Monday January 12, 2009

Slow as molasses in January.

• Logged into Monster to refresh my resume.  I see that they have recently changed their layout and design, thereby making it even more user-unfriendly.  Now I can’t find how to ‘renew”.
• Logged into Dice to refresh my resume.  I see how my 30 day average of 211 views has dropped to 177 in the past few days.  A year ago it stayed at 300 and way above.  A little sign of the times I’d say.
• Long have I disliked Monster’s usability as a job seeker.  Today my dislike is reinforced ever again.  I was able to refresh the update date on my resume by stumbling into the edit mode, then saving.  But I had to manually refresh the browser page because the “lasted updated” date did not dynamically update.
• Lite day: only 6 incoming recruiter contacts.

Tuesday January 13, 2009

I’ll admit that yesterday found me in a rare state – that being just a little depressed over job hunting, the economy, winter weather, and being a Monday.  But, today I am feeling a little more on top of it all.

                  [adsensetop]

• Slow start, then a spike!  3 recruiters contacting me about a contract-to-perm gig locally at Mary Kay; 30% travel to China.  One contacting me about a 6 month contract in Colorado Springs for Verizon.  And a 3-6 month one in Palo Alto, California.
• Updated my resume for one (which I typically decline to do).  Getting ready to take a prescreening test for Mary Kay.

Wednesday January 14, 2009

• Headlines: Google lays off 100 recruiters.
• Took a family field trip to see the King Tut exhibit in Dallas.
• 17 incoming recruiter contacts.  3 or 4 by phone.  A few duplicates, including yet another one for Mary Kay.
• The contract recruiter for Mary Kay that I talked to yesterday is supposed to be submitting my resume to them today.
• Replying to recruiter emails.  Watching MI:5 episodes on my PC through NetFlix.com.
• US Airways Flight 1549 splash-landed in the Hudson River after ingesting a geese feast into its jet engines right after take off from LaGuardia.  The pilot handled the emergency “swimmingly” [as the British say] and all 155 souls were saved.  I gave thanks to God and expect they did also.

Friday January 16, 2009

• 13 [or more] unique incoming recruiter contacts yesterday.
• Contacted by 6 recruiters this week for the Mary Kay position.As is often the case with recruiters, they don’t respond to the candidates’ inquiries or followup.  This goes for my call to the recruiter I chose to allow to present me to Mary Kay.  And it also goes for the recruiter who [allegedly] presented me to Wal-Mart  last week.  In fact, the latter emailed me cold today asking if I was on the market and interested in a position in Wal-Mart IT.  I replied by email twice and left a phone message requesting a status or feedback on the submittal.  But no response; sigh.
• Today is very quiet recruiter-inquiry-wise.

• One guy, Manvinder, called from Chicago to ask me about a gig in New York City. He had a strong Indian accent, his English was not so great, and he was probably using a subgrade IP phone with a lousy bluetooth headset; so, we had difficulty communicating.He asked my rate but cut me off to tell what the client was willing to pay to compensate me: $40/hr 1099.  Before I laughed I politely asked “what did you say?”  Then he repeated it.With expectations of expenses of around $1,200 to fly from DFW and stay in the Big Apple each week, that computes to $30/hr for 40 hours.  So $30/hr has to go onto my all-inclusive rate just to work for free!  That leaves $10/hr which is not any better than unemployment or working as an hourly employee at a retail establishment.  When I countered that my requirement was $90/hr, he said that I must be the one who was joking.  When I asked if he had ever been to NYC he said “not yet”.  Well why don’t you try it Manny!?I’ll tell you who is joking around; it’s a lot of fricking big corporations who are going to exploit the current economic and employment situations to try to get good people for peanuts.  The problem is that they don’t learn from history – or they are just both greedy and stupid – and they don’t realize that they are inviting low morale and churn into their organization.  Because as soon as one of their cheap hires gets a better offer, they will be out of there as fast as the passengers on US Airways Flight 1549!  (Side note: They decided that the icy waters of the Hudson River were more desirable (or less undesirable) than being trapped in a place where good things did not look like they were going to happen.  And many employees and consultants feel the same way about the companies they work for).You can take my word for it because I have been there before [far too many times].  My policy is to wait to take fair pay for doing a good job.  As a consultant (“contractor” as many call it), a lot of opportunities come across my plate during hard times that the perm employee types get skipped over for.

  But in one of the rare cases where I did take a job because I was desparate, the exact thing happened.  It was one of the nation’s largest telecom companies that had only months earlier downsized both employees and consultants.  Then at the beginning of the new year that brought back consultants at a reduced rate of what had already been sucky.  But as a company known to treat their workers like crap, team members started jumping ship as soon as the economy picked back up and other companies started offering reasonable pay again.

                    [adsense]

  My point to you the job seeker is to not let fear drive your decisions.  That is not to say that it is unreasonable to have doubts or concerns, but rather if you choose to deal with someone who wants to exploit your fears, you will become their slave and enter into a miserable existence.  …my opinion