It's nice to be so loved (or: the world of IT is insane!)

[Dimwhit]

Maybe I'm just too much of a snob. I wouldn't want to live in any of those places. I could see someone from India being a better asset to a recruiter in that regard than an American. Because someone from Bangladesh wouldn't know that Boise is a festering wasteland of boredom*.

* I've never been to Boise, so it might be the greatest city on earth, so I apologize to anyone from Boise if I've offended you.

It's a good thing you put that note there, or I'd have to lay a whoopin' on you!

For the record, Boise is actually a great place to live. Been here 7 years and never want to leave.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I don't know of any consulting firm that hires people without any experience. Though there may be some, I doubt it. Most colleges work with graduates and act as facilitators for prospective employers, so if you're a recent graduate, I would check into what kinds of contacts your college has to help you land a job.

Actually, quite a few do. The company I work for (Accenture) is probably the biggest consulting firm, and we hire a lot of recent grads. It's competitive, but if you have the right skill set, you can get in.

 

[fett527]

OK. here's two different routes into the IT world. My route and my brother's. This may help people in either situation on how to get work experience.

Me:

Worked in retail/entertainment while starting Community College as I had no idea what I wanted to do. Dabbled in this and that and eventually stopped school and was in retail management for about 4.5 years. Had a friend who worked in IT and he started teaching me Windows/PC basics and I felt I had an interest and aptitude for it (this was mid-late '98). I researched the best options for me and decided since I was going from 0 knowledge I needed some kind of basis for knowledge. I decided that certification was the best route as it actually taught the hands-on stuff I was interested in. I did not want to go the boot camp route and go the "paper" MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) road. I decided on a technical/business college and took actual college coursework that taught the MS official curriculum and was taught by MCTs (Microsoft Certified Trainers) that worked in the industry. This way I received real-world application as well as what I needed for the cert test. I also knew that getting a job in the industry was critical. I did this by getting A+ certified (after my intro hardware classes) and putting out resumes. A lot of resumes. I also went to job fairs whenever they came up. I did get a job as a PC tech from a job fair (at the business college I was attending) and took a pay cut to get started (I knew I would have to do this and my wife and I prepared for it). I will guarantee that I got that job due in large part to having work experience in addition to the certification- very important! I moved on from that job and have now been working as a Network Administrator responsible for all computer/networking/telecom for my company's US office.

I'll split my brother into a different post.

 

[fett527]

My brother:

He attended Cedarville University and he knew technology was what he wanted to be involved with. He went the MIS degree route. The most important things he did were summer jobs and internships. He took summer jobs building PCs at small, local system builders. When those ran out he worked at Best Buy in the computer department selling PCs (he liked this as a college student since he could use the discount to goodies). He then took an internship (he worked closely with his counselor on finding the right company) with a company in Cincinnati in their IT department working mostly with network hardware. He decided he liked it and worked hard on cultivating the relationship. He had to go back to Best Buy after he graduated, but he began working for the company he interned with in less than a year as his former boss worked hard to make sure to get him in the first position he had available. I was floored by his starting salary too.

So, there are ways. Just have to find what works for you.

 

[RangerWickett]

What's your skillset again, Wick? I work for Fulton County Gov't, and despite the hiring freeze, we have craploads of jobs open that pay decently, have better benefits than most private businesses in Georgia, and many of them count your college as 4 years of experience.

If you haven't already, go to www.co.fulton.ga.us and check it out.

I went there and applied for a metric ****-ton of library jobs, which is where my experience lies. That was a month ago, and I haven't heard back. Of course, I did the online application, which, I dunno, might have been a mistake. Maybe actual paper has a better chance of getting their attention.

I don't suppose you have any contacts who can check on the status of my application? In particular, there was one, the Library Senior Specialist position. Thanks.

 

[der_kluge]

I think resumes filled out online get sent right into file 13. While I suppose it can yield results, I've never seen it be effective.

 

[SWBaxter]

I've been looking around for jobs in my field (psychology), not actively seeking a job, but testing the waters so I know what to expect. The only obstacles are those damnable "3+ years work experience required" even for entry-level stuff. Now, my question to you folks with experience in this sort of thing is what the heck are they asking here? Do they want the experience in that specific career field, or just work experience I.E. had a job for 3 years?

A lot of companies, when they advertise a job publically, put down a dream list of qualifications and don't actually expect to hire somebody with all of the qualfications (generally because they're not offering enough money to do so). If they list five separate qualifications, they'll hope to hire somebody with four of them, and will settle for three. Work experience is usually the softest of the qualifications listed, though it depends on field.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

I think resumes filled out online get sent right into file 13. While I suppose it can yield results, I've never seen it be effective.

For general postings, and for cold application resumes, I'd agree. For active hiring in IT, I actually have gotten more interviews from online applications and e-resumes than from paper. It's just a question of how the field handles the technology, I think.

For larger organizations, like the one RW is talking about, the system probably forwards the resume to some sort of recruiter or screener, who looks it over so see if it meets whatever list of qualifications were given to them. Said list was given to them by the hiring department, it's likely the screen doesn't have the foggiest idea what half the stuff on the resume is. (Side note on the "3 out of 5" qualifications thing- I think that's true if the department is doing the hiring directly. If they're using a screener like I'm talking about, the screener will apply pretty much all the criteria, since that's what they're job is. They might let stuff slide if there's not many applicants, but we all know that ain't the case these days).

