Please wait...
Unfortunately, the documentation for my humor is a tad off. Like the humor.
Perk, or liability? Yes.
ARGH!
Recruiter receives resume, and asks me what skills I have. They're listed at the bottom of the freaking resume, clear as day, in a nice one-right-after-the-other bullshit format that doesn't require any brains to process.
My god, but these are the idiots I have to work with to find work.
Maybe he just called you to hear if you sound like a polite guy when you are asked an obviously stupid question?
You can't tell personality from a resume. Although do recruiters actually care? Well. Maybe he is just not intelligent.
He didn't call, though.
But, I was polite, if brief, although I did point out where he could find the skills.
This said, he wants to talk with me tomorrow about a software architect position that looks fairly appropriate for me. From the job's description, I feel I'd mostly fit it, with some minor exceptions that should not be too difficult for me to get my head around (they want experience with messaging systems, which I lack).
Heh... technically, I've created messaging systems, but they had some specific examples in mind.
Who knows. These guys never get back to you when the position falls through.
I follow up with most of them, but lately I've been taking a scattergun approach to finding work.
God I hate this. It's soul-crushing.
You're right, fleeb. In spite of all these large firms crying to the USG that they simply must import 1B visas because there are simply no skilled, talented workers out there, it's amazing how many very skilled, talented workers I know who are out looking for work! Combined with the abhorrent manners shown by in-house and out(of)house recruiters, it can definitely be soul crushing.
Yes, I know they have such a large stack of resumes to go through. But better written descriptions, removal/updates to filled positions, and the simple courtesy of an email or phone call to screened applicants that the position has been filled would go a long way toward reducing that stack.
Yeah, after this experience, I'll want to shit on the next congressman who gives into the demand for H1B visas.
Nothing, still.
But I finally gained some interesting feedback that might spell why I'm having so much trouble.
I've only worked in C++ at my last job. I haven't really had an opportunity to work with other languages in a professional capacity, and the few times I've tried, I was rebuffed.
How the hell am I supposed to gain experience with another language? I know I can do it, but nobody will hire me without the experience, even if I already have experience at programming in general.
Fucking hell.
I spent literally three hours answering this fucking web site's stupid ass "I don't really want to interview you so type all this shit out" questionaire only to lose everything to a backspace that wiped out the entire damned web form.
I want to KILL someone.
Heh... probably. Unfortunately, I do not think I can fill it out in time before the job offer closes, so I'm out.
Gnaa, that sucks. So, as your personal motivator, I suggest you do the following:
Stop applying to companies that suck at creating web pages. Requesting everything on one site that can fail is probably mirroring their way of coding software or treating their employees. They sure must be bastards.
Start using Opera for such tasks, it remembers the state of your forms when you move back and forth between pages. At least it does on most websites.
Start learning some Java. Just enough so that you are warm with the common ling. Apply for a job and claim you can code in it. If you get the job, learn more Java, just stay ahead one lesson in the book. From what I hear, most Java is copy&paste from all around the web anyway. If they fire you because you do not know enough Java, you can at least truthfully claim that you actually have Java experience. ;-)
Funny, it is exactly the other way with my browser usage: I use backspace heavily to move between sites, but I do expect that the browser returns to the exact same state of the page when moving back in force. Not like Firefox, reloading every single instance, not remembering the scroll positions or entered text or clicked radio buttons. I also hate browsers that do not implement ctrl+z as general purpose "undo" function: For reopening recently closed tabs, undoing text operations, etc etc.
But these times are mostly over since Opera adopted chromes rendering engine. :`(
I have programmed in Java before, just a very long time ago. I took a look at a site comparing Java to C++, and found that there are some differences, but they are also rather similar (pretty much what I already knew).
The real problem here is that I cannot legimately write that at my last job I did Java programming. Nobody cares if I *can* do something, they only care if I *did* do something, probably because of a ditto-head HR idiot who doesn't know beans about the industry.
I've submitted my resume to tons of sites, and occasionally to specific companies who I think might hire software engineers or managers (although not a lot of these). The aforementioned web site was for the Library of Congress, so I suppose, given it's a government web site, it might have some problems, heh.