've been doing clerical work.
My advice to you is to get out. Get out of Quebec!
Cause even if you do find a job, you'll almost never make a good salary.
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
Quick comment, list the skills you know before jobs, and tell how many years of industry experience you have with each.
There are annoying recruiters everywhere these days. I guarantee they'll be beating down your door after this post. They basically look at keywords, and I imagine they run lots of resumes through an indexer to see how well you fit with positions they're trying to fill. Make sure your resume looks impressive to an actual human, and has all the words to make the computer happy too. Most of these recruiters have very little technical experience, but they notice the buzzwords.
It's all a game, you just have to play it right. There's also a bit of luck involved as well.
Monty
So you're not alone! I've been out for over a month now, and sitting at home all day searching job sites just isn't fun anymore :P Plenty of job postings on services like monster.com and careers.yahoo.com, but you need to get replies for any of those things to work ;-)
I think I'm going to go wear my name on my shirt for a while (read: retail), just til I can find something a little more solid. If any employers in Maryland/DC reading this, feel free to visit http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=39513 2 :)
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
Coming from Canada (Toronto) and now living and working in NYC, I can say that there is not alot of Java going on in Canada right now. Not only that, but Canadian companies continue to hold on to their outdated human resources type hiring policies which slows everything down.
If you get a good headhunter in NY or most places in Cali, if you're at all good with Java you should have a job in few days.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Have you tried contacting some banks? I'm from Montreal and I once had to work with the Banque Nationale du Canada. Over there I noticed that they hire a lot of contracters.
Like someone else said, your best bet is to know someone already inside. It's so much easier that way.
Second best way is to look at recruitement companies.
Don't give up. You're a contracter, so you should know that it's part of the job to be unemployed between contracts. You probably got lucky for the last 7 years, finding a contract right away the last one.
Good luck!
Interesting,
Around here, were dying for MS programmers (Visual Basic, Visual C++, ASP, MTS and SQL server) Mostly, I hate to say it, VB and SQL server. We've had at least 3 positions open for over 2 years, and the headhunters idea of "experienced applicant" seems to be "Has opened the box, and installed it"
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I'm having similar difficulties in Calgary. A recruiter told me that there is a glut of qualified I.T. people that have been laid off due to the Y2K bust. Therefore, this spring is a buyer's market in Calgary since most companies have an I.T. department that let Y2K people go. There are lots of positions open for people with tons of experience, but they seem to want an ideal candidate. Some of them are ridiculous: I've seen companies wanting five++ years experience in Java, C++, Perl, CGI, ASP, ColdFusion, LDAP etc. as well as every platform under the sun.
_ _
Headhunters are good at finding me work in Vancouver, Ottawa and Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, I need to stay in Calgary for at least a year. I've been at it for three months and have applied for over 100 positions. It does get disheartening, but I got an offer yesterday with an I.T. Consulting firm.
This is what I did to get exposure:
-most people doing the hiring are clueless about I.T. They are looking for buzzwords in your resume. Research and ask people who have turned you down. It's hard, but you learn a lot. I added that I had worked on testing platforms using TCP/IP, APPC, NetBIOS, IPX, SPX, and suddenly recruiters were interested. It's ridiculous, but inject the buzz words into your resume, it helps.
- Check out Nortel's site and mirror their resume format with skills and time spent utilising those skills. It's an extremely effective format.
- Bug everyone you know that works in I.T.. Most of my leads came from referrals. Try old teacher's, professor's and contact your old University. They often have employment programs for grads. Case in point, I sent my resume to a company two months ago and didn't hear a thing. My old Co-op coordinator sent the same resume to the company two weeks ago, and I instantly got a phone call for an interview.
-If you get turned down for a position, ask why. It hurts the ego at an already fragile time, but it gives you something to work on. If you're like me, you spend your time on the computer anyway. If Company Y wants you to know such and such, find an Open Source equivalent and hack away for a few weeks. If they haven't filled the position, follow up and tell them that you've learned it in the interim.
- To take the sting out of the job search, my friends and I had a PFO letter contest. We tried to see who could get a PFO letter from the coolest company. I applied everywhere just to get a letter. I actually got a couple of leads this way that I wasn't expecting. It was a good morale booster.
- Finally, listen in interviews and get feedback. HR people can be totally clueless. I think that the skill set that I have has actually hindered my job search. Case in point: I do a lot of freelance web work and applied to a web company. They asked if I could use "such and such" proprietary web design software. I said I wasn't familiar with it, but would learn it. They asked what I used for my own development. I replied vi and emacs. They didn't know what I was talking about. So, the candidate that can use an automatic HTML generator probably got the position, and since I hard code all of my HTML, SQL and programming code with a text editor, I'm not attractive to them. Go figure.
