’twas The Week Before Christmas…

Hello there.

No pressure; just creating the initial “day in the life of a professional perpetual job seeker” for the Internet Jobs website.

OK, well it is what it is and will be what it will be. So, I step out of the coffee shop and into the flow.

Hang on, here we go!

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Monday December 15, 2008

17 incoming emails from different recruiters, and my corresponding responses. Plus a half dozen incoming phone calls.
Spent about an hour filling out the required forms for being submitted to a 7 month contract gig with the State Of Texas.
Received inquiries from 5 different recruiters compete for the various BA and PM positions on the same project in San Antonio. This type of overlap makes things very confusing. In some cases the recruiters are sourcing to fill a position for the client directly, whereas the next guy might be staffing their own team for the same project (no duplicity per se),and the next guy might be a sub recruiter of the previous one who has already submitted me and gets a cut. I try to patiently work with the recruiters to ensure that I am not doubly submitted which would disqualify me altogether for a lose-lose situation.
I got frustrated with one recruiter having to explain the most recent entry on my resume, only to learn that somehow I sent her a version missing my two most-recent engagements. Got that figured out and back on track.
Applied online for unemployment benefits (gosh darnit! – The exact thing people like me hate to admit to others – especially publicly online. And, exactly the thing that many of you have in common with me).

Tuesday December 16, 2008

Cold and icy in the Dallas area.

Update my online resumes/profiles.
Received notification from Plaxo that a former co-worker accepted my connection invitation.
12 unique incoming emails from recruiters, plus about 4 additional ones calling.
Watching traffic to one of my websites approach a new daily-visitors high.
Working online with my developer colleague, Derik, towards getting InternetJobs.com launched.
Studied the news about all the bailouts going on for financial institutions, car manufacturers, and the government – most of which have been complete irresponsible; asking myself why I can’t get a bailout.
Give the chickens fresh water since their watering system is frozen.
Talk to an insurance broker about getting quotes for high-deductible low-premium health insurance for my family.
Change a dirty diaper.
Receive a phone call from a local recruiter who just wants to say hi. Must be a slow day in her office and she’s the only one there.
Join my mother-in-law in a phone conversation with the Social Security Administration in regards to her applying for survivor benefits in the wake of the passing of my father-in-law before Thanksgiving. Help her contact other agencies and do other paperwork. Make note to self the importance of having a will.
End the day with no new job or interview set up. Another day.

Wednesday December 17, 2008

Update my online resumes.
11 incoming emails plus 2 incoming phone calls from recruiters by 2:30pm CT.
Told Irfan I am not that interested in a perm position in Cleveland.
Sent my resume to Gopal for a perm in Temple, Texas. Not that I am that interested in living in a place that I really know only as a place between two other places (Dallas and Austin) where you stop for fuel or coffee. But, I do my due diligence, realizing that I am trying only to get an interview.
Make Chai tea with honey and creme. Put on Tchaikovsky Nutcracker.
Check stock prices online.
Check the traffic report and weather.
Harry calls me with an inquiry for a position with the US Government in Washington D.C. I quote him my desired W2 rate, prepared to discount it in light of current economic conditions. I tell him “plus expenses”. He wants “all inclusive”, so I add $22/hr to it to cover weekly travel and accommodations. Harry was very friendly and positive. But I honestly don’t expect to ever hear back from him.
Put Sponge Bob DVD in for the kids.
Reply to Bala who I was messing with the other day. She emailed me with a rediculously low rate for an out of town gig half way across the country: “Low rate. Looking for junior people? Client planning on going out of business soon? Good luck!“ I like to have fun like that at the recruiter’s expense sometimes.
She graciously replied back asking what my compensation expectations were, and I politely answered [without razzing her about not reading them in my online profile where she found me in the first place and they are clearly stated]
Logged into my account at BlockBuster.com and put my mail subscription on hold. Getting ready to hook up my new 2-Wire On Demand video box for my new BlockBuster Access download subscription. If things go well, it will forever change how videos are rented.
I wonder why no recruiters ever called me to work on BlockBuster’s On Demand video download projects. That would have been so cool to work on!
Replied to Krish with my resume for an 8 month ecommerce BA position in Pennsylvania.
Got a reply back from Anil who works with Harry about the US gov’t gig in DC. He said the client would pay my rate but not the $22/hr for my minimal expenses. Since I do not run a charity for governments or corporations, I replied like this:“Probably spent all the money on bailouts Maybe they can hire locally (or find an airlines who gives away free tickets and hotels that charge nothing).Thanks, and good luck!”
Corresponded with Derik on our private project sharing site about launching InternetJobs.com and discussing some of our other projects.
Received an email confirmation of a change to my phone service from ATT that really ticked me off, and immediately called customer service. The price in the work order completion notice was almost double what the original order confirmation had stated, plus there was now a $26 setup fee. The CSR confidently gave an un-explanation about disparity between their online and legacy systems and told me to call back if there still appeared to be problems when I received my next bill.
Azar (his name in his email address) emailed me about a PM position in New Jersey, requiring STRONG HEALTHCARE experience. My online resume shows NO healthcare experience. He then signed his name Azhar. I wonder what other details he fails to see.
5:30 pm. Feels like a busy day. I pour a Sam Adam’s Winter Brew into a nice beer glass.
An email from a recruiter who contacted me about a BA position (or was it a PM?) at SWA. My experience matched the description with only one exception: “RATIONAL SUITE – nonnegotiable”. My response to her was something like this:
“Hi Darlene,

