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Landing a "Regular Job"?
sfe_software asks: "I'm an out-of-work programmer and systems administrator. I've reached a point where I have to find a job - any job - and I am finding this quite difficult. I'm apparently 'over-qualified' for everything from flipping burgers to fixing PCs at the local CompUSA. Noone wants to hire you at $6-$12/hour when you were making $45-$75/hour on previous jobs, yet, I'm not finding the high-paying work any more and need *something*. As a contractor, I've always kept a savings, but at this point that river is quickly running dry. What are other out-of-work techies doing? How do you convince a hiring manager that you aren't simply using them as a temporary stepping stone (even if this is true)?"
If you really *want* a lower-class job...
Instead of over-stating your resume, understate it. Problem solved.
or other educational facilities. Also look into tutoring for classes. Also government jobs. Also, many colleges have job listings for other places in the community. Mentioning that you saw their ad in the college listings may make a difference.
I know this has been said before, but just lie. Just tone down your resume a bit, say you were a field tech for a small and now defunct company and only made 15 bucks an hour. If you want send me your resume and I will help you curtail it for a retail job (before I was an engineer I managed a retail software store (damn that sucked).
I totally understand the difficult situation that you are in. In fact, I ended up giving up the IT career that I had and went into the retail market.
.com bubble has burst. Don't afraid to be honest with them, but you have to be honest with yourself.
I think that employers want to know how long you want to work for them. When you go in and hand in your resume, do you explain to them that the IT market is not good right now? If you just go in and ask for a job, how will anybody know that you will still be around 3 months from now? How do *you* know that you will stay with the company 3 months from now?
Anyways, my story is that I moved to another city and planned on finding a simple retail job to get me settled in for a year. After that, I intended to find computer work. The reason that I wanted to wait a year, was because finding computer work is hard.
I would ask to speak to the manager, and when I saw him, I would say, "Hi. My name is Eugene, and I am new in town. I'm just looking for some work right now to help me get settled in for about a year. After that, I'd like to get some computer work. Have you got anything available?". This got a me a job the first day that I tried it. In fact, I got 3 interviews and 2 job offers. One was with Grand & Toy [stationary company] and the other was with McDonald's as an assistant manager.
People understand that the
If a job offer for an IT job comes your way at $50K/year, are you honestly going to stay around flipping burgers or running a cash register? If not, then you can't make promises to them.
testing out my trending skills
No offense, but I think that if you were raking in an amount near 75$/hour (150k a year) you could have certainly put away enough savings or other investments to wait out an economic downturn.
Isn't it a rule of thumb that the more you make, the longer it will take you to find a similar job in a competitive labor market?
If you are really hard up why don't you just lie or refuse to disclose your previous salaries? You do have this option, no matter how hard HR leans on you- I say this from experience. You can also say that you're retiring early and need something to do, or say that you're staying home to help with a toddler or going back to school for a couple years and want a part-time job. There's lots of reasonable excuses for looking for a "not great but puts money on the table" job.
You could also try doing some freelance consulting to pass the time. There's always people who will need your help if you take the time to find them and negotiate a price they can afford.
And then there's the time-honored tradition of hitting up all your ex-coworkers for possible opportunities. Hopefully you weren't a BOFH!
Unemployment will get you at least a 6 months buffer in any humane US state as well.
Myself, I always had an interest in submarines, action, and travel so I joined the military as a Fire Control Technician. Awesome job, I couldnt be happier...Im a computer junkie and was all self taught but they surprised me with 3 schools known as ISA, NSVT, and ANA. The first is fairly high level computer training, second is Network System Vulnerability Tech.(hacker school! sweet!!) and the third is Advanced Network Admin, which is godly. My self taught level covered me up to the last, and that one surprised me most, it covers EVERYTHING and then some. The guys that run that are extremely well paid in the civilian world(after the service) and work for almost every big tech firm in the country, except Micro$oft ;) I've been having a blast since day one. You probably have the option of being an officer, and on a submarine, my my thats nice pay.
