This is the thread about job searching.

hey guys what is a workflo and how do i shot that

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other-half-works-an-adventure-in-the-low-status-of-software-engineers/

this is just about the best thing i've ever read about interviewing and job-seeking

Going into the big city today for two weird interview-not-interview situations. :-/

The org I worked for (last six years) went out of business yesterday, so I guess I'm on the job hunt now.

if you're eligible, apply for unemployment IMMEDIATELY! the clock on the availability of $ probably starts right away

Thanks j. I did apply this morning.

fucked that one up in the past, myself : /

Well, the people I mentioned still haven't come back but idgaf because I will have two formal offers in the next couple of days to choose from.

Interview yesterday ended with a 45 minute code test ("don't worry, you only need to get 50% right") that was more esoteric concepts appropriate for a CS class than meat/potatoes code grinding. No interest in any of the code samples I brought with me.

Ended with the Lion/Otter/Golden Retriever/Beaver personality test (http://www.collegeliteracyacademy.com/PERSONALITY_TEST_AND_EXPLANATIONS_8-11.pdf) which was embarrassingly unnerving. Bleah.

yeah that sure simplifies things to know that my personality is like a random animal a manager is using to obfuscate the different ways he expects me to be subservient and industrious

omg elvis that thing is just

ELVIS T (thinking): "fuck, what was the deal with abstract static class methods?"

HR (drops form on table): "when you're done with that could you just fill this out?"

ET: "the hell is this?" (looks up 'LOGB personality test' on phone) "again, what the hell?"

Lion / Otter / Golden Retriever / Beaver? You are fucking kidding me.

Like, yesterday, Tom E was on a rant against the MBTI used as an HR instrument but anthropomorphising animals, like... I think I would get up out of that test and say "I'm sorry but I really am not desperate enough to want to work for anyone who thinks this is a good idea."

(This is probably why I'm still unemployed.)

I quit my job and started a webdev bootcamp. its a risk but i was going nowhere fast otherwise..leaving work has been a huge relief, the thought of going back to that type of job would probably kill me now, so this better work out

after months of unemployment i am working three different work-from-home 'jobs' to possibly barely scrape by. they are the worst jobs i have ever had.

i always hated grading papers the most when teaching. one of these jobs is like grading papers, but the same paper, written by a c student, several times a day, every day : (

So I have been putting my resume out there lately... and just got a recruiter email to my work address (which I never made public) with a job listing that I am 99% sure is my current job. O_O

O_O indeed.
i have a job interview today. hoping it goes well, i really need to shake things up.

turned out it was a company that does the exact same thing we do but decided i didn't have enough experience to do the job i am doing ?_?

i just got called for a 2nd interview for a job i interviewed one month and two days ago. zero feedback until now. job hunting sucks balls, glad i am not unemployed.

i just got called for a 2nd interview for a job i interviewed one month and two days ago. zero feedback until now. job hunting sucks balls, glad i am not unemployed.

This just happened to me now. First interview was six weeks ago then absolutely nothing until I was asked if I could meet with the CEO day after tomorrow.

Job hunting feels more like applying for college. HFS, I need something going on here...

i had an hr interviewer (kind of like a pre-interviewer) who i have spoken to before about another job schedule a phoner with me, then cancel half an hour beforehand because they had already decided to pick someone else.

meanwhile, snafu at my present 'job' led them to cut me off from being assigned new work and now as far as i can tell they appear to be letting me hang just because. besides looking around at other job ads again i consoled myself by looking up complaints about them, which does make them sound like a miserable orwellian grind of a workplace. (i work from home, which actually seems like a plus for once, reading about their workplace cameras and 5-minute break rules, mandatory unpaid overtime, etc.)

to make money i did some sweatshop work on the internet and was delighted to find a highly underpaid thing reading abstracts for psychology papers and summarizing the references in them to a given paper - apparently, doing someone's preliminary lit review for them. out of my field, underpaid, etc., but it was so refreshing to be thinking for a few moments and doing something that required my intelligence that i just… hated my actual job even more.

Any recommended Internet sweatshops where I can actually use my brain like that?

oh, i found that one through mechanical turk, but i wouldn't recommend them as a way to make money, i only do it because i'm desperate even for dollars, and there's very little overhead. also, most of the work is mindless and exploitative (typing in receipts, writing content-mill content, rating content-mill content, etc). there is a system of 'qualification' that is mostly based on numbers, but it would take a lot of work to reach the level where supposedly sweet higher-paid work opens up. and this abstract-summarizing thing was a random find; lots of psych, social science, and business/marketing academic researchers use the system as a way to gather data for studies (beats paying students), and this just happened to be a side thing one of them had available.

if you can stand the entry costs, there's a company, leapforce, that apparently has other clients but seems to be mainly a front for google, doing internal evaluations of their search results in order to help them fiddle with the algorithm. they pay well but there are very high unpaid costs - you have to study their guidelines, take a long entry exam, and then work your way up to being granted a substantial amount of work to do - and they are also fairly remorseless, with hard standards for efficiency and quality of work, constant reviewing, policies of sidelining and terminating people whose work they deem subpar, etc. i would not say the ole brain will feel like it's really aspiring to much, but their standards are very sophisticated and reasonableish (part of your job is to study them and learn to conform your own evaluations to the ones their community of raters and their in-house people have a consensus on), so it does require thought.

there's another company like that, i forget what they're called, lion something.

Is this the new thing, where jobs/headhunters just... ghost you, even after a face to face interview?

Like, I understand not getting back to each and every unsuccessful candidate whose CV they reviewed.

But these are people that I got through the first couple of rounds, went in for an actual interview, they say "we'll let you know soon, either way" and then.... NOTHING.

Headhunters may even put you off a couple of times, but stop answering your emails.

