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Within the last month, I’ve had 5 recruiters contact me regarding jobs that I might be interested in. Some of them left voice messages, asking me to call back, and some of them emailed me about these jobs, which is fine by me. I’m what you would consider a passive job seeker; I’m happy with where I am right now, but since I’m on contract and I’m looking for job security, a full time offer would be hard to pass by.

Out of these 5 recruiters, I went to interviews with 2 recruiters, talked to 1 of them on the phone, and exchanged emails with 2 others. Let’s break down how these went:

Recruiter 1
I went to an interview with the recruiter at one of the offices. This was quite a large and well known recruiting company. The recruiter asked me questions about my background and experiences, then asked me to do a computer test on my choice of subject. I chose ASP.NET, and surprised the recruiter when I got an 89 in 15 minutes (this was a 40 minute test that according to the recruiter most candidates scored in the 70′s). She was quite jovial and told me that she’d definitely propose my name to some of the positions that would come along. (There was a full time opportunity at th e time, but it was too far away for me to commute, so I declined this one at that meeting)

After 2 weeks of not hearing from her, I emailed her just to follow up on the situation. No reply came, so I just emailed her again after another week. Again, no reply up until now.

Recruiter 2
This person emailed me and said that she might have a position that suited my skills. She asked if I was willing to meet her and discuss this. I agreed, and we met at a coffee shop for about 45 minutes or so. She gave me the name of the company, and said that she’d forward my resume to that company, hoping to set up an interview soon.

I emailed her a couple of things the day later and she replied quickly. The interesting part here is that after a few days not hearing from her, I again followed up with an email asking about the status of the application. I left that at about a week or two, and since I didn’t get a reply, sent out another email asking politely whether I’ve been rejected. Surprise, surprise, no reply up till now.

Recruiter 3
I’ve dealt with these guys before, and they seem to be quite unorganized, since I once received 2 calls from different recruiters within the same company, and once I sent my resume back to one of them, the other one still hadn’t noticed. Oh well, this time he called me with a great opportunity, as he said, and that I’d be a marginal fit since I lacked some of the qualities.

Calls back and forth within a week’s time (again, I had to talk to another recruiter within the company, and he actually called me back the next week, asking the same questions as the last … short term memory loss anyone?), and after not hearing from anybody the following week, I fired up a friendly email asking about the status of the application. The guy said he’d follow up, and let me know. No reply since…

Recruiters 4 and 5
Sent me emails about possible fits. I traded email back and forth, again with promises from them that they’d get back to me on the status. Well, do I even have to tell you what happened?

So, that’s my experience with recruiters the past month. I don’t really expect them to get me an interview or the job, but courtesy would say at least to get back to me on what happens right? Or am I being too demanding here? A simple email saying that the company has decided not to interview me, or letting me know that there’s been a delay isn’t too hard to do is it?

Asking me to talk to them, go to interviews, submit resumes etc, and then having no follow up after just seems unprofessional. I know there are many recruiters who care about candidates, and will keep in touch just so there are no bridges burnt, but my experience these last months have been quite irritating.

Technorati tags: Recruiters, Courtesy

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I’m almost at the end of my 1st year rotation in the OIP, so I have to submit my preferences for my next position. I really wanted to stay at my current position because my skillset is a perfect match in this position (C#, ASP.NET, web, database, business analysis), but apparently we’re not allowed to choose the same assignment for our second assignment.

So right now I’m kinda confused as to where I want to go next. What I prefer is to get into project management to expand my skills portfolio, but the only PM related position is a coordinator, which I assume means lots of administrative and paperwork. Dunno if I wanna get into that; I’ve emailed some people to ask for more details about the position. There are many positions to choose from, none related to what I want to do: .NET Web Development (the only one being the one I’m currently in, and I can’t choose this one grrrr….).

Here’s the list that I’ve narrowed down to, some are good because of the work, and some because of the location (Eaton Centre baby!!!), any comments and input welcome (I’ve asked 2 of my good buddies to eliminate some of these based on how cool they sound… what a way to select my next job eh? )

- Knowledge Management
- Project Management Office Co-ordinator
- Methodology and Architecture
- IT-SM Analyst
- Application Architect
- IT Security Architect
- Business / IT Performance Framework
- IT-IL Implementation

Well, at the end of my next assignment, I’ll have 5 years total experience mixed with so many different things, I won’t know if I’m an expert at anything at all. I guess being a jack of all trades and ace of none is my career path

Technorati tags: Ontario Internship Program, OIP.