How do you convince a hiring manager that you aren't simply using them as a temporary stepping stone (even if this is true)?
Certainly not by admitting it on slashdot, Justin.
Assuming you don't have a friendly pizza place hiring nearby, my other efforts - selling stuff on eBay, and networking your gluteus off to get website or consulting work (even if it's just upgrading an old P-120 for someone's Mom...) is a good way to bring in a few bucks while passing time in a quasi-productive way. You can also take time to learn new skills, from books or classes, that you never got around to while employed.
The most important lesson I've learned is to keep my income sources diverse. I still deliver pizza one or two evenings a week, I still scan eBay for poorly-advertised stuff I can buy and resell at a profit, and I still do websites and upgrades for people whenever I get a chance. No one person, company or even industry can determine whether or not I earn money.
Perfectly Normal Industries
If you are shooting low, the people hiring for those positions are not smart enough to understand what you even put on your resume.. target it for the bottom-feeder IT jobs like compusa techs. HIDE advanded information, do not put down salaries from your last job, and even if you did they cant verify them it's illegal to release that information without your written consent and only for income verification ... employment is not eligeble for income verification.
you need to downgrade your resume alot, and dumb down when you talk to compusa, remember these IT people at compusa barely operate let alone understand IT.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you find the right district (or private school gig) and you have the skills, they'll help you work around the certification thing while you work.
it might also help to be flexible about location.
(1) Change your first name to something suitable. For example: "Billy-Bob", "Little Paul", etc.
(2) Start buying your clothes at K-Mart "end of season sales". Color co-ordination and size matching need not apply.
(3) Marry someone you suspect, but not necessarily know, might be in the same bloodline as you. She should change her name to something like "Sue-Ann" or "Peggy-Sue".
(4) Acquire a 1979 Ford F-150. Place two armchairs in the flatbed for when ma and pa need a ride.
(5) Apply for job at K-Mart, gas filling station, fast food restaurant of your choice.
And, et voila! You too will have no trouble living close to the poverty line.
Yes, relocation is a pain - just did it last year myself. This makes the 2nd time I've moved to places other than my first choice of living areas...been happy both times. When I was laid off last year, I looked in my large metropolitan home first...after three weeks, looked nationwide. I considered Nebraska, Mississippi, all sorts of places most people wouldn't pick as their first choice. Personally, I'd rather be working than unemployed or flipping burgers. And I'm too young (and so are you if you're under 50) to lock yourself down to one geography. If you want steady upward mobility, you have to RELOCATE SEVERAL TIMES IN YOUR CAREER.
If you cast your net wide - the whole US, go anywhere, do anything - you will find work if your skills are in demand. If you don't find work, then your skills are not in demand or your experience isn't sufficient and you have to lower your sights or improve your skills or both.
It's simple market mechanics. Brutal if you want to call it that, but simple nonetheless. If you're not finding work in your home market, then you need to look in other markets. You might end up in some place you don't like, have never heard of, or not your dream, but you'd be working.
PS...I've never met anyone who was both a senior sysadmin AND a senior programmer. I've also never seen a truly senior admin/programmer who was out of work for long. I'd pick which one you like better and go gonzo on it.
Advice: on VPS providers
My answer to this was to file for unemployment. If you haven't, you should. Its good money, and you *earned* it because whats being returned is money that was taken from you before. Unemployment is not welfare.
Secondly, start a company. Anyone who's an unemployed geek in the Seattle area, drop me a line. I started a small business (runnable only by me so I can work during the day if I need to). I've found that I'm getting turned down for jobs in part because I put the business I started on the resume-- people think I'm not going to work for them full time.
