What do you do?

2:30 AM and I just got back in town from an emergency job interview.

My dad was reading craigslist (I didn't know he knew what that was) and saw an ad for someone to make shop drawings for plate work. So my dad drives there and puts his own hat in the ring for contract work. They talk and yadda yadda yadda he throws my hat in the ring for a job they weren't advertising.

So I get up early, make an 8 hour drive. Talk for a while and drive back another 8 hours.

We'll see. I kind of put the company on notice while hiring and looking at resumes I'm partially looking for my own replacement. Just not my cup of tea. Not enough action and too much sitting around and filing out spreadsheets. They think it's a big deal. I know for a fact 99% of the time the companies we submit them too never look at them, so why pay someone what I make to fill them out. It's just in the contract for stuff that they order 1,000's of or 10,000 might fit on one truck. We ship 1 item per truck per week at most.

Oh well sleep time. Get up for work in 4 hours. Yah fun, more paperwork that the people I submit it too have told me just put anything in it, doesn't matter.

Updating my resume tonight and blasting it out this weekend. The writing is sort of on the walls here and I'm getting uncomfortable.

Anyone here good with critiquing resumes (software engineer)?

Everything's coming up great on the job front for me lately. I was worried that if I started doing other interviews/other work word would get around to my current bosses and bad things would happen, I even posted about it. Well I started my first day of the contract thing last week, and sure enough someone there asked where I normally worked. I was kind of worried about it but today at the end of my shift the lab manager called me in and I'm getting a 15% raise, effective immediately. The letter they gave me says they based it on market research that they did about compensation levels for people at my level of experience in the industry, but I'm pretty sure they didn't give a raise to anyone else. Obviously you're not supposed to talk about it but I'm pretty sure I would have heard about it had it been company wide.

MaWalker_sl said:

Hello All,

A friend introduced me to this site a few years back. Avid thread browser but first time posting on the site. Figured what better place to start than "what do you do?"..

Where do you work? Distribution company for oil and gas related equipment.

What do you do? systems administrator (Telecom/VOIP)

What field/industry? IT

Wages? $65K + Potential for overtime but none as of lately due to current industry state.

Bonuses/SEP? None, contract worker.

Benefits? Relaxed, stress free environment. Company allows me to shift schedule to allow time for college or certifications required to advance in the industry.

Click to expand...

Mrc?

MaWalker_sl said:

Hello All,

A friend introduced me to this site a few years back. Avid thread browser but first time posting on the site. Figured what better place to start than "what do you do?"..

Where do you work? Distribution company for oil and gas related equipment.

What do you do? systems administrator (Telecom/VOIP)

What field/industry? IT

Wages? $65K + Potential for overtime but none as of lately due to current industry state.

Bonuses/SEP? None, contract worker.

Benefits? Relaxed, stress free environment. Company allows me to shift schedule to allow time for college or certifications required to advance in the industry.

Click to expand...

DID YOU JUST SAY YOU SELL PROPANE AND PROPANE ACCESSORIES?!?!?!?

Started my new job last Monday.

Fly in to HQ on Sunday night. My team will consist of my Boss and one colleague from another division that is transferring to this one. This company is expanding their presence from laboratory market to the industrial manufacturing market. My boss is an old colleague of mine from another company.

So get in, colleague kind of tells me the lay of the land. Get back to the hotel, goes right to bed. Thought we would have a couple beers. Oh well. Head off to the office 8am the next morning. I get more lay of the land stuff from colleague. He has to meet a client and pick up our boss from the airport. I fill out typical HR shit to start employment. I sit around for a while. Marketing guy comes over and sets up my PC. He was going to help me set up software but he realizes I know how to use a computer. He's a younger guy, 26. We end up talking about marketing etc, I give him few pointers about what to expect, he appreciates it.

I sit around for the rest of the day doing nothing.

Next day come in for product training with a few others. I've been dealing with this stuff for over a decade, I end up teaching more than learning. Was a good refresher though. I hadn't touched the stuff in about a year. End of the day, go out with the bosses, one global director and keep my ears open.

Next day I go home.

Spend the rest of the week planning strategy, but really wondering wtf is going on. I've gotten no orientation, no strategy planning from the boss. I'm kind of in limbo. I think they expect me to go out there and just do stuff. I suppose I'm ok with this. Boss calls me yesterday and says he's going to travel with me next week to do stuff. Still haven't heard anything from him about a time table. So I'm kind of stuck doing nothing at this point.

The big boss calls me up yesterday to check up on me. He's the guy who manages both divisions in NA. Chat for a bit, I talk about what I've gone through already. He's asking me about my travel plans. I tell him, well, I don't have any yet since no one has given me anything to work off of (client lists, existing opportunities, existing partners etc.) After chatting with me for a few minutes and a dropped call. He tells me he's resigning in 6 weeks and wanted to tell me in person. WTF?

