Category: Job Search

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Working on reworking my resume

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How do you take a 30 year career and convert it to a blipvert?

Blipvert is a reference to a movie called Max Headroom where a new form of advertisement in a slightly dystopian future was blasted into the general populations brains. The problem was that at some point the bombardment would cause your head to explode.

My resume is dated, to be sure. I’ve been looking at articles and suggestions about generating the attention necessary to get your resume past an idiot HR person and into the hands of an actual hiring manager.

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Apparently you need to create a resume that caters to the short attention span, so prevalent in todays young people.

I was wondering if I could create a Twitter version that might actually be read.

Exp Technical SQA prsn, no threat to your job, looking for employment. HMU if pos avail pay needed = min wge or better. Amer Citzn, Ntv Eng

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Blast it out to every single corporation with a Twitter account. Who knows, It might actually work. Maybe I could get my 15 minutes of fame and cash in like the Kardashians.

I’m half serious.

The problem is that my resume is, uh, diverse.

Hey it’s not my fault, the 80’s and 90’s were  tumultuous time in the high tech industry.

It’s not like today when everything is like the Linkin Park song “When they come for me”

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Part of the lyrics say “Everybody wants the next thing to be just like the first.”

What that means to technology is that more and more of the tech has all the originality and creativeness of building a toaster.

The diversity of my resume is seen as a demerit not a plus. Rather than an HR person looking at it and saying “Gee, this guys has been in the industry since the beginning and has done quite a bit they look at it and say why has this guy been at so many companies?

They don’t think about the mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies, and “leading edge” technologies that fell by the way side.

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Most of the HR people today are barely in their 20s and they have zero clue about life pre cell phone or iPod. Most of them never consider that a lot of the technology surrounding them wasn’t in existence 20 years ago. They have no sense of history and even less interest in learning about it.

There are three contract positions on my resume that illustrate my point elegantly.

Ameriquest Mortgage, Washington Mutual bank, and Countrywide Mortgage

Yep, I worked for all three of them and they are all gone now.

Here’s some more:

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Kentek Information Systems, Peerless Systems, Konica Business Technologies, BlueKite.com, Splash Technologies

Kentek is gone and has been for a while. Peerless is still limping along, where they once had a floor and 1/2 of a building in El Segundo the last I heard they were down to just a few offices. Konica merged or was purchased by Minolta and while the office still exists it’s not the development office it once was. BlueKite.com, GONE! in a particularly ugly way, as is Splash. The remainder of Splash was absorbed by one of their competitors.

I’ve got more…

Suffice it to say that unless someone is printing a score card there is no way a 20 something HR person could come close to understanding what the business was like, or the reason that someone like myself would have such and extensive resume.

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Especially when they’re looking for the cheapest newbie out of college they can lay their hands on.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that but sometimes experienced people just want to work and they don’t care so much about climbing the corporate ladder or the money. We just want to do good work, and live our lives, and leave the ladder climbing and Machiavellian machinations to the young.

I’ve been in management, I’ve been a real manager and a manager in name only. I’m not looking for that career path right now.

If I was offered a management position where I was really a manager and not one in name only, I’d consider it.

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I don’t want to have the title and simply be the scape goat for someone above me that’s calling the shots but serving up their “Managers” when things go badly.

I’ve been there, done that and I have the T-shirt.

Of course none of this is something one could or should say in an interview. Honesty is strictly forbidden when dealing with an HR child.

Depending on the hiring manager you could get away with saying to them.

Note, the manager would have to be a guy and he’d have to be a stand up kind of guy.

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There are perhaps a few women who could take it in the spirit in which it was said, but they’d have to be from Australia, or New Zealand.

You know places where pragmatism, a “can do” attitude, and common sense are still preferred over political correctness or the fear of hurting someones feelings.

Yeah, I said it!

If I were young enough or wealthy enough, I’d try to move to Australia or New Zealand and become a citizen. I miss the days here in America when having a common sense approach at your company would get you raises and promotions.

I’d love to find a place to work in the world where that philosophy was still the norm instead of the exception.

I can dream can’t I?

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The Current Plan

NewImagePhase one of the current plan begins on Monday. As with all plans it’s subject to change without notice…

Monday I start class to become a Bartender.

This isn’t a lightly chosen direction. I sure as heck won’t make the kind of money I was making. On the plus side I probably won’t have the kinds of headaches that I once had.

According to the technology industry and especially according  those little 25 year old fuckers just out of college my skills are 5 years out of date. Thank YOU aerospace!

After all, we no longer use Binary… oh yeah that’s right we still use binary.

