>Have to interview for the job you already have? Check.
huh? wuh?
>Have two *in-person* interviews with a national organization, say, the
>ACLU, only to never hear back from them, not even a rejection letter? Check.
not surprised about that.
>I just started dealing with recruiters last year. Once I put my resume up
>on some job boards, I started getting calls. I didn't get my hopes up, but
>I figured, why not let these people help me out. I'm actually doing
>research right now for a small recruiter, so I have employer access to
>Monster.com. Seeing other people's resumes is an eye opener.
Does anyone have the (or a) scoop on recruiters? I didn't get even one phone call the other two times I've done the job search. Not a one. The first time, I chalked it up to having just lost my job. The other time, to appearing to have only recently started a job. Now, it just looks like I've been working at IWPS for two years, so I'm a safer bet. The other issue was age. I left off some of my earlier career history this time around since I've been told that to appear to be over 35 and a woman in this business is not cool, not in this area. TG I still get carded. Though, wouldn't you know it, yesterday I woke up to a lovely gray hair sticking straight out of the top of me skull.
As for recruiters, I realize they aren't working for me, but they are so scatterbrained. I would love to know how they make livings, being so disorganized. Aquent has been THE worst -- and their online software is Teh Crappage (tm).
Dwayne Monroe has typified recruiters into the good and the ugly and, so far, I've only dealt with the good ones, but the thing that gets me is that they sometimes appear to be trying to get you to lie. E.g., for a tech writer gig they wanted someone who writes specifications (biz, tech, design.) No problem. Work with COBOL? Nope. Still this guy kept angling, isn't there any time you've worked with COBOL at all? (DEWD! COBOL's ancient and very industry-specific, I hear. Does reading the books on COBOL my dad brought home from night school when I was 16 count? I developed online learning software, why would i have used COBOL? I'd totally have to lie and then insist on a couple weeks' leeway before starting the job to bone up on COBOL. I have no doubt I could do it, but don't you at some point get shown up for being the liar you are? I do NOT have a poker face.)
>I was dealing with this one recruiter last September who was absolutely
>certain that he had hooked me up with a job at Sprint. The job paid
>$29/hour and involved interface design. A bit out of my league, but I can
>sketch interace designs on cocktail napkins. The recruiter was a bit
>puzzled when Sprint went for somebody else. He seemed genuinely shocked
>that Sprint was talking to other recruiters.
heh. I hope this guy is not unaware. When I did my homework on VIP comp nay, all I had to do was type "Blah Proprietary Content Mgmt System Blah Blah" into search engine to find that three other recruiters were advertising the gig.
So, is this common? To recruit ppl who aren't qualified for the job? I mean, if everyone's lying and you're aren't even qualified in terms of the lies... WTF? Why do they bother? If you want to make a client happy, then you should send 'em candidates who aren't going to make 'em happy. I should think that sending them candidates that don't make them happy would quickly brand them as a useless recruiter. (Or are some of them operating on the shotgun principle of just sent along an assload and cross your fingers? Coz yeah, I know that 99% of getting hired is things like having the right socks on or being form the same part of the country as the person in charge of d-making and crap like that.)
>You are showing them a web design portfolio? What exactly would a
>portfolio look like? I don't bring a portfolio--maybe this is one thing
>I'm doing wrong.
I wouldn't call it "doing something wrong" if you don't bring one. It's an extra you present as the case warrants. In the case of VIP corp where it wasn't such a good idea, I passed it out in bad judgement call due to nerves. Since the interviewers didn't know what they were doing, I kind of felt bad at their awkwardness early on and said, "Oh hey, brought a portfolio...." But this was prob. wrong thing to do since, with the VIP corp posish is totally boring work. Pay's good though. The portfolio could have been a detriment since they might have interpreted me as someone who needs to be creative on the job.
But I knew that going into it and made it very clear that I like my code clean and up to standards whenever possible. Also said some blah blah about how I love to do a job well and nothing is too boring if it means getting the job done right and quickly. (What I didn't say was: dewds, running your own biz means doing some of the most tedious shit, especially when you're working with people who don't even know how to use a computer. I'll deal!)
Anyway, we all know the basics of what to do right. The portfolio was something I saw in one of the dozens of how to get a job books I read two years ago -- and never found a job. :( I'll send you a PDF of what I put together. Invested in a portfolio binder at one of the big box office stores. They run about $4-6.
Basically, the idea is to stand out a little, go the extra mile. They'd recommended a portfolio for any job, even ones outside the ken of 'designer' (and designer really isn't my ken anyway, it's just what I've ended up doing as part of everything else I've done).
I put my resume in there -- the 'pretty design' that is worthless in the world of online apps. The next section was the blurbs from clients and former employers. Depending on the job, next is web dev. I write a design brief at the top -- just an overview and one that emphasizes anything special or anything important for the particular gig. E.g., this one I emphasized QA on platform/browser combos and working with standards-based design, especially XHTML which is big these days. Why I have no clue. It's not like it's hard. What is something that not anyone can do is the DTD -- organizing massive amounts of information. But that's what gets me: it's not knowing the code; it's knowing information design that would count on any important XML project.
Next section, publication design. Then, writing samples.
For the second job interview, it was sweet b/c the posish is justified by the fact that they needed someone who can understand and recognizes the important of FDA regulations as well as information security regs. But there isn't a full-time week doing that, so they justified setting up a new line with potential to go full time if they could find someone who could do something else that's needed. In this case: web dev.
But, the reason why the portfolio worked is that they may swing this into FT gig (from 30 hrs to 40) b/c I had writing samples. E.g., now I"d be doing the QA for regulatory requirements, Web work, and copywriting in the marcomm department. It's hard to find people who can do both web dev and writing and it hadn't occurred to them to even look.
>Good luck with your job search!
Thanks. I need it!