On Thu, Dec 16, 2004 at 10:10:43AM -0500, Jon maddog Hall wrote: > Hi, > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: > > This makes me REALLY wish I was a coder. I'm recently unemployed and fit > > (or could reasonably fake) all the requirements except: 3+ years experience > > with at least two programming languages. (and of course the programming > > skills requirements...) > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: > > More to the point, I'm lacking the undergraduate college degree they're > > looking for, and probably have a bit less experience as a sysadmin than I'd > > be expected to. Unfortunate, since it looks like something that would be > > really cool other than that. > > People looking for employees often list more qualifications than they are > willing to accept. If the ad has been running a while, it means that they > have not found the person they want, and they are still looking.
Something I'm well aware of; I learned some good lessons from my parents, and this is definitely one of them. I got the job I'm at now for precisely this reason: the qualifications were a bit more than what I had experience with, but I applied anyway, since the job description fit me almost perfectly otherwise. I ended up working here, despite being at the tail end of a 3 week interview process, and not having all the skills they were looking for, since I was pretty much the ideal candidate other than knowing Macromedia Flash. I told them that I was self-taught with almost everything I knew, looking to learn more, and that's the basic reason I got hired: they didn't want someone who knew everything, they wanted someone who could learn everything. > My first job out of college was programming in IBM assembler on an MVS system. > While in college I had never touched an IBM system, or studied IBM assembler. > I picked up everything I had to know by reading a book an studying on my own > AFTER I had taken the job. I was up front with the employer, and told them > that I had learned PDP-8 assembler by self-study, and based on this, they > hired me. > > You show up and apply for the job. They point out that you have something > lacking. You tell them that you are a quick study, that they could hire you > for six months and if you don't work out then you leave and everyone is > better off. In the meantime: > > o Brian, you would take courses in programming. You may already know > one language: bash and shell scripting. If you know that, Perl is > not too far behind. > > o Christopher, you tell them you will go back at night and finish your > degree. Yes, you can do it. I got my Masters at night while working > full time. You might even get them to pay for it after a short > "trial period". > > If you don't apply for the job, you will never get it. If you do apply and > they turn you down, at least you will know you tried, and they missed out on > getting a really good sys admin. Good point. At this point, I'm not really sure I want to leave where I do work; I like the environment, and I like the people, and I like being close to home, and I like the work I do. But there's something to be said for a pay raise, and working for ideals, something I can't do here nearly as much as I would be able to there. Working at an advertising firm is just not quite the same. -- Christopher Schmidt
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