Thank you for relaying the feedback.

I have worked in environments where ClearCase and similar tools are used to manage application configuration and checking in and out software. In general I am very familiar with change management and familiar enough with configuration to properly do my job as a BA or PM.

Though I have not used RequisitePro per se, I have used Borland’s similar product, Caliber Requirements Manager (CaliberRM) at both Sterling Commerce and Symantec. In fact, after my first week of using it at Sterling, I was designated as an Administrator for the appliation as well as a user to manage requirements myself.

So, I would say that I have a pretty good aptitude to figuring stuff out and getting the job done. Honestly, RationalSuite would be just another case of that for me. But it is up to your client to decide whether to proceed. – I would love to have the opportunity to discuss it with them

Thanks again, and all the best!”
Messing around with starting to install my new BlockBuster 2Wire MediaPoint super duper video download rental box. It keeps hanging up. Will try tomorrow.

Thursday December 18, 2008

I update my online resumes and finish my coffee. Dice.com’s captcha code is not case-sensitive. Monster always displays those annoying forced ads where you cannot proceed unless you acknowledge the ad. I would not even use Monster except for the fact that I receive just enough inquiries to make it worth my while.
With my wireless printer off and my notebook disconnected from the network, rebooted the BlockBuster box and got it to connect. But when it came time to register it on their website, blockbuster.com was taking downtime (for several hours).
Got logged into BlockBuster.com, but I see nothing on the website prompting me for the PIN being displayed by the MediaPlayer on my TV. This is a sign of poor user experience design. Likely the reason I was not contacted by a recruiter in the past to work for BlockBuster is that BB did not want to spend the money to get a much-needed business analyst to work with their Information Architect (assuming they even had an IA). I’m also irritated that the BB IVR requires me to push 1 to continue in English. And the recorded wait message tells me that I can handle my business with them online; that’s the reason I’m even calling!
Still on hold with Blockbuster customer service, I see a URL called blockbuster.com/settopbox in the poorly worded blurry text instructions on my ancient non-high-def TV. I try the URL and get “SITE UNAVAILABLE” or an error with some numbers. Customer Service Rep finally comes on and says she can do nothing to help me register my box and that I need to use the website. When I explain that the website is erroring out, she says she knows and that they are doing some updates. When I ask why they are updating their webiste in the middle of the day, she stammers and says she really does not know. I politely refrain from telling her that the reason is because somebody screwed up somewhere in the requirements/design/coding/testing/deployment phase(s) of the SDLC and they are probably trying to back off a series of “enhancements” or fix them since they are taking hard downtime and people are going to NetFlix or MovieLink or somewhere besides BlockBuster at the moment.

With the purchase of the box for $107 plus tax, you get 25 rentals. That is 4 bucks a rental. Then rentals vary in price from $1.99 and up (at least $3.99 for recent releases). My wife is already telling me to ship the box back for a refund and take our online-by-mail rental off of hold for $12/mo unlimited rentals with 1 out at a time and free in-store exchange. Though I love the idea of on-demand video rental, Blockbuster’s download model is more of “on-supply”.

Speaking as a software development professional who loves to see a job done right, I must say that I am less than impressed with Blockbuster today.

