Tag: contract

Too Many Secrets

Random Thoughts

One of the great things about the Internet is how easy it has become to post and find job listings.

One of the horrible things about the Internet is that once you put your resume on one of these sites you can never ever truly get yourself removed.  Take it off one site, you’ll find it on another.  Get it off all the sites, you’ll discover that many placement companies have already saved a copy of your resume and contact information.

The only way to really be safe is, each time you start hunting for a job create a new email address (there are dozens of free email companies) and when you are done, abandon that address.  And get a throw-away phone.

Anyway, I’ve never done that, and in fact I’ve always used an address on a domain I own (this one) and I use it for everything.  So, despite having a job and not being on the market, I get emails, probably a dozen a week, about positions I might be interested in.  The one thing all of these emails have in common is that they lack details.  What’s even worse is that even if I were to respond and talk to them about the job, details would still be missing until I actually walk in the door for the interview.

What details?  Simple stuff, like the name of the company.

See, if I get an email that says “.NET Developer position, 6 month contract, may go perm” I’m not really interested.  I have a job, not a contract, and that just doesn’t make me want to consider jumping ship.  If it said, for instance, “.NET Developer position for Amazon.com, 6 month contract, may go perm” I might want to go to that interview anyway, because, you know, working at Amazon might be awesome.  Even if it isn’t something as awesome as Amazon, a company name means I can look them up and see if it’s something I want to be involved in.  “.NET Developer” for a technology company, I’m intrigued.  “.NET Developer” for Joe’s Country Plumbing and Septic Tank Repair… not so much.  Sure, hiding the name might help get applicants for the latter, but it is also going to lead to disappointment for most.  Better to be honest and actually talk to people who want to work for the smaller company.

Once upon a time, I got an email about a programming job.  The details I got were that it was “a small company” and the position was for a “.NET Developer” and required experience with “data warehouses”.  I went around and around with the recruiter trying to get more details, but she never gave any and so when I finally agreed to interview it was more out of exhaustion than excitement.  I walk in the door and discover, oh by the way, the company is Hi-Rez Studios.  Um, what?  If the recruiter had lead with that piece of information, I’d have been chomping at the bit and probably brought in samples of my work and been a lot more prepared.  Instead, everything I’d gotten lead me to believe it was going to be another endless stuff dull job like the one I was leaving, and I walked into the interview cold and shocked, dumbfounded and stuttering.  I did manage to get a second interview, but damn, a little warning next time would be nice.

Another bad part is often a recruiter won’t tell you the name of the company until after they’ve submitted your resume.  Problem is, many companies, when dealing with recruiters who get paid a commission for placement, have rules about excluding double submissions.  So you might actually have the most awesome job listing in the world ready to submit me for, but if a competing recruiter has already submitted me then all you are going to do is get me excluded.  Sure, you asked me where I’ve been submitted to try and avoid this, but your competitors use the same tactics so I don’t know where I’ve been submitted.  And no, I’m not going to use just one recruiter when looking for work.  Why should I limit myself just because you want to keep secrets?

And you know what?  Stop putting things like “solid company” and “great work environment” in your email because it’s in EVERY email.  You cheapen the meaning by using them for every company, especially when it’s marketing and not necessarily true.  Of course they all say that.  No company is ever going to say, “Tell them we are a large unwieldy mass of middle managers who micromanage with lots of unpaid overtime.”  Not gonna happen.

Is a little openness and honesty too much too ask?

Finding my ‘Why’

Random Thoughts

Nearly two years ago I had an idea.  A tool to build, a website.  But no matter how much time I spent on it, I never really got anywhere with it.  I wasn’t inspired to finish.  When I first watched yesterday’s video nearly a month ago, it got me thinking about my own project.

Originally, the idea had just been about making money.  I was working a contract job that was running out and all my attempts to find new work were failing.  I had one of those moments where I realized that it was entirely possible to create a job for myself rather than rely on finding one.  Despite the idea I had, which I still think is a good one, I found that I didn’t have the drive to work on it.  The potential for money wasn’t motivation enough.

After watching the video on starting with why, I asked myself, “Why do this?”  I figured, if I couldn’t state why I wanted to do it then there was no point daydreaming about doing it.

I found it.  I know “Why”.  Stay tuned…

7 Days In Memphis

Reviews

Peter Gallagher can sing.

Wait? Who’s Peter Gallagher? Perhaps if I called his new CD, 7 Days in Memphis, Sandy Cohen Sings The Blues instead you might recognize him. Yeah, the dad guy from The O.C.

Peter has been around a long time, and he’s done broadway… Guys & Dolls, Hair… and so when he busted out the vocals on The O.C., people who knew his history weren’t surprised. However, him winding up with a record contract still is a little bit out of left field. 7 Days in Memphis is a collections of old blues and soul songs, mostly lesser known, infrequently covered tunes. And the man can sing. Oh, he’s not going to win any Grammys I don’t think, but he does know how to work the microphone. To be honest, I put this on my Christmas list on a lark, not thinking anyone would get it for me… I mean, Anthony Stewart Head’s Music for Elevators has been on there for two years and no one has put that one under the tree yet. Anthony Stewart Who? Giles, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Anyway, I figured Peter’s album would rot there on the list too, but wonder of wonders on Christmas morning I unwrapped this little gem. Since then, I’ve listened to the album about a dozen times, and I really like it…

Here’s to hoping he goes on tour during the summer break for The O.C. instead of doing some movie or something…

Yesterday was a good day.

