| Topic Name: |
Techie in a non-tech firm |
| Message Name: |
So rework your resume |
| Date Posted: |
06/26/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
I've worked mostly at contract jobs, not because that's what I wanted, but because that was what was available when I was looking for a job. That's about all there was in Huntsville, where I worked until 10 years ago. Eg., I had a contract job several years ago in Pensacola, doing a conversion. My supervisor wanted to extend me another 3 months, but couldn't get the funding. I like stability, and have often stayed in a position longer than I should have, when a company was losing contracts, so that when I was laid off, many other people had already left and gotten what jobs were available. My supervisors weren't the ones making the decision on whether to keep me.
My last job was a contract job, in 1999, ending in Dec. I was hired to do Y2K work. I started looking in the middle of November, and the market in Atlanta was dead until summer, because people had finished their Y2K conversions and didn't want to start new projects until they had been proved. In the summer, things picked up, most companies who were hiring mainframe programmers also wanted people who have on-the-job experience at PC skills, like Java. They aren't interested in people who have taken a class.
Now that I have been out of work so long, employers have the same attitude as you do, that there must be something wrong with me. In hindsight, I should have been open to relocating earlier, but I kept thinking things would get better here. I have started making friends and hate to start all over.
Recruiters tell me that people my age are having trouble getting jobs, especially when they don't have PC experience. When you ask a recruiter, they say there is a lot of age discrimination in this field.
But of couse, the company can always come up with some other reason. Like, I saw an ad on Computerjobs.com that wanted someone with "up to" 19 years experience. It's not against the law to discriminate on the basis of "too much" experience, although obviously if a place will hire somebody with 19 years experience, but not with more, the purpose is to discriminate on the basis of age.
When I started posting my resume on job web sites with about 10 years of experience, I started getting interest, but when I have to let people know how much experience I have, then nothing comes of it. |
| Message: |
Make it a functional resume, and consider lopping off some of those 70's jobns. They have little to do with what you are doing now, don't they?
I would also look into learning Java well, particularly Swing (user interface) and Corba (for integration work). Also servlets and Enterprise Java Beans, HTML and XML. You can do it on your home PC. Sun has fantastic free Java tutorials on www.sun.com.
I am coming up on 20 years in the business and am always changing my skillset, learning something new. You have to in this biz, sis!
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