Anyhow, the resume has to go through a couple of steps to get in front of anyone who makes and sort of decision about it, so there's a good chance that it does get trashed for being a month short of required experience, or something equally petty. In this case, paper probably would be better- you at least force the recruiter to take the time to toss it in the bin, instead of just hitting the delete key on the keyboard.

Is anyone here involved with the HR side of IT? I don't mean to give offense, but man- there needs to be some sort of standard for recruiting, or something. Most of the jobs I've interviewed for have had vague and wildly inaccurate specs or qualifications in the list. Often, even with prior research, I couldn't entirely figure out what they wanted.

I had one prospect, for example, looked like it would be perfect- small company, entry level, close to where I lived. All they had advertised for a skillset was Java, so I just thought it'd be basic stuff like writing routine functions, supporting what the main designers were doing, etc. Then, at the interview, I found out that they didn't really use Java so much except as a shell to do a ton of networking and system connections stuff, that had packages in Java but also had their own entirely seperate skillsets. So, basically, they wanted someone who could do that, with a little bit of Java to hook it altogether.

My last interview was for a university department in charge of multimedia tech, wiring up classrooms, that sort of thing. Which sounded cool, especially since I thought I was interviewing for what would basically be an AV support job, and it turned out that had all this innovative stuff to play with. The job specified a HS degree only (which was sort of odd for what they wanted, my guess is they were looking to keep the pay low), and I knew both people in the department and had a friend in the University HR who had submitted me for the job. I thought I was a shoe-in, but it still went to someone with tons of experience. The way things are, entry level jobs are out there, but you just can't compete with someone else who's lost their job of 12 years, and is also looking for an entry level job because it's all they can find.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Not sure what you mean by the "Best Buy route". I didn't mention Best Buy anywhere, and no, I wouldn't recommend that at all, in fact I'd steer away from that if I were you.

I did mean Circuit City, sorry. And yeah, that's what I was wondering, if you were talking about the stores themselves or the corporate offices. And no, repairing computers in a retail chain doesn't sound all that appealing, but neither does spending the next few years in what's basically a typist job. At any rate, I'm not looking to move, so that's out for now.

Programming what what I wanted to do beginning the degree, but as you say it's sort of the bottom rung. From my perspective, it looked like I'd be better off going into some kind of admin side of things, since that's less likely to be shut down or outsourced. Essentially I'm pretty open to what I get, I just don't want something that's mindlessly repetitive. One problem is that the university coursework I had (at UM in Columbia, incidentally) was pretty broad, and also somewhat outdated- they were still teaching C as the prime language when I went there, for example (they were just getting ready to switch to Java). I haven't seen much jobs for C at all, everything seems to be Java (which I made sure to take classes in as well) or .NET (which was just a vague rumor as far as the university was concerned). Then there was some database (Oracle SQL), a lot of web design, some development process classes, and that was about it. It was really a "CS light" degree, closer to an MIS I suppose, but they didn't really have that distinction.

At any rate, I guess I'll just have to keep on chugging. I had a call from a recruiter on my machine when I got home today, have to call him tomorrow and see what's up. It's a referral from another recruiter who had my resume, so it could be something legit (she'd told me about a potential opening recently) or it could just be a stab in the dark like you've been talking about.

Thanks for the tips, btw.

 

[Felon]

I went there and applied for a metric ****-ton of library jobs, which is where my experience lies. That was a month ago, and I haven't heard back. Of course, I did the online application, which, I dunno, might have been a mistake. Maybe actual paper has a better chance of getting their attention.

Paper's better, but no big whoop. If the closing date was a month ago or less, then you will not hear back for a good three months at least.

Here's the big secret trick to scoring well: the Fulton County personnel department is flooded with tens of thousands of applications at any given time, and the people going over those applications are generally folks who may not even have anything more than a high-school education themselves. All they look for are how your years of experience stack up against the minimum years stated on the position description. Again, if the description says you only need a high-school degree, then a BA counts as 4 years of qualifying experience (as long as the degree is clearly in a related field).

Equally essential is making sure you use the exact verbage that's used in the position description. If a description says, for instance, "maintained records using library tracking software", then you state exactly that. Don't say you used some specific software package and assume they'll know to make the association because you're talking about the world's most prominent library tracking software. They won't know; the people qualfied to know what you're talking about can't possibly go through all of the applications and still do their job.

Bear those things in mind, apply for every damn position you are remotely interested in, and remind yourself constantly that the application is not a resume. Initially, you're just trying to make the interview list. The interview panel is made up the guys who know what skillset is needed for the position, and that's where you try to impress people with lots of insider buzz words.

And as awkward as it is to say this, I'd be doing a disservice if I didn't mention that if you arre a minority, stating that does help you make the list.

I don't suppose you have any contacts who can check on the status of my application? In particular, there was one, the Library Senior Specialist position. Thanks.

You can find out easily enough by calling the personnel department and asking if they've drawn up a list yet. 404-730-4000.