Category: Job Search

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We’ve reached the end of the week.

Annnnnnnddd… Nothing is new!

Had a job offer rescinded. Disappointing but in truth I had some reservations about the job. The pay was good, but the Job itself was in Florida.

Florida wouldn’t be bad for me personally, but it would mean leaving Jesse, my home, and probably any reasonable chance of returning to California would be gone too, except to sell the house eventually.

I thought about it and had come to peace about all that I’d be leaving and all that I’d have to clean up eventually.

The reservations about the job in addition to those stated, also had to do with the relationship of the person I’d be working for and my family’s involvement. What happened to the job if things went sour between my boss and the family? Those questions were apparently answered when the offer was rescinded. I know from the family’s perspective that something happened.

I’m trying to convince myself that it was for the best and have mustered at least some strength of will to continue this fruitless search.

I’ve been considering just entering warehouse work. There’s a nice symmetry in that. One of the first jobs I had, involved warehouse work, and I sorta liked it.

No politics, simple labor, In motion all day long, and not trapped behind a desk. Do your job, do it right, and go home at night.

There’s also a pot grower nearby that is looking for help with the growing. The pay isn’t as high as the warehousing positions, but I like making things grow. I’d also be a good candidate because I don’t particularly like pot. The employer wouldn’t have to worry about me taking merchandise or being stoned out of my mind on the job.

The longer this unemployment goes on, the more I’m leaning toward abandoning technology as a career and doing something that’s actually constructive.

I’ve been thinking maybe it’s time to let software continue it’s slide toward horrific inadequacy without my interference.

After all we’ve all seen the debacles across the software industry in recent years. From simple things like, Typos salted through menus and help texts, to data breaches exposing a corporations entire customer database to the world.

Remember… the software “Passed” testing…

I wonder how happy I’d be returning to an office environment where any bug I discovered could be called “Racist” based on the color of a programmer’s skin or their national origin. Software either works correctly or it doesn’t. As a QA person my job is to find the problems and report them. I don’t care who or what the programmer is, a bug is a bug.

The problem is, that if you’re assigned to test a particular part of functionality it’s often a particular programmer’s code. Programmers hate QA finding bugs in their code I could see it devolving into a “He’s just a racist and going through my code with a fine tooth comb because he hates: X, Y, Z colored people.“

No matter how you play that scenario out, as a white man these days you lose. Even if you’re treating all the code you test in exactly the same way.

Then I ask myself do I really want to deal with being afraid of using the wrong word or pronoun.

Years ago I was called on the carpet during a class that I was teaching for using the term “dikes”. It was a common term that described diagonal cutters (as in for wire).

I don’t know how the term came into common usage, as that happened decades before I was an itch in my Daddy’s pants. But there I was, facing a pissed off lesbian who’d taken offense.

First of all, I didn’t know or care that she was a lesbian. Second of all, I used a term that the other 30 people in the class knew, and my use of that term caused them to all pick up the indicated tool to perform the indicated action.

I asked her what term I should use, her reply was, “diagonal cutters”. “Fine,” I said, “I’ll use that term for the rest of the class.”

While she was yelling in my face about how hurtful the term “dikes” was, I could see the other 30 people in the class rolling their eyes in annoyance.

I told her in front of the class that I happened to be gay and that I wasn’t offended by the term “Fag.” In fact I expected to hear that term frequently when I was in London.

I then asked if we could get on with the class. She’d have none of it. She demanded satisfaction in the form of an immediate written apology for using an offensive term.

Her boss spared me wasting time on an endeavor to satisfy 0.03030303 % of the class by removing her from the classroom.

Several other women were present and two of them said they too were lesbians, and didn’t mind my use of the term in this context. One of them quipped, “I hope Sheila NEVER visits Holland!“

The class burst into laughter and we got on with business.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that incident over the past year. I honestly can’t say if I’d be happy in an office full of people just waiting to pounce on the wrong word, action, or pronoun, just to be offended and cause drama.

Perhaps I’ve had enough of the corporate grind.