Well we no longer use Hard drives… wait… yep we still use them.

Well there are no servers anymore it’s the cloud… oh wait…

Clearly we don’t use displays, or ethernet, or the conventional model for networking. We certainly don’t use IP addresses or HTML, XML, Windows, Microsoft office, or bug reporting software of whatever stripe.

Oh yes that’s right we DO still use all those things! 

Well automation software has radically changed… after all no-one uses QTP, Loadrunner, Quality Center, or any of the Mercury interactive tools anymore. True… They’re all HP tools now because HP purchased Mercury interactive.

Oh well nonetheless, My skills and abilities are out of date.  I’m hopelessly old and outdated. I’m clearly too old  to be able to catch up or refresh my skills.

Well you little fuckers… when the house of cards comes falling down around your heads… and it will… don’t call me or my friends to fix it for you.

You’re on your own… And one day… you’ll be right where I am and If I’m still around, I’m going to laugh my ass off.

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Meanwhile MY plan calls for me to move into a career that lends itself to my pseudo-retirement.

Step one – immediate income. 

Step two – develop multiple streams of income. (This step involves writing, & photography. Perhaps it will involve becoming a life coach, and possibly a massage therapist. These options are still being fleshed out based on time required and costs.)

Step three – become a SCUBA instructor.

Step four – combine SCUBA, and one or more of the other streams of income into a nice retirement that involves me being on a warm sunny coast with a turquoise ocean and a regular flow of tourists. 

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I’m thinking about an island life, with island time, and little if any of the rat race.

That’s the dream… well,  I suppose it’s the goal.

When I check out. I want to remember a beautiful sunset, the smell of the sea, and warm tropical breeze. Maybe a seagull cawing in the distance.

So while I’m still kinda pissed off about the way the technology industry has gone for me, I’m not nearly as pissed off as I was, with each step toward a future that I’m in control of I’m less angry. 

I’ve got a plan and If at some point I’m working for a resort and they choose to pay me for my knowledge of technology I’ll gladly whore myself out for a few thousand bucks.

Overall, I see my days being a lot more relaxed.

I see myself bar tending and people watching. Then I see myself using those observations to color and bring realism to my characters. I see my near future self leading a less stressful life where I’m not worried all the time about being laid off and what thats going to do to my retirement plan. 

I think I’ll be able to travel a little more easily, instead of hearing the bullshit line, “Well business needs have to take priority, I’m sorry but you can’t go on vacation this year.”

I’m looking at these changes as building a somewhat recession proof income.

After all even in crappy times People drink.

I’d considered the sex industry. I’m a little past my expiration date.

I may yet run a couple of solo videos up on Xtube just to test the market…

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Unemployment has run out…

Today I filed for the last of my unemployment benefits.

I think I’m eligible for food stamps. Who knows, maybe I’ll give it a shot.

Still nothing much in the jobs arena.

I would like to thank President Obama for choosing to end U/E extended benefits just prior to Christmas… What a lovely gift!

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Let’s make absolutely sure that you’re super stressed perhaps even desperate for the holidays when few companies are interviewing and even fewer still are actually hiring.

I do have a plan, that’s of course something that I can only initiate after navigating yet more government obstructions. Sixty days of waiting… Damn! The banking regulations are interfering at every turn in my life lately. 

Many of these regulations are about preventing money laundering but as usual are targeted at the little guy. It’s ashamed that our government doesn’t understand things like limits. You know… a situation where only after X amount of money is flowing through a bank account monthly, does the government stick their big fat noses in.

But if you’ve got a SUPERPAC you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars simply disappear. See the Colbert Report video and listen very carefully to the attorney talking about how to make the money go away.

Instead, they want to make everybody suck cock to open a simple checking account. Welcome to America…

Oh well, as my Mom used to tell me… “When you’re king you can make the rules, until then quit bitching and obey the rules.”

SO 60 days it is…

In the mean time I’m going to keep working on my alternative plans to deal with being out of the technology field.

Wish me luck.

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Lately… I’ve been evaluating a lot of stuff.

I’m fairly sure that my former career is toast.

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Oddly, where once I was very angry about it… Now I’m not so angry.

Sure when I think about it and allow myself to feel that I’ve been thrown away by corporate America and to some extent by America in general I still get a little pissy.

But It’s not like it was this time last year.

Now I’m looking forward to what I’ll do next.

I’m going to have to trim my expenses by a considerable amount. But I think I can do that.

I’m still working albeit not as hard as I should be on finishing my first book. I will finish it… 

I’m thinking that perhaps what will be best for me in the interim is to find a simple job that pays enough for me to pay my bills.

