Austin Employment Web Log

If you, either in the role of a technology job-seeker or a hiring manager, were to design the perfect contracting / staffing / augmentation / solution provider / consultant company, what would it look like? For example, would you want, in the staffing company you choose, any of the following qualities? Young, ill-trained, inexperienced, poorly-paid recruiting staff with extremely high turnover rates Zero commitment to the well-being of their contractors, beyond paying them after successfully billing the customer Zero commitment to the well-being of their customers, beyond closing the deals and getting money for warm bodies, even if just for a month or two Zero knowledge of the high-tech domain, nor what any of the terminology, job descriptions, responsibilities actually mean Zero knowledge of the job market, either from the buyers' or sellers' point of view Zero knowledge of the hiring companies in the market Zero knowledge of, and no accumulation of, available, p...

I read a nice set of posts by a lovely UK recruiter with advice for job-hunters while on the hunt. Long story short: keep your sanity, be organized, methodical and thorough. Although she is correct and all of her tips are useful, I would boil things down even further. The following appears to get the best results, which is the whole point of job-hunting. 1. An excellent, achievement-centered LinkedIn profile is by far the most important tool for job hunting.   Here are some links to get you started . Be sure to include all the important key words ( not buzzwords ) so the searches can find you. I threw out numbers 2 and 3.  They are obvious. Jobs lined up this way, where the employer goes to the effort of finding you, have a far higher chance of closing  (yielding a job offer) than sending your resume out to tons of ATS black holes . These employers are serious . These employers are interested in you . These employers are ready to hire now. Tab...

Fifty years after the original series was cancelled, STAR TREK continues to supply deeply embedded, powerful, cultural, practical and philosophical memes, and continuing, interesting and relevant dramatic content (if the reader didn’t know, there is a new, refreshing and quite challenging STAR TREK series, Discovery . I watched several episodes on a long plane trip – it is well worth a try). Amazingly, there are many obvious parallels between STAR TREK and high tech companies. Clearly, high tech is leading the (productive) future of humanity, at least for the present, and the analogies are right to the point. Let’s take a quick look: Captain (later Admiral) Kirk – sometimes impulsive, often inspiring, always charming, winning leadership. He can take huge risks when he has to, and somehow always seems to come out on top, and credibly so. Engineer Scott – Boss of the technical, master of the warp drive engines, phasers and photon torpedoes, provides the Captain wit...

This report on the Texas Economic Outlook June 2019 from Texas A&M is recent, full of data and appears both objective and complete. Here's a very brief 2019 outlook for the United States. Wage growth in Austin appears to be accelerating  due to the tight labor market. In a genuinely red-hot labor market, wages go up noticeably . I'm not seeing it myself . Neither are other reporters.   There are reasons for this . Lots of reasons . Take-aways : The tight labor market is a mixed blessing. Some economic reporters don't buy it . For most, it's easy to get a job , relatively speaking, but it is harder for your company to hire needed people. Good times for individuals are bad times for employers. It's complicated . Not everyone benefits. Overall economic growth is slowing . The trade war with China is one of several reasons . There are more and more recession warnings . Some believe these are false alarms . Other opinions are mixed . This is proba...

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 m...

I love it when I hear or read the phrase "hit the ground running".  I know what it is supposed to mean: (contractor version): "We don't have the time to train you.  You must get meaningful work done your first day on the job, figure out where we hid everything that you need, don't back-talk, and have ten times the productivity of our lazy and entitled employees, who we can't fire because they have legal rights. You will be fired, with no notice, at the earliest available opportunity." (employee version):  "We don't have the time to train you.  You must get meaningful work done your first week on the job, all while plowing through our tiresome and enormous stack of access requests for the resources you need to use, interminable meetings which are little more than talk-fests for our manager wannabees, badly designed and poorly configured workflow systems, and terribly written requirements / user stories to describe the work you are suppose...

In Gulliver's Travels (1726), Jonathan Swift describes the Laputians, people so lost in their own thoughts that they needed servants (flappers) to bean them with a small bag, on the ear if they were supposed to listen, and on the mouth if they were supposed to speak: Gulliver's Travels, Chapter II The flappers did this, when in the opinion of the flapper , the master was supposed to listen or talk. The novel was biting satire, of course, directed at the legions of court advisers and servants who populated the governments of Europe and shielded the nobles from the rabble, and from reality . Anyone who thinks about it for a few minutes can see the obvious danger in allowing those who wield real power from depending on their underlings for everything...  Oh! silly me, forget I said that. You might be asking yourself why this story is on a blog devoted to employment issues.  I'll tell you why: companies are using software to screen resumes .  That software is cal...