[OT] Finally Employed!!!
- Thread starter Psychotic Dreamer
- Start date
Psychotic Dreamer
First Post
Personally I love doing tech support. It can be frustrating at times, but all in all it's very rewarding work. Makes me feel good to help people. 
Not to mention any work after over a year and a half out of work. 
Not to mention any work after over a year and a half out of work. Congratulations on the job!
I'm still in the unemployed catagory myself. Lost my job back in October when my company got bought out and my position was "consolidated."
It was a sweet deal too. Great boss, nice pay, great co-workers, fresh made food and a stir fry chef.
Best things were the people in my group specifically and the MP3 server.
As you might be able to guess I'm in IT.
Fortunately it wasn't anything personal or anything that had to do with my performance. Hell my boss was damn near in tears when he told me the news which was pretty touching really. All the managment looked like hell.
But I digress, frequently. Again congrats on having more income, something productive to do, and somewhere to go during the day that doesn't involve job hunting.
I'm still in the unemployed catagory myself. Lost my job back in October when my company got bought out and my position was "consolidated."
It was a sweet deal too. Great boss, nice pay, great co-workers, fresh made food and a stir fry chef.
Best things were the people in my group specifically and the MP3 server.
As you might be able to guess I'm in IT.
Fortunately it wasn't anything personal or anything that had to do with my performance. Hell my boss was damn near in tears when he told me the news which was pretty touching really. All the managment looked like hell.
But I digress, frequently. Again congrats on having more income, something productive to do, and somewhere to go during the day that doesn't involve job hunting.
more rant
sorry, forgot to congratulate you.
Congratulations!
no, really, it is tough out there.
anyway,
The personality thing here is a final type of test, they first have to get by me, a combination of tech interview and whether or not I want to work with them. no one gets to move on that I don't personally feel would work out in the position. First and foremost, it is the skills, second it is their ability to have a conversation, and their personality, as this postion will have them interfacing with people on a daily basis.
Where my main problem is, not only with people who are completely 'untrained' but mostly with those who where trained at 'Chubb' and 'Devry' and their ilk. Chubb has a good programing dept from what I understand, but it is their desktop support and network classes that are truly horrible. of the average of twenty people that are in a given class, an average 15 of which have not previously opened a machine, know DOS commands, etc... yet after a few months, Chubb gets them to believe that they should be making 40k a year, with an education that I know is woefully inadequate. I know employers who literally throw resumes with the 'Education: Chubb' on them in the garbage immediately and don't bother even looking at the resume. Devry having a longer course is nicer, but they dwell in the wrong areas, there is a saying around here about how to tell a fresh devry grad on his first day..... "He is the one that takes the multi-meter with him to find out why the printer isn't working".
Here I sit with over a hundred resumes, people willing to move from california, pennsylvania, new mexico, and from farther areas of NJ/NY. A good chunk not worth even calling. 90% of them need a lesson in how to build a resume, some need spellchecking. ....... SPELLCHECKING!!!!
Lies abound, I had one person that enfuriated me so much I ripped their resume up before their eyes, the lies where so thick.
Don't say you know Unix if you don't know what CHMOD is. (not that we here use unix at all, but I was pleasently suprised by that remark on someones resume, and when they didn't know, I had to do more digging to find out even more lies, and finally excuse them from the interview)
I see the 'template' resumes, the resumes put together by head hunters, by Chubb and Devry, full of 'watch word' skills. Resumes put together seemingly by the applicants children, some with seemingly no thought as to how the information is actually presented. If you need a second page for goodness sake use a second page, don't drop to a six point font, don't just put two or three lines at the top of the second page either.
I find that I have a 'golden carrot' of a position, the kind I know people salivate over, sure the pay isn't great, and is the only downfall of the thing, but after two years you would be so skilled that you could realistically make more than double, heck the position title I am willing to change to whatever they want upon their departure(as long as I feel they warrant that title of course).
aaaarrrrgh
RX
sorry, forgot to congratulate you.
Congratulations!
no, really, it is tough out there.
anyway,
The personality thing here is a final type of test, they first have to get by me, a combination of tech interview and whether or not I want to work with them. no one gets to move on that I don't personally feel would work out in the position. First and foremost, it is the skills, second it is their ability to have a conversation, and their personality, as this postion will have them interfacing with people on a daily basis.
Where my main problem is, not only with people who are completely 'untrained' but mostly with those who where trained at 'Chubb' and 'Devry' and their ilk. Chubb has a good programing dept from what I understand, but it is their desktop support and network classes that are truly horrible. of the average of twenty people that are in a given class, an average 15 of which have not previously opened a machine, know DOS commands, etc... yet after a few months, Chubb gets them to believe that they should be making 40k a year, with an education that I know is woefully inadequate. I know employers who literally throw resumes with the 'Education: Chubb' on them in the garbage immediately and don't bother even looking at the resume. Devry having a longer course is nicer, but they dwell in the wrong areas, there is a saying around here about how to tell a fresh devry grad on his first day..... "He is the one that takes the multi-meter with him to find out why the printer isn't working".
Here I sit with over a hundred resumes, people willing to move from california, pennsylvania, new mexico, and from farther areas of NJ/NY. A good chunk not worth even calling. 90% of them need a lesson in how to build a resume, some need spellchecking. ....... SPELLCHECKING!!!!