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You’ve probably heard the term ‘in the zone’ in relation to professional athletes. When they’re playing at the best of their abilities, and nothing they do seems wrong. A good example of this: NBA players when they are shooting the lights out and no matter how they shoot the ball, it just seems to go in. That’s ‘in the zone’

Well, apparently you can be ‘in the zone’ at work too. I’ve experienced this the last 2 or 3 weeks. Understand that I work best when there’s a challenge to be solved, and deadlines to be caught. This was the case the last few weeks; I was working on a project that had a deadline not too far away and was quite interesting for me.

Once I got into developing the application, it just seemed that I was so focused and determined to get this done, that for the last 2 weeks, I hardly took breaks during daytime, sans time to eat. I didn’t bother surfing the net like I used too when there wasn’t tight schedules, didn’t email too much with buddies, and in general was ‘in the zone’ at all times. I even looked forward to coming to work everyday (even Mondays!!!) and regretted it sometimes when I had to leave at 4 because I was so in to what I was doing. Now this was something different from me, because normally I can’t wait to go home and absolutely get bummed out over coming to work on Mondays. The challenge of a project that was going to be of use in a production environment just seemed like an accomplishment to me, and it just brought out that fire in me.

I guess what I’m saying is that in everything we do or are faced with, if there’s a sense of purpose and challenge to it, by default we are created to rise up to the challenge and get it done. A purpose, be it in life or work or play, will bring out the best in us.

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Phew, my computer is finally back up after being out of commission since last Tuesday. I never imagined the problems that came up relating to getting my machine back up and running. Normally, on other computers, getting a PC up and running takes me about 2 to 3 hours plus minus for applications. This install actually took me 2 days to get running properly.

The problem started with the W2K image that was built for my specific PC. It was an old image, no patches etc, and so I was told by my support officer that I should expect it to get hit by viruses, trojans, etc within a few minutes of connecting to the network. We then proceeded to install all the required patches, updated the antiviruses, scanned for malware, adware and whatever ‘ware’ there is. (This paragraph I just described took almost a day by itself)

Next problem, I’m supposed to be ‘Admin’ on my machine, and yet I don’t have permission to access the registry or admin tools from Control Panel. I also couldn’t right click on my taskbar, hence no quick launch buttons. (Argh.. how could one live without the quick launch toolbar? ). I was thinking some Global Policy or script that runs when I login. So I check the policy object, look at the script on the domain, and nothing really stood out. I ask my support officer, and she doesn’t know either. We’re both stumped (This after running virus scan with the latest .dat file and all those spyware removal programs mentioned above). Of course, the next course of action had to be a google search. Found out that I could just rename ‘regedit.exe’ to something else .exe and it ran fine. I then found some keys that had to be turned off so that I could get my Quick Launch toolbar running.

The funny thing here is that after some patch installs, and installation of Visual Studio .NET, somehow my registry gets reset back to prevention of right click and regedit. This doesn’t happen all the time, so I’m quite lost on what’s going on. If anybody could give me a clue on what’s going on, I’d be grateful. FYI, Microsoft’s AntiSpyware, Spybot, Winpatrol, and the latest McAfee antivirus doesn’t return anything even in Safe Mode without networking.

While trying to download Spybot, I also found this nifty util called RegAlyzer, which pretty much is a custom build ‘regedit’. This allowed me to bypass using regedit when it was disabled.

So that’s how my last few days have been going, I managed to install Cognos Impromptu andamp; Powerplay, Visual Studio.NET, SQL Server Client Tools and IIS to round up the last day. Just hope my HD never crashes again, it’s really a PITA to get things back running.

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When I first heard of the word ‘blog’, it was in 2003, and at the time I had no idea what it was. Somehow in my mind, it registered as ‘blob’, which of course is short for ‘big large object’ – a data type for certain databases. It wasn’t until I asked someone about this new term that I found out that it was short for web-log. Now my first thought was, “Oh well, this is just like an online diary or a website that you can post your thoughts to”, and in a certain way I guess that’s what they are.

