Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Jobs and jobhunt

Tips for working with recruiters?

radioamy — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:56:39 -0800

I am looking for a job and am starting to work with some external recruiting firms. Do you have any suggestions/advice/wisdom for me? I am trying to broaden my job search and have sought out a couple of recruiting agencies (recommended by friends). I have meetings with two different companies this week. I am a bit nervous because I have only ever applied to positions directly with companies before and this is new territory for me!

I'm looking for advice, tips and wisdom from past experiences - whether you have been an applicant who has worked with recruiters or you've been a recruiter yourself. What should I be prepared for, both in terms of this first meeting and then the process beyond? Anything I should or shouldn't do in particular?

If it is relevant, I am looking for a marketing job in the SF Bay Area and I have about six years of experience.

This job search is putting holes in my soul...

the NATURAL — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 07:18:30 -0800

You live in City X. You want to move to City Y and are looking for a job there. Do employers care if your resume says you live in City X or City Y? If yes, other than outright lying, what are some ways around this?

Love vs. career - how hard will it be to maintain both?

ergo — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 11:18:02 -0800

I'm going to be moving around with my S.O. for a few years. Will having a few ~2 year jobs on my resume look bad? I'm an engineer and I've had my current job for 1 year, 8 months. This is my first job out of university. Prior to that, I'd worked for the same supervisor in university for 4 years - 1 as a summer/p.t. student researcher, 2 as an m.sc. grad student, and 1 as a research associate while the economy was bad.

Now my S.O. is moving to another city several hours away at the end of the month for work. I'm planning on going with him in the near future - going to try to find a job first and wrap up my responsibilities on my current projects so I leave this company on good terms. I'm optimistic that I'll be able to get a good reference from my current supervisor, on the basis of my good performance, commitment to my projects and I'm only leaving the company because they don't have a branch in my destination city.

He's probably going to move again in 2 years for a 1-year training course in another city... and then we'll get sent somewhere else permanently, when I'll be able to stay in a steady job again. It's possible we could shift the training course a year earlier or later, but I don't know what would be the best for my career - if I manage to find a job, that is. In any regard, I'm going for personal happiness first and am flexible in my general career path.

I'm wondering though... how will that look on my resume, if I have a couple of ~2 year jobs in different cities? What will potential employers think?

Co-workers? Supervisees?

sugarbomb — Mon, 09 May 2011 17:41:51 -0800

If not a current supervisor, who do you ask for a job recommendation? I've read a number of responses here that state pretty emphatically,
"do not ask your current supervisor for a job recommendation." My problem with that: I work in a very small place. The department is pretty much myself and my boss. I could ask a co-worker, but they all work in different areas. I could ask someone whom I supervise, but I don't know if that's something that people usually do (also, I don't supervise them for very many hours a week at all). What to do? I definitely think that I should include a recommendation from my current job, or that would look suspicious. Am I wrong?

The other thing is that: my supervisor knows that I will someday leave this position. I am overqualified, underpaid, and underemployed. She knows this. She has even told me about new jobs popping up in my field in the area.

What would you do, oh wise ones?

Finding IT jobs in (K-12) education

MeProxy — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:08:34 -0800

For various reasons, I've decided to find an IT job at a school, preferably NOT at the college level, though I'm somewhat open to the idea. Let's just say that my credentials/resume/references are not the issue. The issue is finding job openings in educations! For industry jobs, you have dice.com, monster.com, various head-hunting resources, etc. Finding a job here and here has never been a problem when I've decided to move on.

However, now that I want to work in education, it seems like there's a lack of centralized postings. I've found this one for for the Midwest called EdPost that alleviates the need of going to every single private school and district's web site. Are there other centralized job posting boards I should be aware of? Even if there's no national ones, localized ones like that would be awesome to help make my job searching more efficient.

I've done a few Google searches, but all the "education job" boards don't seem to have much, or at least much less than EdPost which seems odd since EdPost is only regional and not national.

Before anyone gives me gruff about it, I'm well aware that job searching takes work. I don't mind putting in the time. Rather, I'm just hoping to find more centralized, quality resource for finding education jobs.
However, if my only recourse is to just hunker down and scour indivdual school/district websites, then by all means, let me know!