Random Thoughts

It started off like most days, I woke up at the butt-crack of dawn in order to drive to work. Oh, did I not mention? I have a new contract for ITCS, I’m working downtown for BellSouth now, full time. Anyway, so I get up, shower, dress, and head out the door. Its raining. I hate driving in the rain. People, as I have said many times, suck. Somewhere in many people’s heads they actually believe that the chance of getting in an accident is affected by the duration of being on the road… so driving twice as fast means half the time of the road equalling less accidents… *sigh* Anyway, as much as I hate driving in the rain, I achieve a certain “Road Zen”, the opposite of “Road Rage”… traffic sucks, I have accepted that I cannot change this and am at peace with the horrible traffic allowing me to listen to music and smile as opposed to making rude gestures and screaming at people.

By the time I get to work, the rain is over. I park in my usual pay lot, and start the walk to the office. Its Thursday, and as I head down 3rd Street toward Spring, I see a Creative Loafing bin. Jackpot! Open it up, snag myself a hot off the presses copy of the new Loaf. I enter the BellSouth building with a bounce in my step.

At work, I get stuff done. I learn some new programming tricks. All is well. Lunch tastes good. More work gets done. All-in-all a very satisfying day in the trenches for a contract developer like myself. 5:30 rolls around and I punch out for the day.

It hasn’t rained all day, and the reports say it should be sunny but cold all weekend. I round the corner to the parking lot and I see about 5 or 6 people standing around. One guy eyes me and says, “Is this your Cherokee?” I answer affirmatively, and he says, “The cops are already on the way.”

Now I’m worried, I double time it to the car and look it over. At first everything looks fine… no flat tires, no big dents. Then I see the vent glass on my rear driver side door, you know, the smaller window glass that doesn’t move… and its shattered. I look down the row of cars and see that all of them have the same window broken. “Anything stolen?” a woman asks me. I look in and… no. Not a single thing missing. I say so and they start saying that nothing is missing from them either. While we wait for the cops, I call my insurance company, they file the claim, connect me to their repair hotline, who connects me to a glass repair shop who schedules me for a repair the next day… $0 deductable, full coverage. So at this point the only cost to me is time. The cops show, make their report, I call the insurance company back and give them the case number for their files. Then I get on the road and head home.

The whole way home, I think about it… I’ve known people who’ve been burglarized and vandalized before. They always talk about feeling violated, unsafe. I don’t. I wasn’t there.. it likely wouldn’t have if I had been. Nothing is missing. No cost to me for the damage. Just a bit of wasted time. What I am is annoyed.. a touch angry. But why?

See.. I believe in violence, as long as it has a purpose. Frankly, violence when used with direction and guidence has solved more problems in the history of the world than anything else. I believe in war, when other options have failed. People will try to tell you that we need to try to keep everything peaceful, but the true is, world politics is like parenting… at some point you have to realize your child isn’t going to stop screaming, and you send him to his room without supper. The only difference is, its much harder to make a country controller by a dictator with an army behind him sit in his room, they fight back. There must exist that point where you are willing to accept that peace isn’t working and commit to war.

This is, and its bad that I feel I must say this, not a comment on the current situation in the Middle East… that’s a difference monster altogether, because unfortunately we ARE at war… the problem here is that we are at war with an idea, not a country. In all of History I do not believe a war has ever been successfully waged on an idea… countries, of course… cultures, sure… religions, yes… but all “ideas” of the past have been backed by a physical land mass and an identifiable group of people. What we fight in the Middle East is purely an idea… terrorism is fear, and how do you fight fear?

But I digress…

Back to my day… see, I’m annoyed because some schmuck out there walked down a row of cars, breaking a single window on each, stealing nothing. In fact, the window he broke is the most useless window to break… in almost all cars these days there is no locking mechanism on the rear door, its controlled by the front doors or automatically in some other way, and with child safety regulations, most rear doors won’t even open if they are locked and you pull on the handle. And the vent glass… its too far away to reach the lock on the front door. This guys stole nothing… he made no attempt to steal or get into any of the cars. He just broke glass. Violence without purpose. That’s what I hate.

In any event, the window is fixed now, and life goes on. People continue to suck.

As The World Turns…

Random Thoughts

Ahh… the busy life.

I’m preparing myself for Jodi’s return to England. And with that, trying to prepare myself for sole ownership and care of Dr. Jones.

And then I decided, “I’m not going to be busy enough, I think I should get a second job.”

So now 2 days or so a week I’ll be putting in hours with another job. Its contract/consulting type stuff… and it gets me work that is NOT on a help desk. YAY!!

Anyway, just as I was getting ready to start updating more (notice the new background and logo – or don’t notice if you’ve never been here before) I go and give myself LESS time to do it.

Oh well.

The Job Hunt Continues…

Random Thoughts

Yeah, I know I have a job, but when your job sucks you look for another.

The most annoying thing about looking for a job in an “economic downturn” isn’t the general lack of jobs, it when you get all excited because there are 5 jobs posted in a single day that you can apply for, but as you look more closely at the job position descriptions it dawns on you that what you are really looking at is 5 contract/staffing companies all trying to fill 1 position.

Slurp my butt.

You think the least they can do is just post the damn company name, or all of them cut and paste the exact same description so that I don’t have to fire up the Crays down in the Batcave and hack the federal government applying all of my best detective skills to determine that its a big waste of time to send out 5 resumes, especially when they are all offering different hourly rates for the same job.

It should be illegal for a company to use more than one contract agency for a single position. Either that or it should be illegal for two agencies to use the same website to post the same job.

Just as an example… here is one, two, and three postings for a single job. I know, because I called and talked to each of these agencies. Its. The. Same. Job.

grr…