Anyway, I'm not sure how much of this you are already doing, but hang in there and keep pounding the pavement. There are always start ups that need to throw bodies on a project who are willing to take a risk. The trick is to find them. Bug everyone you know and let them all know that you're looking for a job. It's humbling, but I've had great leads from the weirdest sources.
Best of luck. You're definitely not alone.
_______________________________________________
$which weed
1. That wonderful 6 figure job that a friend of a friend got. Myth.. doesn't existed. Sure maybe someone one time did get a great deal but since then this story has been floating around the livingrooms of relatives and associates for years.
2. It's who you know. Knowing people in companies to get your foot in the door is a huge help. Job placements are filled based on referals, after that they then start to look at the qualifications.
3. Use buzzwords, it's like the management buzzword bingo, they only understand certain words "java2" computes to them as "skdfj" where "java" is "JAVA!!!!" they don't know that java2 is the newer implementation of java.
4. Contracting is cyclical. Much like the ocean it comes in waves, sometimes you are bored out of your mind and can't find anything, next thing you know 4 jobs drop in your lap.
5. Ask friends with small businesses for work, tell them you will do it at dirt cheap rates, this will give you experiance in something that you may not know yet (like OO), while keeping the image of being busy.. cause after all who would you rather have the busy guy who everyone else wants or the guy that is doing nothing that no one wants.
6. If you work for yourself, give good deals to the client (within reason). Everyone knows that large consulting firms assrape clients, so they are much more likely to pass on good information about you and your work if they feel they received a good value.
7. Don't bother with/for a company that doesn't want to pay cash value, i know this seems silly but i have dealt with people who want to give me a peice of their 'business' for the work done. I do not take this anymore, there are 1000's of businesses that are going to fail, and more being started by idiots who see the .com gold rush.
8. Lean as much about something as you can, preferably new technology, in your spare time, this means you do some computer work at home. Good computer people enjoy using the computer, it's just not a 9-5 thing.
well that's my list of things that you should know....
I do wonder how much of this is because we're so close to MS. Because I know many out-of-work windows programmers here (waaaay too many for the number of jobs), but every unix programmer I know here can get a job (though not all choose to at all times :).
But I'd reccomend that you either move, or, if you like it in Montreal, that you maybe try to get a job from afar. From what I can tell, all the US cities with booming internet-based companies have more c/unix/database jobs than they can fill. And my company has at least one coder working from afar.
Of course, different people will have different comments... and we are very likely to disagree with each other. Here's my take.
To me, your objective is rather wide, and very technology-based, rather than ends- based. Most businesspeople think about the ends, not the means to get there.
Your objective seems to say that you don't care whether you're developing childrens' software or new means of delivering serin gas -- so long as it's done in Java or C/Unix.
(FYI: I don't put an objective in my resume.)
To me, the employment looks fairly good, though very FoxPro-centric. I'd be very curious why, when most of your experience seems to be with FoxPro for Windows, that you have a goal which seems to be very different than your experience.
I'm also curious about why you ordered the job in the order that you did. In my opinion, you should put the items that are most relevant to the kind of position that you want first, so that the recruiter will see them.
Your 'skills' section is excellent. Remember that most resumes, nowadays, are put into a database, and get searched by keyword.
If you want the resume to match your objective, I would put skills before your employment history. You don't want conflicting-seeming information to be right next to each other.
I wish you the best of luck in searching for a job!
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
Dear Frustrated Programmer,
Finding jobs where you live might be easy or difficult... that depends on the high-tech culture of where you are. (Unfortunately, I don't know how the culture of Montreal is.)
However, as a freelance contract programmer, you have an option which isn't available to most professions: You can contract work from any company, anywhere in the world. If you want to work for a Silicon Valley pre-IPO startup, without having the Silicon Valley nightmares of traffic and the housing crunch, you can.
On the other hand, your problem might not be technical -- it might be personal. A lot of us programmers concentrate so strongly on technical issues that we forget that the rest of the world operates on social issues. You might talk with people who have hired you in the past, asking them how well they got along with you, and whether they could recommend any way to improve yourself, socially.
If you've determined that your problem really is technical (I don't consider this likely), you might sign up with a consulting or contracting firm. They take a hefty margin from what their companies pay them... but you'll get experience, and many of them provide education. If joining that kind of firm offends you, you can also get experience by volunteering your services to a non-profit.
If you post your resume here (hopefully without your address or identifying information), I'm sure that people will be glad to critique it.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.