[Gllug] How do they manage it? (IT recruitment agencies)

[Lee Blackwell]

> Nooooooo!!!!!!!!!! I've been wanting to find an agency like this for
> ages. I really pisses me off that agencies don't understand that Unix
> is Unix, and
Yeesssss!!!! After I'd specifically stated that I wanted Solaris work,
then thats what I expect to be contacted about, not AIX.

Even during the phone call I explained that I wanted Solaris work and the
guy just didn't listen.

If you think BryteOne can help you then give them a call.  However, I'm
pretty sure that the guy I talked to didn't understand the subtle
differences between different flavours of *nix, and was just trying to get
some poor sucker to have their CV sent over in the hope that the agency
will eventually fill the role and get their commision.

> if you know Solaris, the jump to AIX is pretty insignificant at the
> end of the day,
I disagree again, sort of.  I'm damned sure that any Unix person that has
experience of one or more *nix OS's couldn't just jump into Solaris at the
required level.  I'm sure he/she could get started, look after the basic
system, but would an AIX person know how to fine tune a Solaris kernel to
extract the best performance for an Oracle database? Or Domino server?
(etc...)  This applies to any jump from one flavour to another.

And I also feel that at the higher end of the *nix sysadmin market, they
want someone to do rather more than boot the system, add users or take
care of the backups.  This requires a greater understanding of whatever
flavour, and one of the reasons these companies treat any kind of
certification as a bonus (aka passport to an interview).

I'm sure I could turn my hand to AIX or HPUX etc, but it would take a
short while to get up to speed and learn the in's and out's of a
particular OS (not to mention processors, expansion, RAID arrays etc)

The vast majority of companies require someone to fill their vacancy
quickly, and hit the ground running, rather than faff about spending time
getting used to the OS.  This is why the hiring firm lays down specific
requirements for their candidates.

It's happened in my team.  We needed a Solaris person, but with the dross
that came through the door, we went to the list of CV's initially
rejected.  In the end we hired a guy who was a whizz on HPUX, but largely
unexperienced with Solaris.  It's taken us 6 months to get him up to
speed, but at now he can be trusted to get the job done and is a valuable
team member (sorry, slipped into corporate speak then...)

If we'd managed to hire a Solaris person in the first place, we'd have the
benefit of 6 months extra productivity.

> Irix, and yet last time I was looking for a job, I was turned down
> because I didn't have any Irix experience. The fact that I've used
> SunOS, Solaris, Linux, BSD, AIX, HP/UX, Tru64, DG/UX, Dynix/PTX,
> Ultrix, Bull BOS, Xenix, SCO, and even fscking Coherent doesn't seem
[snip]
> *some* jobs, like partioning an E10K server, I can see the need for
> specific experience, but for general Unix admin, it's *really* not
> necessary.
I see your point there.  Of course, these companies are looking for that
experience for the reason mentioned above.  What they fail to realise that
there aren't *that* many people out there with E10K experience.  I mean, I
know my Solaris, but the closest I've got to an E10K was when I visited HQ
and stood next to it for a picture! (Hmmm I think that qualifies me as a
geek, right?)

In that situation, I can only suggest not answering the agency with a "no,
I've not got that experience", but baffling them with some techno
bullshit, enough to get your CV sent over to the hiring company.

>     for our fscking Cisco "expert" to fix his fscking network so I can
<flame bait>
I could start on about how great 3com kit in... but I'll leave that to the
marketing boys ;-)
</flame bait>


Lee



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