This has happened twice, in the last 2 interviews I've had, and I've got an awful feeling it's about to happen again.

Like is this just new standard operating procedure in a market where employees are considered disposable chattel? Am I being oversensitive in that I consider this really fucking rude? Because you know what? I am finding it really fucking rude, and I'm fucking tired of it.

To the recruiter who just e-mailed me and literally three-hundred-and-something other people directly in the To: line

• nice try but I kind of doubt that you'll take any application seriously
• the 'Hi <<Forename>>' bit both manages to be overly familiar and, by dint of actually putting <<Forename>> rather than properly inserting my forename, massively impersonal and incompetent
• an e-mail full of phrases like 'interim basis with a view to go permanent' tells me what you want from me, but nothing about what the job is going to offer me

I ripped into the last person who did that instead of BCCing people. Within the 5 mins it took for me to send the email I already had spam presumably from someone on that list.

Job interview on Friday. Here we go...

Headhunter number 3 did, finally, get back to me to let me know it was a no.

(And explained how he thought it was really rude when people had done that to him, so he didn't want to leave me hanging.)

((And may have another role coming up that's suitable for me, so, y'know, he may have had an incentive to keep in touch, apart from not wanting to be rude))

Jobhunting is making me so cynical about human beings; it's awful.

trawling ads again

so hopeless, so anxious

Holy shit I got a contract job building databases! Only one month, but it's a much-needed lifeboat.

I now work in the building that's on the cover of Yes' Going For The One

it turns out my last job didn't fire me after all, or i guess was ambivalent enough that they decided i would suffice to do work they wanted done, so i am doing that again

and it is horrible : /

typing addresses into a spreadsheet was unfathomably better

I've got an interview for a job I'd really like. But it's scheduled for a week when I'm away on business for my current job. The hiring company won't change the interview date and it's too late for me to reschedule the business trip. The interview is in a different country from where the business trip will be. My options would appear to be:

- level with my boss, hope he will be understanding and allow me to take a day or two off the trip to attend the interview – my contract expires in a year so he must know I am looking for a new job;

- lie to him – throw a sickie or say I have to return home for a funeral or some such;

- forget the new job altogether.

What does ILE think I should do?

ask for a phone interview?

will give it a shot but not sure they will agree. thanks.

F all of those jerks, but especially F the hiring company because if they're interested in you and think you might add to their establishment then they should make it possible for you to interview. How much do you want the job?

pretty much want it, yes. big pay hike and good career progression.

you're both right, a telephone interview seems like the way to go

After Christmas, I'm quitting my awful food svc/retail job of the past five years and planning to move from NJ to Philadelphia with the meager savings I will have accrued by then. In the meantime I've been scouring LinkedIn, Craigslist, Indeed, etc. for jobs in the city (I won't have a car, and would rather do without one), and coming up with practically nothing. I did find a research assistant job at UPenn that would be an almost ideal fit, and applied, but it's probably a long shot. I'm a guy with a linguistics degree, aspirations to be a science writer, and not many "professional" or technical skills. How fucked am I/what ought I do to be less fucked?

learn about 'data'

About to apply for a job that asks for 5 yrs experience + a master's degree in public policy, and is basically all program support & admin. Like literally "order office supplies and meet IT needs." WHAT? In what fucking world, bozos.

Hey, my employer is merging with another biggie in the field! Just overheard a conversation featuring "For those of us who survive..."

Please send out good-thought waves for the job stability of a 50+ aged guy with chronic illness and total inability to care anything except cancer and moviegoing.

Fingers crossed, Doc. :/

An org I applied with last year (who never even called me) just specifically asked me to apply for their new opening. And I was told from the inside that I'll get a call soon, possibly today, about coming in.

So my 2-yr idyll could be almost over...although let's wait and see what the pay cut before I get too excited.

xpost: doc I feel you about 50+ best of luck to you and in orbit too. heading in to year 2 of my idle after an idyllic one-year contract job at that big tech co. freelancing aint what it used to be and it was always inconsistent even in the best of times. still, i just submitted yet another application and january remains the month of fresh hopes.

should i should i not apply for an amazing looking job at the, uh, h0l0cau5t mu53um

i can't stop thinking about that onion article about the HM cashier having 'yet another depressing day in a seemingly endless string of depressing days'

I all but literally stumbled into my current job. I want to leave said job more than ever, so does anyone have any advice on looking for a new job while one is still employed? (I am conflict-avoidant in the best of circumstances, and right now do not feel comfortable about openly looking for a new job.)

Most would-be employers are cool with you wishing to remain discreet in my world.

One way to do it is to apply for everything you want online. Some applications have an option for "do not contact my current employer or some such."

If there is a phone screen, schedule it at your lunchtime or before/after hours; again, these are generally seen as reasonable requests.

For in-person interviews, just take personal time off; it's none of your employer's business what you're doing. The last time I jobhunted, what I did was to schedule a vacation and put as many interviews as I could into that week. I didn't lie about it or sneak - none of that bullshit like wearing a suit to work and then saying "Uh, I have, um, a dentist's appointment! Yeah! That's it!"

At the same time, philosophically speaking, you're not an indentured servant. You have the same right to "fire" your employer as your employer has to fire you. I personally don't get why an employer would stand in the way of someone else's happiness.

Oh, and if you have references from earlier jobs, use those. Or if you have a trusted colleague inside your current organization, who is sympathetic to your reasons for looking, you can sometimes use that person as a reference. Best to stick with prior jobs.

When asked by interviewers why you want to switch, don't neg too hard on your current employer. Not a good fit for my abilities / not what I want to be doing long-term / want to try something new / want to challenge myself more - those are all fine reasons to give. Saying stuff like "My boss is an asshole and my co-workers are a toxic stew of infighting" is nagl.