Re: [SLUG] Re: [Jobs] Systems Admin - Build Engineer
On 05/24/2011 12:54 PM, Simon Rumble wrote: You're talking to the wrong people. Lemme guess, recruitment agents with English accents, straight off the plane from England but claiming to have extensive contacts in the industry? They're idiots. Every last one of them. They'll be reading your somewhat eclectic CV and see that as a liability, which is idiotic of course but they're idiots you see. Since they have absolutely no understanding of what we do, they just parse a checklist of skills against your CV. There are two discussions I know of on LinkedIn regarding IT recruiters. One in the "Australian IT Industry" group asking for your top five complaints about recruiters. (If you are going to post have a read of all the comments first - you might learn something [and grab a large coffee first its rather long]) ...and secondly in "Australian & New Zealand Recruitment Network" where recruiters are discussing how they can *fix and address* the *valid* complaints IT (and other) candidates have. The comments about imported recruiters have been made on both LinkedIn groups. Try to find companies that advertise direct. In some (many?) cases recruiters are filling positions you are interested in so dealing with them is part of the employment landscape. My advice: * Make an effort to build a relationship with smaller numbers of recruiter who you get better service from, find them, stick with them. * They are time poor and dealing with 100's of different people each week - give them a break and start every phone conversation with a couple of words to job their memory "Hi its David, the DBA candidate for the North Shore role..." * Vote with your feet - walk away from recruiters that mess you about and tell them eg: "You told me the role was paying $80k but in interview the employer said it was $70k" (it might be that the *employer* made a mistake or lied - give the recruiter enough feedback to mend their evil ways. If there's a job you really want that's got a recruitment agent in the way, put in a custom CV that ticks all the mandatory boxes, plus something ridiculously wrong but funny (12 years Ruby on Rails experience). Hopefully you'll get through to someone with a brain who'll find it funny and decide to call you. That's not good advice. (I find it funny and can look past it but I wouldn't bet you career on the recruiter or employer doing sowould you?) The IT recruitment agency slogan: If you can, do. If you can't, have you considered a career in IT recruitment? Most engineers and IT people make lousy recruiters, one of the biggest complaints that IT candidate have is that the recruiter doesn't understand the job (aka they are not an engineer / IT person). Now just some caveats: * I've been in the Recruitment Industry since 1991 * Most recently as a developer of recruitment software * I manage the "Australian & New Zealand Recruitment Network" group on LinkedIn and kicked off the discussion so that recruiters could fix their own back yard - and OF COURSE they want to! * I have hired engineers a number of times (grad, ord, masters and up to professor level) and without exception none of them could do the recruitment role, but I know of people in the industry who are engineers and can * The discussion on "Australian IT Industry" has much larger feedback from both sides - most of which is valid - and if you care about this topic then I suggest you read it. The reason I have posted a reply is that in all the LUG's their are people with a wealth of experience and knowledge and also young people starting out on their careers. It would be unfair to the latter group to have Simon's opinion (which he is perfectly entitled to) go uncontested since - IMHO - the problems won't exactly go away so people might as well know how to deal with them. Trust me - I've been using Linux years before I was in recruitment! Cheers P -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: [Jobs] Systems Admin - Build Engineer
On 24 May 2011 13:24, Simon Rumble wrote: > Try to find companies that advertise direct. Whirlpool is a good place for > that kind of thing. If Python is your thing, try finding out what big > companies are doing Python in a big way in Sydney and contact them, and > find > others in the community who work for them (LinkedIn is your friend). > Snipey (http://www.snipey.com.au/) is supposed to be an aggregator of direct job postings by companies. I haven't done anything through them so can't testify on their quality. Good luck, --Amos -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Linux in Australia in 2012 - trends..
> "David" == David Lyon writes: David> Opinions sought... What will happen in Linux in Australia in David> 2012? David> Yes Ubuntu is nice, but Android is surely set to be a David> competitor ? David> Is anyone going to retrofit Linux for sensors and A/D ports? David> Accelerometers? Linux already has drivers for all these things. Embedded Linux is huge, and has been for some time --- almost every modern high end embedded device (set-top box, in-vehicle entertainment system, mobile phone, mine gas sensors, security system, etc., etc) has linux somehwere in teh mix. The big thing coming up is more virtualisation, and moving virtualisation onto the embedded device. Arm have announced hardware virtualisation for their chips; and there are sound reasons for using it in sensitive applications. -- Dr Peter Chubb http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au peterc AT gelato.unsw.edu.au http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au ERTOS within National ICT Australia -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Linux in Australia in 2012 - trends..
Opinions sought... What will happen in Linux in Australia in 2012? Yes Ubuntu is nice, but Android is surely set to be a competitor ? Is anyone going to retrofit Linux for sensors and A/D ports? Accelerometers? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: [Jobs] Systems Admin - Build Engineer
On Tue, May 24, 2011, Del wrote: > >My experience would put that salary at a high level helpdesk person, with > >what they are asking more towards the 80-100K range. > >Or am I being somewhat ambitious with my views? > > No, not ambitious. I had the job pushed at a few people I know by the > recruitment agent late last week. They want a degree qualified Linux Admin > with extensive development experience as well as able to be a MySQL DBA. > When I found out the salary on offer my response was "you are joking, > right?". +1. The above is basically why I stopped hunting for thos kinds of contracts outside of very narrow markets (eg financial contracts); most (local) places seeking all of the above expect(ed) to pay the equivalent of $60k - $65k pa for it. Adrian -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: [Jobs] Systems Admin - Build Engineer
My experience would put that salary at a high level helpdesk person, with what they are asking more towards the 80-100K range. Or am I being somewhat ambitious with my views? No, not ambitious. I had the job pushed at a few people I know by the recruitment agent late last week. They want a degree qualified Linux Admin with extensive development experience as well as able to be a MySQL DBA. When I found out the salary on offer my response was "you are joking, right?". -- Del Babel Consulting http://www.babel.com.au/ ph: 02 9400 0400 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html