Starting the Job Hunt in 2009

The last three weeks were very busy for me with not hunting for a job.  With the first business week of 2009 at hand, I expect the contacts and prospects to increase for the next 5 months before hitting the summer downturn around June.

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Monday January 5, 2009

  • Icy wintry day in North Texas.  Happy to be home.
  • Refresh my online resumes in Dice and Monster.
  • Receive a couple of inquiries from recruiters looking for developers, and respond with my resume for BA and PM positions.
  • Check the stock market.  Looking up a little.  Happy that TRN is back on the rise; I worked at Trinity Industries a couple of years ago and I like and respect them.  Been around for 75 or 80 years; forward-looking, but very conservative in their approach. I picked up a few shares on sale late last year.
  • Letting the chickens out of their coop.  They seem to be doing just fine, staying nearby and eating the popcorn and other scraps by the structure.  Hopefully no bobcats or neighbors’ dogs or hawks will show up too soon.
  • Started a new meetup group at Meetup.com, called Go Frisco!  Go Frisco! is intended to be a business-to-business networking group made up of decision-makers for those businesses.

Thursday January 8, 2009

1:30pm: I just lost all the content for Tues, Wed, and Today since WordPress logged me out and I did not copy my text before saving the post (simply CTRL A, then CTRL C).  So, I’ll see if I can do an abbreviated week-to-date recap…

  • Tuesday: 8 incoming recruiter email contacts plus a couple of phone calls.
  • Wednesday: 12 incoming recruiter email contacts plus 5 or 6 phone calls.  Decent conversation with a recruiting working to fill a perm position at Wal-Mart.
  • Thursday: 13 incoming recruiter email contacts plus 5 phone calls.  5 different inquiries within one hour about a low-paying job at Verizon Wireless.  Sanjay called and argued with me for 15 minutes how I would be lucky to have the gig since he has a direct line to the client.  I explained to him that I have worked for Verizon in the past and found it to be a very unpleasant experience.  Instead, I could lower my rate in my online profile by thousands of dollars per year, and still make tens of thousands more than what Sanjay was suggesting.  Maybe I will go on sale.  But if I ever go back to a Verizon company, I won’t be cheap!

Friday January 9, 2009

Almost 2 months since I rolled off my last gig.  Glad I was able to put a little money away and prepay some bills.  Though I am starting to feel a little pressure, I always want to avoid being in a situation where I end up taking a job or contract that is not a good match or something I just don’t like because I have to pay the bills.

  • Shipped my On Demand video download set top box back to Blockbuster since it really stunk, and I now have NetFlix.
  • Responded to a recruiter about a really cool-sounding perm position in NYC for Director Of Editorial.  Not holding my breath since my background/resume does not depict me as a heavyweight expert in that area.  And, living in that area would probably not be financially feasible unless they want to pay an executive’s salary, which would not happen.  So I continue with my job hunting after having done my due dilligence by following up.
  • Refreshing my online resumes.
  • Checking out the new members to my new meetup group, Go Frisco!
  • Reduced my rate in Dice.com to the next lower notch.  Interested to see if it affects my rate of inquiry from recruiters.  Am aware that lowering it too much can actually reduce the number of desired inquiries and increase the amount of undesirables.
  • Quiet day.  Only 8 incoming recruiter contacts.

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