[GRLUG] Job searches - any good tips?

[Philip J. Robar]

On Mar 14, 2011, at 12:49 PM, Rob Steenwyk wrote:

> I am currently employed, but in the interest of keeping my options open have been looking around for any open Sys Admin position in West Michigan. Haven't had much luck. I've been looking on Craigslist, Dice.com and the classifieds in the GR Press.

Most job seeking related articles I've read say that only about 10% of positions in any field are filled via the big sites like Monster, Dice, etc. In Silicon Valley, where I'm from, it's who you know (including lists and user groups like this one. There's been a hand full of announcements, you might want to check the archives.), Craig's List, jobs posted by companies themselves at their sites, job shops and maybe LinkedIn. (In that order, in rapidly diminishing order of value.)

My Dice experience from a couple of years ago was that I got lots of calls from junior head hunters paying their dues by ploughing through piles of resumes found by Resumix. Most of them couldn't spell C and though that UNIX was a type of unicorn. If you don't match what they're looking for exactly you were unlikely to hear back from them. But, on the other hand I did get a couple of interesting leads this way and a couple of calls from actually hiring firms.

At least in the Vally, Craig's List had lots of interesting real job openings.

Newspaper ads for exempt positions like engineering are pretty much there only to fulfill Federal H1B visa requirements, they're not actually looking for U.S. applicants.

My first real job in the Valley was a testing position at a start-up which I found on a bulletin-board at a junior college. (I'm self taught in computers and was willing to work relatively inexpensively.) When they had to lay me off a year later they made my job for my last few weeks to be getting a new job.* They got me three interviews which resulted in two offers, one from Intel and one from Sun. While at Sun I got an offer from Taligent (which I still regret not taking) from the manger who had hired me at Sun. After 11 years at Sun I took some time off (I thought I was well off, the 2001 tech bubble bursting informed me otherwise. ;-) My next job was at Postini (Pre Google buy out. :-( I was hired there by one of my best friends—whom I met at Sun. As I said, it's mostly who you know—and a little luck.

My brother, who lives in Columbus, has had some luck with job shops, but you're giving away a serious amount of money by going that route. He got his current job via a happenstance meeting with a stranger at a FedEx/Kinkos. (Who you know…)

Many of the big tech and development sites (Arstechnica, Dr. Dobbs, etc.) have job boards which seem to be listing real positions. As do many of the tech companies whose sites I visit—especially the smaller ones.

I was under the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that Grand Rapids was one of Michigan's tech centers, but given the reality of Michigan's economy and ongoing brain drain if you really want get into system administration you have to be willing to move—probably out of state—or be patient. Hiring is definitely on the rise in Silicon Valley and other parts of the country.

BTW, I take offense at your "only want to be a sys admin", as if system administration can't be high level engineering. System administration jobs run the gamut from extremely junior operations position like replacing hard drives in a server farm to running that server farm. Two of the smartest people ever at Sun where, take away the fancy titles, system administrators. One of them runs Netflix's engineering department now. Perhaps you meant, "I'm looking for an entry level or junior sys admin position." ;-)

Phil

*Yes, there are at least a few people in Silicon Valley with the level of integrity that says that even when you don't know if the company that you founded is going to be alive in the foreseeable future that you still have an obligation to make sure that your junior engineers in their first job with only a year of experience make a successful transition to a new job. (There's that luck thing again. :-)



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