Job hunting blahs

[bunsen_h]

Over the last couple of days, I've had a strange combination of depression and housebound twitchiness, enough to push me to go through the list of recruiters and job-search sites provided by my former employer. Given my "eclectic" set of skills, I knew that the effort was likely to be frustrating.

(That's not counting the IT recruiter sites with seriously broken systems, of which there are far too many.)

Some sites have drop-down lists allowing me to identify skills which I have and which are in demand. It's disheartening that out of a list of some dozens of desired qualifications, I'm good at one, mediocre at two more, know nothing about any of the rest, have never even heard of at least half.

And now the automated recommendation messages are starting to come in. "Based on the information you provided us, we think that the following positions are good matches for you!" Let's see, I have no experience at all in any of the must-have skills, and the location is 50 km from here. Why exactly is that being recommended? Unsubscribe...

I've got an interview Thursday with another recruiting agency. I'm not holding my breath, but at least it sounds like they'll be filtering their possible positions to match what I might plausibly be able to do.

Comments

[metalana.livejournal.com]

Be sure to take an optimistic view of your skills. Sometimes the job requirements list a bunch of marginally-relevant stuff just to weed people out. I have found lots of ways to say I'm familiar with a concept or acronym, and sometimes that's all a job requires.

I've found I get the most calls from agencies when they are actively looking for a skill, and the keyword appeared on my resume (either in their database, or searchable on Workopolis).

Therefore, emailing a resume to all agents in town is a good use of your time. Phoning agents to make a personal connection miiiiiight be useful. Visiting them in person is generally not necessary, at least until they have a potential job for you.

Filling your Workopolis resume with keywords is good too. I don't bother checking the posted job ads (there or anywhere else), nor subscribing to automated notifications. Not many opportunities actually make it onto the websites, because the agencies can usually find candidates from their resume databases, and companies can hire friends of their employees.

The agency staff don't understand the skills, don't have time to read your resume in detail, and don't know your commuting limits. So you have to do your own screening. If you talk a lot to one agent, they will learn what jobs (not) to send you, but you actually need to be on the radar of many many agencies. Spray & Pray, as they say!

[dewline.livejournal.com]

*takes notes*

This is stuff I suspect I've heard from other sources, but refreshers are good.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

I'm talking about stuff like "Flash Software Developer", when my resume doesn't mention Flash -- and I detest Flash so much that I avoid installing it when possible, and use FlashBlock otherwise. Or "Internet Software Developer", when my resume doesn't mention any network-related tools because I don't know anything about the tools or the related concepts much beyond "you need to plug a wire in... except if you use one of those wireless things, I guess".

[beable]

If you have the stomach for it, reading up on internet-related development (i.e. java and stuff) probably opens up your potential market considerably.