But that business returns positive cash flow, allowing me to spend money building another, bigger, business. (Which is why I'm looking for fellow entrepreneurial geeks) I've some ideas that will be really big, there isn't the competition there once was for staking out space in the industry-- most companies are shrinking or retreating. Now is the time to boldy go forward and start a
Now is the perfect time to start a company- resources are cheap, from office space to engineers and the competition is not getting off of the ground because most of your would be competitors are going the VC route and finding VC funding hard to come by. (There's a simple solution to this if you need investment- some businesses inherently need investment- but I'm not going to reveal it here.)
Anyway, its a good time to start a company and you should use unemployment to smooth things over.
Plus you won't have a difficult to explain gap on your resume in a couple years.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
The solution, of course, is to alter your resume when applying for certain jobs.
The simplest strategy is to simply offer no resume: for the burger flipping job, or many other minimum-wage positions, presenting a resume is probably a red flag all by itself.
On job applications (or on your resume), do just the opposite of what most folks do: understate and deflate your experience.
I suppose the worst problem is how to fill the blanks: if you were working at a dot-bomb company from 1997-2001, you can't just leave those years blank without raising concerns (though if you have young kids, you can report that "following the birth of my first child in 1996, I decided to spend more time at home" without actually lying (maybe you didn't ever manage to act on that decision, for example, until the company's Chapter 7 filing in 2001).
Or just make some minor changes in the way you describe that job: if your resume now says, "Chief Technology Officer supervising 65 programmers and maintenance of 200 web servers from 1997-2001," try changing the title to something that sounds a lot less grandiose (like "Computer Operator" or "Equipment Manager").
Let's face it, being "over-qualified" for a job you want right now, is a problem that most people only dream about.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
I'm in (well was) the same boat you were in. I used to do all the systems and application managment on one of the largest Windows 2000 datacenters int he country, over 2300 servers. I've written articles for Hewlett-Packard newsletters about OpenView, written a few articles for Windows 2000 magazine, even see me in a book or 2 here.
Six months ago recession hit me. I lost a 65k/year job (Not to bad for Illinois) and the reserves started to go.
What did I do? Well, after an exhaustive search I found and settled on (quite happily I must admit) Semi Truck driving cross country. The company I work for pays for all the training, gets me my CDL, and sends me out in a truck. Pay is low for the first year (no more then 36k or so) but within a few years you go up to 60-70k/year plus.
Thing I dig about it, I only work 2 weeks a month. 2 weeks in a row mind you, but I have 2 weeks off. And Im getting paid for it. It's not as abnormal as I thought either, normal job stuff. Drive 8 hours, etc. Only thing is sleeping on the road thats odd.
And on the upside I get to work on my OWN projects now. I'm working on a free game for fun, and talk about war driving. How about over 2000 sites on a trip from Illinois to Oregon and back. Hell, if anything it's sweet for geeks. A lot of toys I get to bring with me on runs. Plus I do IT stuff on the side.
I used to work 15 hours a day. 3 hour round trip commute, plus 12 hours in the shop. Now I'm not so stressed, the money is good and you meet a lot of cool people.
So give it a shot. I went through Schneider Trucking but I see ads for a lot of other companies that do the same thing.
And yes, they hire ANYONE. Literally anyone. During training I was with 5 other IT pro's, one with a MIS. There was a college professor, and a housewife too.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
Need honest person to infiltrate telemarketing lair and mark all potential customers as "do not call". Must be able to find your own way out of a 3,000 square foot cubicle maze.
Funny thing... ;)
I did the same exact thing for the job I am at now.. I softened the resume and started getting calls. My last job paid below average for what I was doing and the one I have now pays above average so in the end I'm not really making that much less. Of course now I deal with end users which I thought I'd never have to do again. Bottom line, it pays the bills and I am not under any pressure. I want to eventually move around again and I hope this job will not be a negative in the future, I'm trying to stay in the loop. I actually have fun calling the system administrator and telling him that the mail/file/backup/etc server is all jacked up again. Then I add a "maybe you should just reboot it again"
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.