Well, fast forward to the present, 2005. ‘Blog’ is the next ‘big’ thing on the internet, people are jumping in the trend and blogging everywhere. Blogger of course is one of the largest blogging services around. I had to ask myself, “why is this such a big thing?”. After all, aren’t blogs still used by the majority of people as some sort of online diary?

I’ve been watching this trend for awhile now, and I’ve seen people start use blogs in a different way. They’re using it as a form of professional communication between people, corporations, places and various entities of society. It’s grown to be a totally different beast altogether. It has spawned new technologies such as RSS, Wiki’s, various blog monitoring tools etc., and also re-defined the way people communicate online.

A blog can be used by companies to act as a voice to their customers, and vice versa allow them to track what people are saying about certain products, and thus allow speeding up of business reaction time.

This new way of communication has opened up a new field of jobs. There is a huge demand for people who can communicate well with people through what they write / post online. Companies will hire people who can act as their face / voice online, to communicate with other entities that are talking about the company / business.

I was just browsing the web, and found this weblogs inc article about making money by using blogs. It also had some blogging jobs available for people who could write about various topics of interest.

A good example of how blogging has become a source of income is this: I’ve literally followed what Jeremy Wright has done since he started Ensight. Reason for this? He was my former IT manager, and I just wanted to know what was going on in his life. The easiest way to do this was to follow his blog. I’ve watched him grow to be a very popular person in the blogsphere, from his Ebay auction of his blogging services which ended up at more than US$3300 to his blog consulting company, InsideBlogging where he acts as a blog consultant for companies, helping them determine whether blogging is for them or not, as well as help them out with anything related to blogging.

So, is blogging a bona fide job in today’s world? I do believe so, although it might take some time for people to catch on to this trend. I also believe that it’s not going to be as big as traditional jobs in IT or business because blogging is about good communication skills, and not many people have these in abundance. It also requires a lot of creativity in writing and communicating thoughts, again I’m not too sure many people have this. But for the people who are great at doing this, blogging provides a great job; they could work from home, the only requirement being a PC / laptop and a creative mind.

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Got to the office at 8.00 AM after having 5 days off (sick on Friday, Sat, Sun, 2 days off Monday and Tuesday for Christmas andamp; Boxing day replacement). The whole floor was empty, no lights and deafly silent. Did they call of the last 3 working days of the year and forget to tell me?

Ah well, I think it’ll be a slow day today.

Update: 8.20 AM and some people are in the office, so I guess it’s still work

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Arrrgghh… I just needed a place to vent my frustration. I’ve been getting some job opportunities from recruiting agencies the last few weeks. Today, I found out that there’s this job that seems to be the perfect fit for me. It’s a full time job, good security, better pay, very close to home etc, etc. And yet, it required the person to start immediately, which I can’t do because I’ll be going to Indonesia for 3 weeks starting next week.

This of course frustrates the heck out of me. Why do these opportunities come at the wrong time? Why couldn’t it just come up when I was struggling and looking for a job?

Gyaaaahhhhh….

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I went to an orientation yesterday, specific to the people who were accepted to the IandIT (Information and Information Technology) stream. The first speaker of the day was actually the CIO of Ontario, Greg Georgeff, which was kinda cool. After all, how many CIO’s of large corporations take their time to meet and talk to the new recruits? He seemed like a visionary, and knows where he’s taking the IT initiative in Ontario Government. Considering he’s leading the IT department of an organization comparable to a huge private organization (then again, which private organization has 60, 000+ employees), it was quite fulfilling to have him meet and talk to a group of 20 of us.

I found out that there will be plenty of opportunities to move around within the government, experience different facets of IT and even business, and really grow up. I find this fascinating, as it is almost impossible to do the same thing in a private corporate world.

It’s also great to know that the Ontario government is one of the leaders in e-government, utilizing technology in almost every facet of service, and it uses leading edge technology in its implementation.

There will be a showcase of how the government of Ontario uses all these technologies within their scope of work at Showcase Ontario 2004. It will be great, as there will be lots of workshops, labs and conferences featuring many of the technologies that we use / apply. So, come up and register, it’s free for us government employees, not sure about the public, but I can assure you it’s gonna be a great showcase event.