I'm also told I'm one of two people in the company that knows anything about this market and product (outside the engineers who designed it).

Sigh. Still an interesting opportunity, but it's more frustrating than anything. I hate sitting around idle and not doing anything and that's all I'm doing right now. I'm kind of stuck waiting for info before I can take off. Sometimes I don't understand how businesses are successful.

Man, when your boss's boss gives you his six week notice that's just a real headscratcher.

I mean it's a very decent thing to do. But WTF indeed.

joeboo_sl said:

Every single firefighter I know has a 2nd job. I guess they all just get too bored with all that downtime, only working basically 2 days a week.

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My dad is one of those old school military boner guys who thinks that every firefighter, police officer and military person is personally responsible for the protection of our nation. He was ready to kill me when I told him I thought firefighters may have the best jobs in the world.

Do they have 2 dollar rips?

stupidmonkey_sl said:

You can send it my way if you like.

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Done. Much appreciated.

It's amazing the number of resumes I get that have a glaring spelling error in job titles, the industry they worked in and stuff like that. Plus the number of ones that have a phone number with an extra digit in it and stuff like that. Not even talking just a regular spelling error in a sentence. Doesn't help that even petro chemical won't go thru a spell check and a 1,000 other job related words. I have seen a few that I know they ran spell check and shouldn't have. Petrol-chemical is a common one. Nobody works in the petrol-chemical business in the US but that's what word changes it to.

I'm always tempted to call and ask if they knew who they worked for and what they did. Some of them are pretty obvious they "heard" it from someone but have never seen it written down.

I can't imagine why anyone would lie on a resume. Shit, I don't have *room* to lie. Squeezing a decade of work into a single page is hard enough as is without trying to gild the lily.

I have a 3 page resume, and a 3 page cover letter. It works tho, I don't even put education on it. Best possible outcome on new job lead is no requirement for a resume lol.

I could go the rest of my career without looking at more of them. That's the downside of being on an "island" so to speak and not getting any hires via word of mouth. I see a few resumes where people put the high school they went to that have been working in the business for 20 to 30 years.

Mine was two, and I was strongly urged to cut it down to one page. Same with cover letters, I keep getting told don't make them read too much. If the point is to get an interview, you don't want to give away the farm so early.

I'm in the opposite camp. I see LOTS of one page resumes that I wonder what they actually did at the end of them. Everyone throws titles around now days I want to know what you actually did. I look for listing what you actually were responsible for at each job/posistion. I will also look at projects if they list them or put them in a cover letter. I want to know what customers the company you were working for serviced.

At one job I had the title of estimator, project manager, structural steel designer, and project coordinator all at once. I list out what each actually entailed. Even stuff like estimator varies wildly. Now if I got a full time check for each of those then we might be onto someting lol.

The rest of the "skill" list and shit don't do anything for me. Lots of people put skills that are no brainers for the job they have had. It's kind of like no shit, because if you didn't have those you would have been fired.

Kind of like the guys in interviews that say 5 times they are a hard worker. If they will put their job responsiblities and projects I can spend 5 minutes and check up on them before I even waste time calling them for an interview. Even tho it's the largest industry in 2 states here people know people and people talk. If you put you worked on desulfurizaton project #2 at XYZ refinery I can make 2 calls and find out if it went smooth, on time, and on budget. If it wa riddled with hassles not going to waste time.

Getting kind of punchy, may go home and take a nap lol. Up 30 hours. Lost my touch of working a 16 hour day on site and then drive to the office to work a few more hours and catch 4 hour sleep in the office apartment.

Borzak_sl said:

It's amazing the number of resumes I get that have a glaring spelling error in job titles, the industry they worked in and stuff like that. Plus the number of ones that have a phone number with an extra digit in it and stuff like that. Not even talking just a regular spelling error in a sentence. Doesn't help that even petro chemical won't go thru a spell check and a 1,000 other job related words. I have seen a few that I know they ran spell check and shouldn't have. Petrol-chemical is a common one. Nobody works in the petrol-chemical business in the US but that's what word changes it to.

I'm always tempted to call and ask if they knew who they worked for and what they did. Some of them are pretty obvious they "heard" it from someone but have never seen it written down.

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I've probably inadvertently sent a few fucked up resumes in my last job search. Usually because their computer system would only accept resumes in MS Office '97 format and saving my resume in that format completely mangled all the formatting.

I'm real cautious about those types of systems. Maybe 10-12 years ago I sent my resume to a recruiter, I should have sent a PDF but they would only take a word upload. I got a call from someone asking me when I went back and got X degree. I didn't. Recruiter changed my resume and like a dumb ass sent it to someone I knew.

I have the most basic resume, go right down the list in chronological order with company and job title and list the major duties for each and so on.