# Resumes/job hunting



## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

I know job hunting, and starting out on a new job sucks...I had two long term jobs early on, 13 and 19 years in duration.. So I was later in life before the suckage started...

Lost a job, and the morning of my first interview was 9/11/2001....I actually made the interview, and got a call back 3 years later ....

At this point I had just over 10 years to retirement, and my greatest wish was to find a productive job that would let me finish my career with a little dignity....

It probably took 5 years for work to pick up in my field, and I beat my computer to death re-working resumes, and cover letters....

In between I did contract work, a week to a few months all over the Eastern U.S....

All this time, my wife said I was "Playing on the computer"...I wound up landing a couple of fantastic jobs....

Any job hunting stories out there....HOPEFULLY GOOD ONES...


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## jorgegene (May 26, 2012)

Good for you. 

What fantastic job was it?

I only have one good job hunting story.
when I was 18 years old, I got temporarily hired at a snooty french restaurant by the head waiter.
I had no experience, but the head waiter was a cool guy and said 'ok, ill take a chance and 
Train you as a busboy' 

So, cool. I was pretty jazzed. Not so fast. Three hours later, the owner came in, took one look at me and
summarily fired me after learning I had no experience. 

I was a busboy at the most snooty french restaurant in town for 3 whole hours!

The head waiter felt real bad, offered to pay me for the three hours, but I said no need and thanked him for offering me the job.


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## jorgegene (May 26, 2012)

All the rest of the job hunting stories are too boring.


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

jorgegene said:


> Good for you.
> 
> What fantastic job was it?
> 
> ...


I live in N.E. Arkansas, and the job was a designer at a company called THE COLUMBIA GROUP that designed and built miniature swimmer team delivery submarines, and robotic submarine mine sweepers. Worked there (Panama City Beach FL.) for 13 months..

My wife called one afternoon. She said her GF's son in law said they needed a designer where he worked...Found the engineering manager was an old friend and co-worker Told my wife to call him and tell him to send me plane tickets for an interview.....She said "I can't go making demands like that"....I convinced her to do it, and he called me a couple of hours later, excited that I was available....I got the tickets, and got the job, and finished up my career designing tooling for Denso Corp, at a plant near our home...


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## heartsbeating (May 2, 2011)

jorgegene said:


> The head waiter felt real bad, offered to pay me for the three hours, but I said no need and thanked him for offering me the job.


What a classy move.


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## heartsbeating (May 2, 2011)

Now-a-days I think Linked-In, networks and resumes can provide benefit when on the job search.

I have a couple of fortunate stories. We'd moved overseas and I'd said to my husband, 'I want a job within this industry, this role, and within walking distance...' My husband, being the realist, felt that was highly unlikely given where we were living but sure enough, Jedi style, in following days I saw a job advertised for just what I'd described and 20mins walking distance to boot. Who'd have thunk it?! My application was quirky to set me apart and I got the call. At the interview, we were interrupted by a staff member needing the boss' opinion/work approval. The boss asked me to make the call, which I did, while introducing myself and then expressing my reasons for the choice I'd made. After I'd begun working there, the boss told me he liked that I'd had a strong opinion and hadn't looked to him for approval. I think there was a combination of right time, right place, and a bit of lady luck.

The new job I'm in is a complete career change. The job ad requested experience and qualifications. I just figured, 'What have I got to lose?'...I knew that sending my resume would make no sense whatsoever for the role. Instead I phoned the hiring manager, called out that I don't have experience in the industry or the qualification (although I'm now studying for it) but expressed what I could bring to the table. During the phone-call, she invited me to interview. When we met, she said she saw qualities in me that suited the role beyond the qualifications so she could overlook that. When I got the job, heck, when I got the interview, I was jumping around the living room like an idiot. I can play it cool but I'm really not that cool.


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

Two of my last 3 jobs, my boss was someone that had interned with me when they were in, or just out of engineering school....I must have demonstrated my ability and work ethic pretty well, because they were both really glad when I was able to come to work for them....

In fact my annual review with one was "You made me look like a fuc%ing genius for hiring you"...

In the other job, the company was sued almost out of existence within the year.....Me and 649 others were fired in one day.....


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## Chris Taylor (Jul 22, 2010)

Applied for a job last April.

Got my "Thanks, but no thanks" email last week.

Not sure what they had been doing for the past 5 months.


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## tech-novelist (May 15, 2014)

I got laid off in 2001, during the great tech bust.
There were no jobs within hundreds of miles of where I was living.
So I wrote a program to scan the big job boards like Dice and Monster and email a copy of my resume, the subject of the email being the job title from the job board, to every job that listed my main programming language.
Using this program, I sent out about 10,000 copies of my resume.
Within a couple of months I got a job offer in Florida, 1000 miles away, with two weeks to show up.
We packed up our personal belongings in a U-Haul and arrived in Florida in time for me to start work just before Thanksgiving.