I know I’ve had enough of the HR bullshit where a corporation states their policy then promptly discards the policy based on skin color.

Yeah, the last place I worked had a few incidents like that. I’m rule based. Give me a rule & I’ll follow it until you aren’t following the rules. At that point, don’t try making me selectively follow your rules, especially not based on the color of my skin versus someone else’s.

The last place I worked, was just starting to see the perpetually aggrieved. I have to wonder how much worse that’s gotten over the past year.

I just want to go to work, do my job, be paid for my effort, and go home. I don’t want to be terrorized all day into silence or be expected to show up at some event to show corporate support for a cause that I don’t believe in.

Sadly, that too seems to be required by some companies.

Time will tell…

I wonder if it’s too late in my life to move to Norway. A nice simple one room cottage perched on green hills overlooking a fjord. Maybe some sheep, a cow, and a windmill or solar panels to charge the electronics, (At least much of the year…)

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The Job Search continues

As it has for almost 2 years now…

When I was notified that my Job was being outsourced, I started looking. Anyone with half a brain would have at that point. I was hoping to secure a position before the actual layoff, even though it meant that I’d be leaving money on the table.

“We’re going to lay you off, but if you leave before we lay you off you don’t get this bundle of money we’re going to pay you if you stay with us so we can enjoy making sure your’e really fucked.“

Corporate logic! How about you offer to pay a pro-rated amount up until the time you lay us off?

Ultimately it hasn’t mattered a bit. I’ve been looking and sending endless resumes and filling out online job applications until I’m honestly sick of it. I’m sick of being approached by strangers saying they’ve got the perfect job for me only to jump through all their hoops and then hear NOTHING!

I’m sick of calling to follow-up on positions I’ve applied for and not being able to reach the person, leaving a message, then never getting the simple courtesy of a return phone call or an email telling me what the status of the position is.

I’m sick of reaching out to recruiters that someone I know has dealt with, only to be ghosted.

There are those like my Mother who’d say, “Well it’s the COVID dear… “

No Mom, it’s not the COVID, this has been going on since well before the COVID gave everyone an excuse to be jerks.

Then there’s these websites like Glassdoor. “We’ve found a Job that we think lines up with you perfectly. Customer Service Representative for a Beauty Supply and Accessories company in Cupertino, Pay range 20,000 per year. Not Remote”

SAY WHAT?!!

You can’t live in Cupertino for 20K a year. Maybe if you lived in your car, and it was paid for and you had no bills, and didn’t need to eat.

If it was just a one off mistake fine, but this has become a constant. No where in my resume does it say that I have any idea about anything related to beauty supplies!

I’m a Software Quality Assurance / Software Test engineer. How do you get to Customer Service Representative from a 30 year resume that’s uploaded to your site, and then was redundantly filled in on your customized series of forms?

Glassdoor, you’re so out of here!

So I closed the account on that particular aggregator of jobs which hadn’t done me a lick of good anyway.

Then when I close the account which didn’t ask any questions about why I was closing the account, I get an email saying that a review of some job, [I hadn’t made any reviews in at least a year] suddenly violates their community standards.

The email rolled in within seconds of my closing the account, so it’s fairly obvious that they sent it by mistake instead of an email stating I’d closed the account. Hmmm. Perhaps Glassdoor could use my services? Just saying…

I’ve lost count of how many hours I’ve spent looking for a job. I no longer know how many different applications and forms I’ve filled out online. All for nothing!

I know, there are those who’d say, “Just keep trying, it’ll work out for you, you may fill out 1000 applications but you only need one to be successful.“

I used to be able to have two or three offers, in recent years that’s dwindled to offering to suck cock for just an interview.

I’m not into the Pollyanna shit anymore.

The thing that gets me is that while I’m working with all these online job applications, I’m finding bugs in them.

In some cases it’s typos throughout the forms, in other cases it’s forms that don’t work properly on Mac or Windows. I seriously think I should be paid to do nothing but test the forms companies put out on their public facing web sites. At least then their company HR pages wouldn’t be an embarrassment.