I don’t want that as a long term solution but I do think it might be an achievable short term goal.

Recently I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved with a couple of gatherings that demonstrated several things to me.

1) People are hungering for things that the internet can’t provide.

2) There may be a growing number of people that are pulling back from things like FaceBook and other social media.

3) Intimacy is something that everyone needs regardless of their walk of life or sexuality. Men in particular seem to be starving for it 

4) Many men don’t have the ability to articulate even to themselves this need.

Much of this was brought painfully home to me as I attended the first meeting. The speaker was saying these things and I thought, “yes that resonates with me”. But what really drove it home was that I decided to start at the beginning of the book and do some editing.

As I reread the first chapters making changes and improving continuity I realized that there, in the pages I’d written was the same message.

In communications with friends and acquaintances this point has been driven home again and again.

I’ve had similar conversations with male friends and acquaintances who identify as Straight, Bi, gay, and curious. and all of these men seem to crave the same thing.

Silence, Peace, Joy, Sensuality, Compassion, Intimacy, Passion, Love, and Touch. All in varying degrees. The straight men aren’t going to need or indeed may not be comfortable with sensuous touch from another man. However all of these men could enjoy and benefit from a simple hug regardless of the gender of the person giving it to them. All of these men could benefit form having someone that would just listen.

In these conversations it’s become obvious that perhaps I’ve been ignoring a calling that was right in front of me.

These men are in general men that I care about. They’re friends (old and new), acquaintances, potential friends and because I care about them I find myself reaching out to them with the very strong desire to comfort them. 

I find that I want to help them, to allow them a few hours of safety where they don’t have to worry about defending themselves or having their defenses up at all.

Obviously, these friends are very different from the general population.

However it has raised a question in my head. Could I provide some of these unrequited needs to men? If so in what capacity? Could I find a career where I could make a living being a guidepost to people who need someone to help them find their way?

This would allow me to continue to pursue art, and writing  to feed my own soul. But it would also allow me to pass through the world leaving it a better place than it was. That too feeds my soul.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that I’m far less interested in the latest craze and far more interested in doing those things that fill me with joy, feeding my spirit at the same time.

Only recently I’ve come to the realization that I’ve never been truly happy at any job I’ve ever had except one.

That was when I was spent time as a Personal Trainer. In retrospect I loved helping people.

I hated the fact that the gym I was working for, was all about screwing the trainers & clients out of as much money as they could.

While I was actually working with clients… I was happy and joyful. I looked forward to going to work.

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At the time I was also using my knowledge of technology publishing a monthly magazine that I was very proud of.

Unfortunately I had a business partner that assumed I was rich and that he was entitled to all the funds in the business.

This ultimately led to me ceasing publication on the magazine, paying off the debts owed by the magazine and having to go back to work in a cubicle farm. 

I carried a lot of anger about that for many years. I genuinely hope that he learned something and won’t make the same mistakes again.

Now, many years later I’m out of the technology field, even though it’s not necessarily by my choice. 

It’s time for me to follow my heart.

I’d rather have the time to write than commute 80 miles to report to an office building.

I’d rather deal with people on my terms than deal with bosses and coworkers who are all about scrambling up the corporate ladder at any cost.

I need to pursue art, beauty & light instead of struggling to preserve those parts of me against an onslaught of negative forces.

So after over a year of worry and fretting about a new job & being “thrown away by corporate America”. I’m going to try something new.

I have no idea where this will lead. I can say that right now, I’m feeling really positive and good for the first time in a while.

Time will tell if this is the right path for me. 

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I do know going back to corporate America doesn’t appear to be an option. I suppose I would temporarily if only to fund my ability to pay for the training that I’ll need to move into the light.

My journey begins with setting down some baggage that I’ve carried far too long. 

Someone else can pick it up if they wish, I’d strongly recommend against it.

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I guess it’s just my lot in life…

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’ve been a technology guy for almost 30 years.

Now I’m unemployed and have been looking for a new job for the better part of 18 months.

Usually I can’t get the time of day from the places that I apply to. Those placement firms that do contact me are often not much more that one step above spammers.

Got a call from one of these guys the other day, He was obviously Indian and his English pronunciation was so poor that I had no idea what he was saying. I finally got him to send me an email with the job description. His written English was only marginally better, which explains why he was trying to match me up with a position that was almost completely NOT anything I can do.

I find myself wondering things like why can’t I get any decent leads.

I’m still working on that one… but I’m beginning to wonder if I’m not paying back some seriously big karmic debt.

