[sclug] Any work going?

[Matthew Browning]

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On Thursday 29 May 2003 11:29, martin summers wrote:
[ snip ]
> One last point worthy of note - Job hunting is extremely time
> consuming. To have any degree of success at the moment, I think it
> would be difficult to find a job while you are currently working -
> unless your current employer lets you have a free reign with your
> time and the phone calls you receive, or you get very lucky ! This is
> especially true if you are thinking of moving into a job which
> utilises skills you would *like* to use and develop, rather than
> skills you already have.
>

I came to the end of a contract this time last year and found a good[1] 
job in less than a month.  Here's how I did it, my views are subjective 
and based solely upon my own experience so YMMV:

i. Do not consider approaching agencies - therein lies[2] madness.

ii. Get a good CV; make sure it is all true; keep it short; prepare it 
in (X)HTML *and* MS Word format (I know it hurts but about 90% of 
people cannot read anything else).

iii. Consult yell.com and formulate your own database of *every* 
company you think might possibly employ you. This will take you about a 
day.

iv. Write a Perl script which sends your CV and a covering letter to 
every company in your database.  A week later run the script again to 
send a kind of chase-up message.  I am not kidding.

v. Go to interview with laptop, show off some code (or whatever you 
do), smile a lot.

This methodology secured me three interviews, none of which were from 
companies that were advertising positions.  I was offered two jobs and 
selected the one I thought would be the most fun.

I have since been in the position of considering new candidates and it 
is my (again, entirely subjective) opinion that the two main mistakes 
people commonly make are:

i. Not seeming particularly interested.
ii. Vastly exaggerating their skill-set and not then being able to back 
up their claims ( almost everyone seems to put `Expertise in C/C++, 
Assembler' - come off it! )

Some interesting views/approaches on recruitment may be found browsing 
Guy Macon's website.  I particularly like this bit:

http://www.guymacon.com/FAQ/INDEX.HTM


Matthew Browning

[1] `Good' as in `doing what I want to do, using Debian'.
[2] This word carefully chosen ;)
- -- 
http://matthewb.org/public_key.txt


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