Lies abound, I had one person that enfuriated me so much I ripped their resume up before their eyes, the lies where so thick.
Don't say you know Unix if you don't know what CHMOD is. (not that we here use unix at all, but I was pleasently suprised by that remark on someones resume, and when they didn't know, I had to do more digging to find out even more lies, and finally excuse them from the interview)
I see the 'template' resumes, the resumes put together by head hunters, by Chubb and Devry, full of 'watch word' skills. Resumes put together seemingly by the applicants children, some with seemingly no thought as to how the information is actually presented. If you need a second page for goodness sake use a second page, don't drop to a six point font, don't just put two or three lines at the top of the second page either.
I find that I have a 'golden carrot' of a position, the kind I know people salivate over, sure the pay isn't great, and is the only downfall of the thing, but after two years you would be so skilled that you could realistically make more than double, heck the position title I am willing to change to whatever they want upon their departure(as long as I feel they warrant that title of course).
aaaarrrrgh
RX
Squire James
Explorer
EDIT - Here I did up this big, steam-blowing rant about myself, and I forget to Congratulate the One that Escaped! Bad, James, really bad! Well, Congratulations!
WARNING: Rant from person good at work, baaad at job hunting! At least I didn't get my training from anyone calling themselves Chubb...
My IT pain's running 14 months now, with 0 interviews during that time. I've had bad times before, but this complete lack of interviews puzzles me. I'm starting to think that:
(1) Online job applications are 100% worthless - they're going to someone's /dev/null (see, I know UNIX!). Except the people trying to sell you resume/interview books who, of course, will spot your online resume within a week of posting it.
(2) My resume is insufficient to breach the "HR Wall". Currently I'm not sure if it's my resume, or if HR has been ordered to build extraordinarily high walls lately. I've noticed many job ads have moved all their "plusses" into their "requireds". I wonder how many companies consider that queries with 8-10 AND's in them tend to come up empty.
(3) I'm competing with 5,000+ ex-Avaya employees (fortunately not including my friend Scott, whose programming ability humbles me).
(4) It's a really, really good thing I saved up $20K just in case something like this would happen!
My last two jobs both came "out of the blue", from a totally unexpected direction (one from a resume delivered to a guard shack outside the company, one from a contracting firm who had a 2.5 year-old resume). While I'd like to think I'm a good worker any sane IT employer would want, I'll accept luck too!
WARNING: Rant from person good at work, baaad at job hunting! At least I didn't get my training from anyone calling themselves Chubb...
My IT pain's running 14 months now, with 0 interviews during that time. I've had bad times before, but this complete lack of interviews puzzles me. I'm starting to think that:
(1) Online job applications are 100% worthless - they're going to someone's /dev/null (see, I know UNIX!). Except the people trying to sell you resume/interview books who, of course, will spot your online resume within a week of posting it.
(2) My resume is insufficient to breach the "HR Wall". Currently I'm not sure if it's my resume, or if HR has been ordered to build extraordinarily high walls lately. I've noticed many job ads have moved all their "plusses" into their "requireds". I wonder how many companies consider that queries with 8-10 AND's in them tend to come up empty.
(3) I'm competing with 5,000+ ex-Avaya employees (fortunately not including my friend Scott, whose programming ability humbles me).
(4) It's a really, really good thing I saved up $20K just in case something like this would happen!
My last two jobs both came "out of the blue", from a totally unexpected direction (one from a resume delivered to a guard shack outside the company, one from a contracting firm who had a 2.5 year-old resume). While I'd like to think I'm a good worker any sane IT employer would want, I'll accept luck too!
Last edited:
Dagger75
Epic Commoner
Micar Sin said:Not sure if congratulations or condolences are really appropriate
I work tech support for a major restaurant chain, and people who work with them everyday have no idea how to do the simplest things... but any way, congrats and I hope you enjoy it.. at least for awhile
Same here, help desk for a MAJOR fast food company. These people can barely read and they want me do help them through DOS and Unix commands.
I think Helpdesk is the first level of Hell.
Sorry for hijack, back to regurally posted congrats on getting employed
PS Congrats
Psychotic Dreamer said:Well after about a year and half I have finally found work doing Help Desk work at an ISP. To say I am happy does not even begin to describe how I feel right now. I know I probbaly shouldn't be posting this, but I just had to share my good news with everyone out there.
I hope things go well for everyone out there that is looking for work. I know I was honestly starting to wonder if I would find work. Then a place I had sent my resume to about 6 months ago called... and well as they say the rest is about to become history.
Congartualtions!
I'll bet your FLGS will be very happy
Re: more rant
Good heavens. I know what CHMOD and a fair number of other basic UNIX commands are, but I still wouldn't dream of putting UNIX on my resume. How did those people come to think they could actually fake their way through a technical interview, not to mention the first week of the job?
Good luck, RX. And congratulations, PD!
RingXero said:
Good heavens. I know what CHMOD and a fair number of other basic UNIX commands are, but I still wouldn't dream of putting UNIX on my resume. How did those people come to think they could actually fake their way through a technical interview, not to mention the first week of the job?
Good luck, RX. And congratulations, PD!
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