job hunting part 2

Job hunting is bad these days.

There are lots of jobs in my field. Most of them are for contract work. Which means no benefits and you can be fired at any time. Generally they pay pretty well, but there’s no security.

 Fortunately, there are  lot of jobs that need my skills at a town about an hour north of where I live (Boulder, Colorado) – Unfortunately they’re all working as contractors for IBM.

Here’s a little open secret about the IT biz in 2009. After years of layoffs (with the associated work-load increase for the survivors), paycuts and benefit reductions, there isn’t one happy employee left working for IBM anywhere in North America. Or if there is, he’s like bigfoot and nobody’s seen him in years.

Mainly, you’ve got the lifers who are trying to gut it out a few more years to get the pension, the slackers who can’t get hired anywhere else and the more ambitious people who are using it as a fall-out shelter until they can get something better. But there’s none of them who likes where they’re working and there’s not one of them who doesn’t update their resume on company time every month or so.

Another way to put it is: There’s no one working at IBM. There are people who are STILL working at IBM. It’s a different thing

Most of my job hunting involves putting resumes on monster.com or dice.com and letting the calls come in.

Generally I get 2 or 3 calls from headhunters a week. Generally, they’re Indian. God bless the Indian people — but a lot of them who work in the IT recruiting business I just can’t understand. I have to talk to them for ten minutes before I get the rythm of their speech and peculiarities of their dialect down enough to even know what they’re saying.

 And usually what they’re saying is: "Hey. We’ve got this job we want you to apply for working as a contractor at IBM making 10k less than you make now. With a longer commute." So – I usually just let them talk for minute or so and when they take a breath I say: "Hey – can you send me an email about this?" And then I usually email then back and say" "No, thanks."

This process is absurd and a little irritating, but I’ve learned to be patient with it because it usually takes a 2 to 6 months before you get a lead that seems promising. And so – that’s the game I’ve been playing for a few months now.