A break in the silence, and a true story
My last post here was more than a year ago. In the meantime, I found a wonderful life partner, and a good job. Both fit what I need closely. In short, I've been busy with better things than blogging. Things are looking up in my neck of the woods, big-time.
It's how I got the job that I am going to describe here. I got it the old-fashioned, non-technological way. I was approached by a company, submitted my resume, and was promptly rejected. However, the company kept my resume, made me wait, then re-approached me about a different, better-fitting job about a month later. They had actually read my resume and understood it. Since then, I have been happily automating the dickens out of that company. They actually wanted large amounts of exactly what they knew I could do. Amazing!
Lest any of you think I managed a miracle, that place goes (too) fast, has a fairly high degree of chaos, and is definitely not for beginners nor the faint of heart. In all honesty, I can thank my previous employer for the brutal, boring, micro-managed seven-year stretch of hard time done there - they did me a favor, those unreconstructed, troglodyte tyranosauri!
This was just dumb luck, plain and simple. As it turns out, there was a miniature micro-climate glut in DBAs during the time I was looking for a job, caused by a single company laying off 10 Oracle DBAs just about the time I was seriously looking for a job. Those DBAs were less expensive than I was, and so the market, predictably, absorbed them first, then turned to me. I didn't know it at the time, but sort-of felt something like that must have happened. Amazingly, I got two job offers in the same week, one of them by a sister company of the one that had laid off those 10 DBAs. I took the more interesting job, and it turned out to be exactly the kind of engagement I has been hoping for.
How does this modify the things I have advised in this blog?
Not much. There is still method that job seekers need to follow. There are still ATS systems to recon with. There are still HR departments with bizarre rules and practices. Thoroughness is still strongly recommended.
The biggest change since I got hired is the incredible job market. Today, and for the last year, is the strongest employee's market I have ever seen. I read that unemployment is at the lowest point since 1969; fifty years. Amazing. We're having huge trouble at work hiring the people we need, because of the amazing competition. I have a feeling, but do not know, that having a businessman as President, instead of a career politician, has done wonders for our economy.
Here's hoping it keeps happening!
It's how I got the job that I am going to describe here. I got it the old-fashioned, non-technological way. I was approached by a company, submitted my resume, and was promptly rejected. However, the company kept my resume, made me wait, then re-approached me about a different, better-fitting job about a month later. They had actually read my resume and understood it. Since then, I have been happily automating the dickens out of that company. They actually wanted large amounts of exactly what they knew I could do. Amazing!
Lest any of you think I managed a miracle, that place goes (too) fast, has a fairly high degree of chaos, and is definitely not for beginners nor the faint of heart. In all honesty, I can thank my previous employer for the brutal, boring, micro-managed seven-year stretch of hard time done there - they did me a favor, those unreconstructed, troglodyte tyranosauri!
This was just dumb luck, plain and simple. As it turns out, there was a miniature micro-climate glut in DBAs during the time I was looking for a job, caused by a single company laying off 10 Oracle DBAs just about the time I was seriously looking for a job. Those DBAs were less expensive than I was, and so the market, predictably, absorbed them first, then turned to me. I didn't know it at the time, but sort-of felt something like that must have happened. Amazingly, I got two job offers in the same week, one of them by a sister company of the one that had laid off those 10 DBAs. I took the more interesting job, and it turned out to be exactly the kind of engagement I has been hoping for.
How does this modify the things I have advised in this blog?
Not much. There is still method that job seekers need to follow. There are still ATS systems to recon with. There are still HR departments with bizarre rules and practices. Thoroughness is still strongly recommended.
The biggest change since I got hired is the incredible job market. Today, and for the last year, is the strongest employee's market I have ever seen. I read that unemployment is at the lowest point since 1969; fifty years. Amazing. We're having huge trouble at work hiring the people we need, because of the amazing competition. I have a feeling, but do not know, that having a businessman as President, instead of a career politician, has done wonders for our economy.
Here's hoping it keeps happening!
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