Davide Bruzzone wrote:
Khalid,
Word of mouth. I started going to every career fair, Internet Chamber of Commerce meeting, other meetings where unemployed IT people would congregate, etc. I was officially unemployed for four weeks, and during that time I managed to put together quite a collection of business cards. I also had a "layoff buddy" (another guy from my team who was laid off when I was) with whom I exchanged information, swapped leads, etc. Its just a matter of knocking on every door you can think of.
What I think really sucks are the pay sites that are preying on people who are in a situation where they don't have a lot of extra disposable income. Interestingly, although these sites claim that their "Fuzzy logic, neural net, AI-based systems" will find postings that you won't find anywhere else, I found this not to be true. The free teaser posting titles that the pay sites would e-mail me were exactly the same as those that I would find on the free boards.
I personally never seen such pay sites in the UK, and like you I would not recommend them. I have seen a lot of newspaper adverts with "improve your CV" guaranteed for £100. I would go to a graduate recruitment fair if indeed you are recent graduate (2nd jobber). Obviously that precludes me, but going to proper professional consultant can work wonders. Fortunately most financial city instituations put that sort of thing together for the employees that are getting the boot, at least to politically soften the wounds. You would be well advised to seek their help, because any help helps just that little bit.
Bloody hell! That is a huge ratio 800 to 1! I had a suspicion about search keyword software but
I didn't realize. I will definitely update my CV to be completely keyword specific. You know this is so
similar to static web design with META tags.
/// Ditto, there too many candidates and too many agencies. Simple economics will tell you that many agencies are going to fold over if this "recession" lasts longer or if they dont go bankrupt they will taken over byo the bigger fishes. I think I would give my right arm to be in MA (Mergers and Acquistions) at this precise moment. /// It's real pity that the banks have had to let go a lot of good people. In the UK at least they had the money and sometimes the innovation to persue the latest technologies. Last year I got my last employer to look seriously at open source and I had to influence not to re-invent their own MVC implementation. This is how I got into bed, so to speak, with Struts. It was tough but eventually they were talking Log4J but not quite JBoss. If it is indeed truth that alot of the IT project budgets especially the e-commerce projects were suddenly cut , suspended, or postponed, then we are living in lack-lustre time in the IT world, at least in England that is. Many businesses are burning the candle oil to survive, so hence the reason that recruitment for J2EE is so tough. The money is there but no one wants the responsibility to employ the wrong guy. So therefore the list of required skills is stringent and bloody tough, and if you don't have it, then you don't have it. I am sure it is the very same in the USA too. -- Peter Pilgrim ServerSide Java Specialist My on-line resume and for interview videos about myself, J2EE Open Source, Struts and Expresso. || \\===> `` http://www.xenonsoft.demon.co.uk/no-it-striker.html '' -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:struts-user-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:struts-user-help@;jakarta.apache.org>