I’d consider just going back to printed resume and good old fashioned US mail in response to Job postings. The only problem with that is hiring companies rarely post an actual address or phone number so that you could even go “Old School”.

There’s another site that’s really funny. They’ll post positions that say, located in Ontario, CA. What they really mean is Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The problem is that even on the description of the job they’ll still say Ontario, CA and it isn’t until you get to entering your information and the application won’t accept a US zip code that you realize the mistake.

Give me a good old fashioned newspaper want ad section any day. I know, you’d think, “Hey there’s an idea,” You’d be wrong. a large number of newspaper want ads simply direct you to their online resources like careerbuilder.com. Which puts you right back into a nationwide database that probably hasn’t been purged of erroneous records for a decade.

There are the other aggregator sites that post positions as “NEW” but when you follow the link back to it’s source you find that the position is already 3 months old and has been filled. The position may be “NEW” to the aggregator, but it’s really so stale you could grow penicillin on it.

There must be a better way. This online bullshit ain’t cutting it.

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The problem with paying for a resume rewrite

A few months ago, I began an experiment. 

I paid to have my resume rewritten. The experiment was worth it, in that I had a fresh set of eyes looking at my resume.

Another benefit was that I was able to do some comparison between my old resume and the rewrite to determine if the choice of wording, layout, etc. would have any effect on the response rate.

In short, it didn’t.

The rewrite is something that I was never really happy with, because it was not “My” voice, nor did it reflect me the individual. The rewrite is pretty generic and while it is “true” it is also boringly high level.

I have a pretty good command of English. Many would say that my use of English is better than most. The wording in the rewrite is convoluted, (some might say tortured ) English. When I first read the rewrite, I thought that the writer had simply opened a Thesaurus then stuck their finger down the poor tome’s throat to induce vomiting.

The paragraphs are needlessly complex, using words that while technically correct, give the appearance of desperation, and someone trying impress, by putting lipstick on a pig.

Nonetheless, despite my discomfort, I used the rewrite. My reasoning was that the search engines are looking for keywords before even presenting a resume for consideration. You have to get your resume in front of a live person to get the interview.  Because I didn’t know what those keywords were… I deferred to someone who was supposed have that knowledge.

I’m terminating the experiment. The rewrite has garnered no interviews of any kind and in fact has generated less interest even amongst the spammers.

So over the next few days I’m going to rewrite my resume from the ground up. I’ll incorporate the elements I like from the rewrite, merging old and new into a resume of my own creation. 

Hopefully, writing something in my voice will make me more comfortable about the resume in general, and be more demonstrative of my intellect and experience. After all, any company that hires me, should hire me, not someone that knows nothing about me, my experience, my industry, or my abilities.

I’m pretty damn articulate all on my own. I tend to speak plainly and my writing reflects that. I’ve always believed that my resume, as a reflection of my career and abilities should stand on it’s own merits.

My philosophy is that the hiring manager should be able to get a sense of who they’re interviewing, and hopefully hiring, from the resume so they can dedicate the interview time to asking relevant questions. I personally hate spending interview time reiterating what’s printed in my resume. Ask specifics about this position, or that particular skill. 

I know that’s old school, just because something is old school doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

After all, I’m looking for a position that I want to excel in and the hiring company is looking for someone who can do the job well, and be happy doing it. 

It seems like a simple enough equation.

I wouldn’t say resume writers aren’t worth the time or money. This is especially true if you have a hard time writing. I would suggest that if you choose to use a firm, choose carefully. Vet them thoroughly and see what value they provide. 

Frankly, I think it’s time for us to stop treating resumes like web pages, stop applying SEO to them. How about hiring managers actually reading a resume?

When I was a hiring manager, I’d read the resumes of my employees word for word. This simple act gave me the ability to mentor, allow for growth, and properly task my direct reports, so that they could be successful. I’d ask them to give me updated resumes once a year. That kept me apprised of new abilities and skills attained by my group, enabling me to better manage and foster growth.

There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing an employee’s face light up because you give them a task they’ve never done before, using something they’ve worked hard to learn over the past year.

Just a thought, again old school.