See my full review of the Blockbuster’s 2Wire On Demand Media Player at www.ConsumerSafety.com or at CNET.com

Lots of recruiters are calling and emailing me, but I am unable to deal with them right now as I am dealing with insurance companies, Blockbuster, and trying to figure out lunch. 10 incoming career/job emails and 3 phone calls as of 1:50pm CT. Looks like I will have a busy afternoon.
Maybe Blockbuster is not so dumb after all. They have retained me to do user acceptance testing [in their production environment], and are even getting me to pay them!
Received a call from Neeraja about a gig in Austin working for Texas. Quoted a sales-price rate on 1099. Sandeep followed up with a call. Emailed him 3 references.
Blockbuster emailed me confirmation of the ordering and shipping of my set top box. So now I am confused yet again by Blockbuster… Is that communique about the box I received 4 days ago, or did Blockbuster decide I was ordering another one when I logged in this morning to confirm my PIN to register my existing box? I’ll have to visit my bank account to try to find out.
Neeraja called me back from Los Angeles and said she has another req to submit me for in Texas at an even lower rate (fire sale). When I asked her where it was located, she said Texas. Well sister, Texas is a pretty large place with multiple cities; is there a particular place in Texas where the job needs to be done, or is it simply in Texas?
While rebooting my notebook to free up resources an try to get my wireless all-in-one HP Photosmart C7280 scanner and fax working, I do my daily 25 ab crunches and 25 back extensions.
Sanny and Neeraja double team me with phone calls. Sanny asks if I am PMP-certified. I politely answer yes and do not lecture him about how that is why I have PMP after my name on my resume and in my email signature and why I paid big bucks to get the training and certification so I could put those three letters there and thereby have the right to lecture him and other recruiters like him about it. And then I remembered most recruiters and everybody else really are not interested in whether you have a PMP certification except in down markets like this where they can use it as an excuse to offer you a lower rate if you don’t have one; and then offer you a lower rate anyway.
Sanny and Neerja get Veejay in on the action. We are having connection problems and end up talking over each other due to a 5 second lag. They want to know if I am interested in being submited for a gig with a “financial institution” in the Dallas area. When I ask who the client is, VJ says he will tell me after I am submitted. But I insist that he is not authorized to submit me for any position until I know who the client is. We go ’round like this for few iterations until my annoyance becomes highly evident in my tone of voice and tell him to forget working with me if he won’t inform me of the client identity. As I prepare to hang up he says “alright, alright” and then spills the beans. As I feared, it was a mortgage lender – the kind of gigantic proportions that having had government oversight is now getting government bailouts and whose CEO had to return $23 million of his compensation but still was on the President-elect’s finance committee. My concern was that it might have been Countrywide Mortgage or EMC Mortgage (formerly owned by the former company Bear Stearns), both of whom I worked for and from both of whom I had the most unpleasant of experiences in the most hostile of environments. Neeraja asked “so you don’t like “F-M”?” And I replied, “I don’t like mortgage companies – period.” I don’t know whether it was the language barrier, the phone connection, her being a junior recruiter, or what, but she seemed to have difficulty understanding my meaning.
Create a new user account at www.twitter.com.
Susan calls and from my resume she can tell I am a wonderful candidate and mentions that she actually read my note to recruiters about helping them get good requirements… …but any reqs I might be qualified for are closed and, well, maybe I could come down and meet her and her team and, well, get ready, and, uh, maybe have coffee or donuts or something… OK? No thanks Susie, ’cause I only meet for open reqs and a confirmed interview. But nice pickup line though. Good day.
5pm: Ashek calls in regards to a Program Manager position in Austin. Seeing his email of having managed several projects of over $20 million, I tell him I am not the candidate they are looking for.
A little time spent coordinating with Derik about Internet Jobs and the other websites.
5:20pm CT, and I still have 17 unopened emails from recruiters today. Most days I work hard to respond immediately to each inquiry, but some days like today I batch them, and will get to them this evening.
Watching The Last Sin Eater with my family.

Friday December 19, 2008

Did not work my job hunting emails last night. Instead I played around in twitter – which is a form of professional marketing and part of the career growth strategy and thereby qualifies occasionally as a job hunting activity.

Responding to Annette that I do come with my own notebook and software.
Read this article in the WSJ about finding work (found link in twitter). It’s fine for some, but not really my style personally. However, I always encourage others to find their own style because that is where you will do your best.
Passing on some positions like these: a perm position for an Endeca developer in NYC; ATG Commerce Lead in Bangalore, India.
Responding with my resume to some that I don’t really want: A BA in NJ for 6mo (Rekah emails back saying client is looking for candidates with recent PeopleSoft skills. OK Rekah, if I don’t fit the bill, then why did you contact me in the first place?).
Reading Ephesians 5.

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