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

technovelist said:


> I got laid off in 2001, during the great tech bust.
> There were no jobs within hundreds of miles of where I was living.
> So I wrote a program to scan the big job boards like Dice and Monster and email a copy of my resume, the subject of the email being the job title from the job board, to every job that listed my main programming language.
> Using this program, I sent out about 10,000 copies of my resume.
> ...


Congratulations.....


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## happy as a clam (Jan 5, 2014)

jorgegene said:


> Three hours later, the owner came in, took one look at me and summarily fired me after learning I had no experience.
> 
> I was a busboy at the most snooty french restaurant in town for 3 whole hours!


Ahhh... but @jorgegene... you must have forgotten to get the highly-coveted "Professional Busboy" *certification* before applying. (you know, those online training schools where you can get "certified" in almost anything!)

:lol:

(P.S. What a snooty owner... how hard can it be to "learn on the job" how to bus tables?)


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## Healer (Jun 5, 2013)

Well, I work in the oil industry, and my company is laying off 540 people this week. I find out Wednesday if I'm one of them. We have to sit at our desks, doors closed, from 8-11 am. If you get a knock on your doors, you're gone. That's going to be a rough day. We've known about this for 3 weeks now (the specific date/details). It's BRUTAL. Regrading job hunting - wow. The city has lost 10's of thousands of jobs these past few months. I don't know if there are any jobs to be had.


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## Chris Taylor (Jul 22, 2010)

Healer said:


> Well, I work in the oil industry, and my company is laying off 540 people this week. I find out Wednesday if I'm one of them. We have to sit at our desks, doors closed, from 8-11 am. If you get a knock on your doors, you're gone. That's going to be a rough day. We've known about this for 3 weeks now (the specific date/details). It's BRUTAL. Regrading job hunting - wow. The city has lost 10's of thousands of jobs these past few months. I don't know if there are any jobs to be had.


Best wishes for Wednesday.

Last place I got laid off from I was hit in the 6th rounds of layoffs.

First round they brought in extra security. You were escorted to a conference room, escorted back to your desk and escorted out of the building.

Next few rounds were the same way

When I was laid off they said "Feel free to use your desk for a few weeks. No hurry to leave."


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## Healer (Jun 5, 2013)

Chris Taylor said:


> Best wishes for Wednesday.
> 
> Last place I got laid off from I was hit in the 6th rounds of layoffs.
> 
> ...


Thanks man. Yeah, this is round 3. So even if I survive this, there's probably more to come. There'll be no hanging around if I'm let go - we were told those leaving will "leave the building shortly after being notified".


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

When I interviewed, the company told me they were expanding, and had bought land in Utah for a new facility....It was a privately owned company of an immensely wealthy family.....One of the daughters was an actress, and played Harrison Fords daughter in "Air force One"....She caught daddy comingling her trust fund money with the company's, sued for a billion dollars, and won....650 people were fired in one day.....

I got the "perp walk" to the door....I didn't feel too bad since I had only been there for 4 months....That was right before 9/11....


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## SurpriseMyself (Nov 14, 2009)

Healer said:


> Well, I work in the oil industry, and my company is laying off 540 people this week. I find out Wednesday if I'm one of them. We have to sit at our desks, doors closed, from 8-11 am. If you get a knock on your doors, you're gone. That's going to be a rough day. We've known about this for 3 weeks now (the specific date/details). It's BRUTAL. Regrading job hunting - wow. The city has lost 10's of thousands of jobs these past few months. I don't know if there are any jobs to be had.


I don't understand this. I work in software and have never been more than 3 months without a job. And I have an English degree.

Right now developers are making $80 an hour and they are hard as heck to find. If you are in a dying field, change what you do! There are tons of great paying jobs out there, but you have to go get the skills.

I hope you don't take that the wrong way. I just want to let you know there's plenty of reason to hope.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## 4x4 (Apr 15, 2014)

I HATE job hunting. I had been fortunate that my last two jobs were offered out of the blue by former colleagues. Recently. along with divorcing, I moved back into town and started job hunting. I haven't had to update my resume since 2000. I started putting it up on LinkedIn which I don't really care for or to do, but it seemed the way to go. Before I could finish that process I made 2 phone calls and 2 emails to former colleagues and landed a new contract job making more than ever. Then I reached out to another old buddy on Skype to met for lunch and catch up and found he had been promoted to Director level and he tentatively (assuming the position opens as expected) offered me a full time position for January.

Building a reputation for doing good work goes a long way. Also maintaining a decent network is very helpful. Some of the people you work with earlier on in your career will move into hiring positions later on and they remember good/bad workers. It's not always what you know, but who you know as they say.


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

It is always better to have a job before you quit one....I was lucky to have a 12 year and a 20 year job back to back...3 of my last 4 jobs, I was pulled in by former co-workers.....My last gig was 5 years, and I was hired by a guy who had interned in my office. I had developed a major assembly line, and he had done the initial capability study with me.....He needed a designer, and I had my wife call him to tell him I was available....She didn't remember him because he was just a kid when she met him. He recognized her voice, and immediately asked her if I was available. It was a great job till he quit...The last couple of years, I worked for a real dork, but by then, I was well entrenched in the department, and my group leader was a Jordanian engineer who was a terrific guy to work with. He gave me my last annual review, and it was the highest in the entire engineering group...On my last day, I took the whole department to lunch...


