Awhile back Dhaval (I believe) asked me for some thoughts about going through the hiring process during this economic crisis. I had been working for a small consulting development company, and that job folded up around the end of November. Given the holidays my search didn't really begin in earnest until Jan 1. I did look in December, but there just wasn't much happening.
I don't think I carried away many insights from the process, but there are a couple of things worth mentioning.
The obvious one is that the competition is much tougher. In my career I've had the experience of getting most of the jobs that I am a fit for after one day of interviewing, and sometimes after one interview. For the first month and a half I sent out resumes to opportunities located on Dice or Monster at a rate of 3-5 a day. If I got any reply at all it was usually to find out that the job paid $45/hour, or was 100 miles away. I got to the offer point on one job with a body shop only to be informed that I had to spend the first 6-8 weeks in Arizona. For the most part I didn't hear anything back.
Moreover I soon realized that on Dice, at least, I saw the same recruiters posting the same positions over and over again for weeks. Hundreds of them. In some cases these were positions I was a marginally-overqualified fit for, but I wasn't getting contacts back. I came to the conclusion that they were getting from my resume that I wouldn't work for what they could pay.
That was one class of opportunity. The other were the more "serious" jobs, jobs where you could tell they needed a strong background, good mind, good comm. skills, experience and judgement, etc. But, almost all of these jobs were for very specific skill sets. Don't apply if you don't know IBM MQ. Don't apply without Homeland Security experience in image processing and perimeter surveilance (I actually saw that one). I went after this one C++/Java job to create a web crawler. It sounded fun, but they would only talk to people who had recently written a web crawler. That posting stayed on Dice for weeks and weeks.
I even thought about pursuing more management-oriented opportunities, as much as I hate it, but I needn't have worried: there were almost no opportunities of that kind to consider. A project manager friend of mine that was let go at the same time I was is still looking.
Which led to my strategy shift. I decided that I had let my skills become too generic. I was competing with the fat and cheap part of the market. Over most of my career I've prospered by knowing the things that are beginning to take root, that other people don't know yet, and I had let that get away from me. I decided to focus more on what was a current interest anyway: Silverlight and WPF, and really dive in. I started participating on the MS Silverlight forums, and blogging about Silverlight and WPF topics. I started doing demo apps and posting them too. I established an open source Google search library on Codeplex.
All of this was intended to raise my profile in areas where I felt I would have less competition. All the while I continued to cruise Dice three times a week, and a couple of months into it I saw a posting for a telecommute opportunity. Sr. .NET dev/architect. I sent my resume and received an email back a couple of hours later. I learned they were a small company, in business 15 years, with a strong book of work, and completely virtual. After three interviews, total about 5 hours, including analysis of some written code examples and questions, they made me an offer.
I'm now working on the back end of a large production Silverlight 2 application for a major media company, from my home, for slightly more money than I was making previously (when OT opportunities are accounted for).
The strong lesson for me was: specialize in the hard stuff, and make sure you put a public face on it. I learned later that my Silverlight work, the quality of the demos, my blog posts, and my open source project all played a role in setting me apart from two other candidates that were under serious consideration. So far I am very much enjoying the job, and glad I beat the poor bastards out. But it was touch and go there for awhile. Things are definitely tough, especially if your title is "generic cube dwelling web app developer". The most important thing is to find some way to distinguish yourself from the pack.
I don't think I carried away many insights from the process, but there are a couple of things worth mentioning.
The obvious one is that the competition is much tougher. In my career I've had the experience of getting most of the jobs that I am a fit for after one day of interviewing, and sometimes after one interview. For the first month and a half I sent out resumes to opportunities located on Dice or Monster at a rate of 3-5 a day. If I got any reply at all it was usually to find out that the job paid $45/hour, or was 100 miles away. I got to the offer point on one job with a body shop only to be informed that I had to spend the first 6-8 weeks in Arizona. For the most part I didn't hear anything back.
Moreover I soon realized that on Dice, at least, I saw the same recruiters posting the same positions over and over again for weeks. Hundreds of them. In some cases these were positions I was a marginally-overqualified fit for, but I wasn't getting contacts back. I came to the conclusion that they were getting from my resume that I wouldn't work for what they could pay.
That was one class of opportunity. The other were the more "serious" jobs, jobs where you could tell they needed a strong background, good mind, good comm. skills, experience and judgement, etc. But, almost all of these jobs were for very specific skill sets. Don't apply if you don't know IBM MQ. Don't apply without Homeland Security experience in image processing and perimeter surveilance (I actually saw that one). I went after this one C++/Java job to create a web crawler. It sounded fun, but they would only talk to people who had recently written a web crawler. That posting stayed on Dice for weeks and weeks.
I even thought about pursuing more management-oriented opportunities, as much as I hate it, but I needn't have worried: there were almost no opportunities of that kind to consider. A project manager friend of mine that was let go at the same time I was is still looking.
Which led to my strategy shift. I decided that I had let my skills become too generic. I was competing with the fat and cheap part of the market. Over most of my career I've prospered by knowing the things that are beginning to take root, that other people don't know yet, and I had let that get away from me. I decided to focus more on what was a current interest anyway: Silverlight and WPF, and really dive in. I started participating on the MS Silverlight forums, and blogging about Silverlight and WPF topics. I started doing demo apps and posting them too. I established an open source Google search library on Codeplex.
All of this was intended to raise my profile in areas where I felt I would have less competition. All the while I continued to cruise Dice three times a week, and a couple of months into it I saw a posting for a telecommute opportunity. Sr. .NET dev/architect. I sent my resume and received an email back a couple of hours later. I learned they were a small company, in business 15 years, with a strong book of work, and completely virtual. After three interviews, total about 5 hours, including analysis of some written code examples and questions, they made me an offer.
I'm now working on the back end of a large production Silverlight 2 application for a major media company, from my home, for slightly more money than I was making previously (when OT opportunities are accounted for).
The strong lesson for me was: specialize in the hard stuff, and make sure you put a public face on it. I learned later that my Silverlight work, the quality of the demos, my blog posts, and my open source project all played a role in setting me apart from two other candidates that were under serious consideration. So far I am very much enjoying the job, and glad I beat the poor bastards out. But it was touch and go there for awhile. Things are definitely tough, especially if your title is "generic cube dwelling web app developer". The most important thing is to find some way to distinguish yourself from the pack.
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