| twenty years of schoolin’ |

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ah get born, keep warm, short pants, romance,
learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed, try to be a success
please her, please him, buy gifts, don’t steal, don’t lift
twenty years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift

- bob dylan, ’subterranean homesick blues’
off of Bringing it All Back Home, 1965

job hunting sucks.

i’ve been looking for several months. the rejection gets you down. the people who don’t call back get you down. the jobs for which you seem to be a perfect fit that decide to ‘pursue other candidates’ get you down. the deepening debt gets you down.

and people say, ‘well, God must have something better planned for you.’

hmmm.  all i can figure is there must be some people who want to talk theology in debtor’s prison…

am i too old? (don’t think so.)  too fat? (don’t ask.)  too experienced?  (don’t get me started.)

do i come across in interviews as a too-polished consultant? i know i could be somewhat turned off in the past when i interviewed people who were that way. at times it appeared the ’sheen’ was there to hide shortcomings on the skill side.

but here’s the bottom line: i have gotten things done in IT for twenty-five years. i have always been rated near or at the top within any peer group i’ve been in.

and there is nothing i’ve ever done in this field for which i was really qualified when i was assigned it.

that is, if ‘qualified’ means i had all the right acronyms on the old resume.

but, if ‘qualified’ means a proven track record of being able to do essentially anything put in front of me, then i was as qualified as anyone.

this time, i’ve made it through phone interviews, initial face-to-face interviews, second round interviews – but nothing yet.

wife complains that i’ve drained all our (her) money. oldest girl doesn’t feel like she has to get a job because ‘dad isn’t working.’ middle girl says in frustration, ‘well, maybe dad should just get a job.’ i know that most of the stress behind these comments is no different than the stress i’m feeling, and that their comments – while painful – are not really meant to hurt.

and now summer is here, and vacations will pull the critical links in the hiring process away one by one at different times, slowing any progress i might be making in landing a position.

surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be too much money in commenting on various blogs around w’s internets. or getting banned at the bibliolator sites of the recitation theologians. or pointing people to jethrotull.com. or writing ten-part reviews of recent best-sellers.

now, if i had just one nickel for every time i’ve been called a heretic the past six months, or told that i needed to repent and be saved, i could wrap up this job search quicker than you could say ’semi-pelagian’.

(look it up…)

i’ve been wondering if i should try and get java-certified, or just get some basic sun or microsoft admin training and step back a level or two from the ’senior’ and ‘manager’ roles i’ve been in of late. i love programming – it’s a creative endeavor that touches both left and right sides of my brain. as needed, i’ve taught myself java, c++, perl, xml – essentially any language i know.

but all the job postings say, ‘5 years java, j2ee, soap, wsdl, perl, cgi, xml, jsp, servlets, c#, .net, asp, etc.’.

who has all that?

lately, it seems the only acronym i have on my resume is S-O-L…

job hunting sucks.

~ by mikerucker on June 14, 2008.