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During my orientation program, we did quite a bit of networking. I’ve always heard about the power and effectiveness of networking in developing a career. I just want to emphasize how true that is, even though it’s really hard for some of us to do. I find myself feeling very estranged and alone during these events :). So here are some of the things I do during meetings / conferences to start networking:

- Make up my mind (important!!!) to go to a person and introduce myself.
- Keep thinking to myself that there’s nothing to lose.
- Walk to the person from the front and look at them so they know you’re planning on talking to them.
- Before the person can think or do anything, say hi, offer a handshake and introduce myself. If you walk slowly towards the person and avoid eye contact, they might move out of the way, and you could lose your confidence and avoid them altogether.
- Ask them open ended questions, like where they work, where they live, how’d they get here, what they think of the meeting, etc. Most likely they’ll ask you the same questions and you can then begin to relax and think of stuff to talk about.

I’m not saying I’m an expert at this or anything, and I still do go to the washrooms 5 to 6 times during breaks because I can’t seem to find anyone alone to talk to (group conversations are more intimidating to break into. I’ll have to learn to do that), but if there’s one person doing the same thing as me, or not doing anything, I’ve learnt to go to them and have a conversation. Don’t forget to exchange information and keep in touch. Try to help that person out as much as you can, you never know when this person might be able to help you out in turn.

On a final note, after talking to lots of new people and exchanging ideas during the last 2 days, I find myself full of new ideas and things to do. I guess meeting new people and building relations do have a way of promoting creative thoughts in your mind.

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It’s been awhile since I last posted, mainly due to the fact that I’ve still not gotten used to working :). When I get home everyday, I try to spend as much time as possible with my wife and kid, and after that, there’s not really much energy left to do anything else.

I’ve been at work for 2 weeks now (minus 2 days of orientation to my program), and I’ve mostly completed one small project. It’s basically a Windows Service in C# that takes backup log files from the server and parses them. It then stores the data in a small Access database, to then be analyzed by Cognos. Why not use SQL Server you ask? Well, my mentor doesn’t want any extra overhead on our Business Intelligence servers, so he doesn’t want to install SQL Server there, plus the data won’t be really that big anyway. This little exercise was intended to get me started on my coding tasks, as well as Cognos, since we didn’t have any data that could be used from the beginning.

The program is not completely done yet, I haven’t figured out what’s wrong when it tries to read files from a network share. I keep getting these access denied errors, when I have full permission on the files and directory, as well as access to the servers. If anybody can shed some light on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

But the main functions of the program are fine, and I’ve managed to get some initial data in the database. My mentor then proceeded to show me how to use Cognos Impromptu to produce reports. I must say that it’s really easy, because everything’s drag and drop based. Hardly any typing involved. Of course, I haven’t delved into the complex reporting etc., but I did find it quite simple at the time. Next week, we’ll start getting into Cognos Cubes, which should be more fun and challenging.

There’s just this one thing that’s bothering me about my placement. It seems that the job I’ll be doing and learning doesn’t really match the proposal that was sent to me. From what I understood, I’d be doing .NET development, Database development, as well as Business Intelligence. But from what my mentor has told me, it seems like .NET will only be a small part of this rotation, and database development doesn’t appear at all in anything he’s mentioned.

So, I’m gonna go to talk to my manager sometime next week to clarify things. I was hoping to ask her if I could be involved in team projects, especially dealing with web and database development, and also projects that will directly impact the public. I don’t mind just shadowing other developers or people, but I think that will broaden my experience even more. Not that learning BI is bad mind you, but I’d also like to develop my existing skills and team working skills.

The last 2 days, I’ve been in an orientation program into the OPS (Ontario Public Service). It was quite interesting getting an inside view of the government of Ontario. I really liked what was presented to the interns and left the whole thing excited about my future, since they have emphasized that we are the ones who will take over the reigns from the current regime. They have glaring gaps in the structures, and we are the ones who will be trained and expected to fill these roles in the not too far future.

It’s a great opportunity, and I really expect to seize the moment and do a great job at my placement. I’ll also keep pushing for more challenges and expect to grow in leaps and bounds within the next few years. So wish me luck.

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