[rescue] Interesting bit on Multics

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

On Mon, 2003-10-27 at 09:27, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> --- Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
> 
> > This was a job at a bank, but as usual they would not say who.
> > 
> > Recruiters love the cloak-and-dagger game.
> 
> Well, to be fair, they need to be - I'm sure every recruiter has a
> story from early on when they let slip a client name and the applicant
> did an end-run around the headhunter and got the interview/job,
> preventing the headhunter from doing their job/getting paid.
> 
> That said, I wish I had a head hunter involved in my current job search
> - I applied for a position out of the blue (co website listing) and got
> a call... Went for the interview, and the position I applied for was
> put on the back burner, they are considering me for a better (Mgmt,
> building on my exp., etc. - other position was a bit of a shift within
> the same industry)... Anyway, I find myself dealing with the VP/Sr.
> Mgmt of a large multi-national company and am afraid I will wind up on
> the losing end of the negotiations (sell myself cheap).

Glad you like headhunters.... during my aprox 1 yr of unemployment
(I'm almost employed... I'm told it's a sure thing by I'm trying
not to count my "chickens"...) I have found them 100% useless.  The
ones I met with in person IMHO are not qualified to judge qualified
candidates for a technical job.  They do not have the skill to 
evaluate me as a candidate for any job... why... because I'm not
a certification hound... it makes them tough for them to place
me.... because they can't easily match up all the 3 and 4 letter
abbreviations with the 3 to 4 letter abbreviations that either the
employer listed or someone higher up at the headhunter created out
of the job requirements..... (I'm probably exagerating some based
on the way I feel... but so be it :-) ).

Out of all the resumes I submitted to recruiters... only a maybe 6
called me for any reason at all (that is probably about half of
them).  I talked extensively in person or on the phone with about
half of those.... and they did absolutely nothing to put me to work.
Not one call, not one job lead, not one interview.

Just to give a bit of background of my skills... over 12 years of
UNIX experience, over 15 years of PC/DOS/Windows/etc experience,
a few years of mac experience, 6+ years of networking experience
(LAN, WAN, Firewall, VLAN, routing, security, etc... mostly with Cisco),
web programming (HTML, DHTML, CSS, Javascript, Perl, PHP, SQL, etc),
C programming including UNIX sockets programming, 3 years of tier 1
and 2 technical support at Sun, various roles of consulting, project
management, staff management, presales support, and more...

And... not ONE job interview.  The job that the recruiter that I 
hauled myself into Boston to go see who wanted to talk to me and
size me up for a job opening he had.... it was a Microsoft 'network
engineer' position (what ever happened to a network engineer being a
network engineer... how did working with Microsoft server products get
 labelled 'network engineer')... I didn't have the certs of the work
experience for it (I'm sure I could do it... but that confidence, my
ability to learn, and all doesn't cut it (understandable given the
economy)....

So.. I'll </soapbox> now.... I have yet to really here a story (from
friends/associates) of a headhunter actually having done anything
particularly good for anyone I know (at least during this economy).


> 
> I wish I had a headhunter involved, so they could drive me trhough the
> process and make this happen, as it is, I am out of my element and not
> sure how hard to push/encourage/remind them about my application...
> 

confidence.... do you know your abilities ?  Can you communicate well ?
If your confident, know your stuff, can relate to them and communicate
with them in terms they know/like, and know how to best not shoot
yourself in the foot then what do you need a headhunter for... seems
like you could use him more for confidence than anything.... and IMHO
they never provide that....

besides... if jobs are tough to get in your area as they seem to be
here, I'd rather shoot myself in the foot and lowball myself a bit to
get back into the job market.... I can work more confortably once 
employed to work my way back up if I was to have lowballed myself
(and I wouldn't lowball myself that bad anyway).

Seems to me from what I see, on average with the dot bomb in the rear
view mirror and seeing legions of unemployed through the windshield and
knowing it is much more of an employer's job market out there now than
a employee's job market means that salaries are going down from the
dot com era .... <sigh> .... it was great while it lasted...

> Anyway, I like headhunters. ;^)

well... you can have mine then... they are useless to me :-)

> 
> 
> =====
> Lionel
> 

Best of luck Lionel... I hope you land the job, make no mistakes and
get everything your looking for !

-- Curt

> "I am not into examining other peoples' dumps..." - Sheldon T. Hall
> 
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