Many of the companies that I’ve applied to, I also do occasional business with. This morning I was looking around online for a decent six or seven port USB Hub. 

As I wandered through the myriad websites I kept seeing one defect after another.

These are major, nationally known companies who advertise and sell their products on the web and yet I was seeing things like;

Dead links,

Typos,

Dialog boxes that were blank, (I mean… just a white box with nothing in it.)

Check boxes that appear unchecked yet if you do check them, to narrow your search you actually destroy your search results.

Oh, and these companies… all have either flat out told me that I wasn’t good enough to work for them, or they simply have never responded to my inquiries.

While I many not be good enough to work for them, clearly their existing staff sucks!

Part of the problem is this. 

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All of these companies want someone that has long list of software development methodology certifications. To date I’ve worked with virtually every methodology.

However, I’ve never bothered to get certified in any of them, for the following reasons;

1) The certifications are very expensive and often required me to burn my vacation time and pay for the seminar and the hotel & food costs. Often as not just sitting through the seminar got you the certification.

I don’t believe in buying certifications. If that’s what I’m doing… then let me send you the $1000 and you send me the paper with my little name printed on it, and we’re done.  

I think that there should be something a little more structured and some accountability or grading must be built into the system.

Then there’s this thought… I have one miserable week of vacation. Do I spend it at an expensive seminar in a hotel conference room or do I spend that week on a beach somewhere? Let’s think about this for all of a nano-second! If I’m going to spend my vacation time and have to pay for a hotel and transportation… I’m going diving in the Caribbean!

2)  These methodologies are ever changing and in fact I’ve worked for companies where the methodology changed as frequently as the upper management did. It was simply impossible to keep up with the method du jour and as a result, the certifications were pretty much pointless.

3) These methodologies claim in some circles to be a standard. But in point of fact they are really only the framework of a software development philosophy that allows for variable implementation based on the needs, desires, and whims of the corporation where the method is being used. 

The practical upshot of this is that a new employee starts out having to learn how the company has implemented a particular methodology whether they’ve got the certifications or not.

4) I have noticed through the years that regardless of the published “Methodology”, corporate “Procedures”, or even ISO standards all go right out the window when the project is late,  (Every Software Project ends up being LATE). Which means that Agile is pretty much the defacto standard of ALL software development regardless of the corporate sales pitch.

5) I’ve actually been involved in companies where the process was so complex that it actually impeded the development and testing processes. In these companies, I only got 3 hours of work done on software I was testing per day. The other 5 or 6 hours of my day were spent in meetings, explaining what testing was being done and WHY the testing was going so slowly. 

REALLY?

In point of fact it wasn’t the methodology, it was the implementation.

I’ve always thought it was funny how almost anything begins to take on the worst aspects of religion. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Agile,SCRUM, PC vs. Mac, iPhone vs. Android…

None of them are inherently bad ideas or philosophies but all of them suffer from problems introduced by zealots.

I guess now it’s time for me to pay for some stupid seminar where the badge of honor is that I have a certificate saying I sat through the seminar.

At least I could legitimately say I’m certified in one of these things…  That 30 years of experience is irrelevant but a silly certification in a software development methodology is annoys me beyond belief.

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I could take my laptop and spend the time writing and half listening. God! The soul crushing boredom  of seminars like this makes me cringe. When I’ve attended these kinds of seminars in the past,  at the end of the day I headed straight for the hotel bar and worked on anesthetizing myself… All the while having to listen to other folks from the seminar gushing about the importance of the words of the presenter… aka The Prophet. 

Meanwhile, I’m looking for the nearest exit and wondering if I can find another convenient bar where I don’t have to listen to a rehash of the day faithfully regurgitated by those who’ve drunk the kool aid.

I suppose it’s jaded cynicism on my part. A large part of my inherent resistance comes from knowing these methods, don’t make me a better tester. It just means that I’m going to be better able to recognize when someone is wasting time in needless meetings.

Which leads me back to Karma…

Am I now paying the price for not drinking the kool aid? Are the errors I’m seeing on web sites the not so subtle reminders that my choice not to play the latest corporate mental masturbation game has left me on the outside?

I still stand 100% by my conviction that as a Software Quality Assurance Analyst, knowledge or lack thereof about these philosophies won’t change the quality of the software.

Actually testing the software will. 

My Karma is to be unable to ignore software defects, and to seemingly bring out defects simply by wanting to use software as a normal user. 

I guess, I was a serious asshole to someone in a previous life. 

Now where was that catalog of obscenely priced seminars????