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

*Resumes, as a rule, are little more than "written tools" for a company to see if a candidate "fits in" at the place!

The best quality and chances of procuring work is being able to solicit help from people that you have previously worked alongside with! Unless a company has an overriding need for a certain position, they do not want to spend their monetary or timely resources in wading through thousands of resumes, sending the vast majority to the round file or the shredder, without exercising the common decency to even reply back with a "Dear John" rejection letter, which costs them even more time and money to do!

You would have an extremely hard time in convincing this man that it's nothingmore than a shameless sham!*
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Healer (Jun 5, 2013)

SurpriseMyself said:


> I don't understand this. I work in software and have never been more than 3 months without a job. And I have an English degree.
> 
> Right now developers are making $80 an hour and they are hard as heck to find. If you are in a dying field, change what you do! There are tons of great paying jobs out there, but you have to go get the skills.
> 
> ...


I live in Calgary - it's an oil town. Oil and gas are what drives 80%+ of the economy. The city is officially in a recession. I'm a web developer, graphic designer and Communications analyst - I can do what I do in almost any industry. The problem is, no other industry pays even close to what O&G pays. I made $120K last year. I'll maybe get half that in any other industry. That's the risk with O&G - it's boom or bust. Part of the reason we are so highly paid is compensation for the instability.

With the city (and province) in a recession, there's very little work out there. But it'll bounce back - it always does. The question is, can I survive these cutbacks? If not, then my new full time job will be finding another job. I'm very marketable and skilled. I'll be OK - but it's going to be a bumpy ride for a while.

I'm better off than a lot of people here - for example the engineers and geologists. Their skills aren't really transferable to other industries. Mine are.


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

Healer said:


> I live in Calgary - it's an oil town. Oil and gas are what drives 80%+ of the economy. The city is officially in a recession. I'm a web developer, graphic designer and Communications analyst - I can do what I do in almost any industry. The problem is, no other industry pays even close to what O&G pays. I made $120K last year. I'll maybe get half that in any other industry. That's the risk with O&G - it's boom or bust. Part of the reason we are so highly paid is compensation for the instability.
> 
> With the city (and province) in a recession, there's very little work out there. But it'll bounce back - it always does. The question is, can I survive these cutbacks? If not, then my new full time job will be finding another job. I'm very marketable and skilled. I'll be OK - but it's going to be a bumpy ride for a while.
> 
> I'm better off than a lot of people here - for example the engineers and geologists. Their skills aren't really transferable to other industries. Mine are.


This might be a good thing....I was trapped in a job I loved for 20 years......When the plant shut down I was forced to look in a much wider marker...Got a 30% raise right out of the box....


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## Healer (Jun 5, 2013)

Well, I'm in my office, door closed. The next three hours, I wait for (and hope against) a knock on my door. It went from all sorts of chatter and laughing, reminiscing in the hallways, to dead silence right at 8 am. Eerie.


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## Healer (Jun 5, 2013)

I survived!!


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## unsure78 (Oct 17, 2011)

Healer said:


> I'm better off than a lot of people here - for example the engineers and geologists. Their skills aren't really transferable to other industries. Mine are.


LOL im one of them, just work on the consulting side instead of directly for industry...Glad you survived Healer


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## Healer (Jun 5, 2013)

unsure78 said:


> LOL im one of them, just work on the consulting side instead of directly for industry...Glad you survived Healer


Are you in the US? Are you feeling the crush of the oil price?


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

Spend a decade in college and teach yourself the rest of what you need .

With a MA in cognitive psychology and specialization in computational linguistics )) I got a nice R&D job 30 years ago developing software and rules for free form text understanding and processing, then moved into knowledge engineering, defining rules to teach systems that learn. 

Decided to go back to college for my PhD on a company scholarship. Spent four years mostly on decision analysis and modeling. Came back to my employer full time and as luck would have it they assigned me to work in the then fledgling user experience department. I found that I loved the actual design process where we work together to design products (consumer electronics) I'm now the leader of the user experience lab.

But to be honest the first day I sat down with the industrial designers it was about like what the bus boy mentioned must have felt. I sweet talked my way into the internal interview and the position - thankfully with an advanced degree I could make things up with impunity - and ended up learning a lot on the job... 

I've only had one formal interview when I hired on 30 plus years ago. I did pretty well but it was a great match too... Very specialized but an awesome match.


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## Chris Taylor (Jul 22, 2010)

Healer said:


> I survived!!


Congrats. But if the company is going through lay-off cycles, better to keep looking and leave with your boots on.


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## unsure78 (Oct 17, 2011)

Healer said:


> Are you in the US? Are you feeling the crush of the oil price?


Yes in the US....not this time yet, it was worse for my side of things in 2007-2009. Im in the environmental side of the business, so O&G are mandated by the government to cleanup no matter what the oil prices. However, if it gets bad enough for long enough we have the cuts come down on us as well.


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