Looking back

I've completed three weeks at the gig at OMB (at gotten paid for one of them!) and things are still going well.

I've had some time to reflect on the experience of finding a job. It's something that few people do often. I hadn't done it for over nineteen years.

Some thoughts:

If you have a job, it's easy to become complacent. It's also easy to think that your skills are up-to-date. The corporate process for evaluation is not always a good indicator of your skills. Your company has its technology and culture. Other companies have different technologies and cultures. What works in one company does not necessarily work in others.

When looking for a job, optimism helps. So does discipline.

I split my time between three major tasks: job search, new technical skills, and networking. The job search consisted of the traditional things: posting my resume on job sites, talking with recruiters, and going on interviews. The networking consisted of meeting people, from former co-workers to local user groups.

I revised my resume many times. Seventeen. (I kept count.) It took longer than I expected to pull together a list of my responsibilities and accomplishments and mix in the technologies that I used.

Keeping my normal routine helped. I woke at the usual time, ate at the usual times, and stayed focused on the "work" of finding a position. Having no television (I have no cable TV and the television is an old analog-TV) made the task easier. I also set up a fake commute to motivate me to get out of bed. The fake commute was nothing more than a walk to the light rail, a short ride of about three stops, and then a walk back home. But it was enough to keep me in the "I have to get up and catch the train" mindset.

Advertising helps. Not advertising in the sense of purchasing air time or magazine pages, but other types. I used two: job-board freshness and e-mails to recruiters. The e-mails are easy: I picked the four or five best recruiters and sent them e-mails of my accomplishments. (This is where learning new tech is helpful.) I sent the e-mails twice a month: not too frequent to be a pain but frequent enough to keep me in their mind.

For job boards, I used a different form of advertising: I kept my resume up to date. I set up a weekly plan to visit the different job boards (dice.com on Monday, monster.com on Tuesday...) and updated my profile and resume. Sometimes it was as trivial as adding a space or blank line; other times I would make corrections or add new items. The point was to keep my "last updated" date on the web site recent. Recruiters who searched by "show me the latest" would have a better chance of seeing my resume.

I picked the best recruiters and worked with them. I worked with other recruiters, too. At first, I had no idea of a recruiter's skills. After working with them I could group them into three categories: Recruiters, placers, and head-hunters.

Head-hunters are my least favorite. They do very little to learn about the candidate or the positions they have. They perform a simple keyword match against my resume and their jobs and then call me to learn my interest. Their conversations are brief and to the point, usually "I have a position with ${skill} in ${city}, are you interested and what is your rate?"

Placers are better than head-hunters. They ask questions about one's skills and background. They take some time to get to know the candidate. They have a decent understanding of the position. Often they will have placed other people at the same company. But they work on a position, and once it's filled, don't bother to talk with you.

Recruiters (as I use the term) work harder than head-hunters and placers. They know quite a bit about the hiring company. They want to learn about the candidate. Often they require an in-person interview before presenting the candidate. They work with multiple companies and multiple positions. They can suggest alternative positions, and will even tell a candidate that they are not a good fit for some positions.

I don't know for certain but I expect that recruiters have a better "hit rate" with qualified candidates than the others. Which means that hiring companies, if they are interested in a long-term match, should do better with recruiters than with placers or head-hunters. Candidates should do better, too.