Surely the economy isn't this terrible!

mccarty.tim — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:28:42 -0800

Pardon my naiveté, but what's the best way to go about job searching for an entry-level/retail job for a person who doesn't have a degree beyond high school? They never taught me this in school. I've been giving an application to nearly every place that will give me one/has online applications, but I just don't seem to be getting any interviews or offers. No place is too cheap or "beneath" me. I'm not just applying to retail positions at places that seem like they'd be "fun." I really want some income, because I want to move out of my house and be somewhat independent, and I'm tired of hearing daily about how I'm a real problem for household finances from my mother. However, I think I'm a bit naive about job searching.

I'm 22 years old, and eager to work. I don't really have any qualifications towards retail (weird home-life meant I couldn't get a ride to get a job while I was in high school or even back when the economy was good). I'm currently a college student at community college, and I'm studying towards an associates in computer science. I have a decent grasp on Java and I've played around in AS3 before. I'm also almost A+ certified, I'm passing the practice exams but don't really have the money for the certification test. I've worked for a financial planner's office before doing PC repair, but he lately hasn't had any jobs for me. If it matters, I have taken a good 5 years of French, and I'm confident I could translate most simple written documents.

I don't really have any spiffy connections or anything to pull (my mom's a financial planner and all my friends are college students, none of whom seem to have any clout at their jobs).

I tried signing up for the state job exchange, Monster.com, and applying all over the place. Is there something I'm missing, or is it just a factor of a bad economy?

Failing finding work near me, I might, just might, be able to convince my mom to pay me a little money to move elsewhere in the country if it means me being independent. Anywhere in America that has a better economy for a person starting out than NJ?

Honestly, I'd even settle for odd jobs right now (filing, shoveling snow, etc), if it meant at least building up some savings and not sponging off of my mom for every sort of luxury. Any tips for getting those?

(Crosspost from Reddit.com/r/Jobs)

We want to make a DINK-move, not a dick-move.

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:03:26 -0800

Husband loses job, gains new job. Awesome! But I'm expecting a great job offer myself - on the other side of the country. My husband's company has teetered on the brink of survival for the past several years. Two weeks ago, he was informed that his position (and many others) were being eliminated.

The good news? Husband & his old boss from a few years ago have been talking on and off for 6 months about working together. (Old boss has a new employer, a local office of ~20 people.) As soon as the layoffs were announced, The Once & Future Boss (henceforth, TOAFB) called husband up and told him he could start Oct 1 - at a pay increase of $10k above husband's current salary.

Now for the catch. About two months ago, *I* started looking for a new position... and the process is going very well. I'm currently vastly underpaid for my role & industry, and have been looking at exciting new jobs that would pay 30-50% more than what I make now. But every company I'm considering would require moving to another city - and all of them are 3-5 hours flying time away.

My husband hasn't mentioned the issue (yet), but did try to talk TOAFB into pushing his start date back to Nov 1 to give us some breathing room. No dice - the guy is so excited to work with him, he just wouldn't take "actually, a few weeks off would be just the ticket!" for an answer... and husband was understandably reluctant to divulge more when I don't have an offer in hand. But now he's wondering if he should've just laid everything out for TOAFB right at the start.

In the next two weeks, he's scheduled to start this new job, at almost exactly the same time that I have prospective employers scheduling me to fly out to their offices for final rounds of interviews. If I get a job offer we can't see ourselves turning down, have we screwed ourselves royally here? TOAFB has been a great reference & contact for my husband, so we really don't want to torch that relationship. Thoughts?

Other notes:
- I have the more marketable/lucrative career path of the two of us (he's cool with that).
- There are no good options for me to advance my career in our current city.
- I don't make enough to support us both (yet).
- We've done long distance - years of it. 2 months is the most we can think we can take at this point.
- Telecommuting might be an option for him - but the timing of starting the job and then needing to move several weeks/months later seems horrible.
- And for added fun, his new contract includes a 1-year noncompete (ew)

What's the modern procedure for finding a job?

KathrynT — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:32:58 -0800

How do people find jobs these days, anyway? My beloved husband was fired yesterday from the job he's held for ten years as a full-time employee and for four years prior to that as a contractor (after his first bad review, not that I'm bitter). Given that I'm having a baby in two and a half months, getting a new job ASAP is pretty imperative. . . but how? The process has clearly changed in the past decade. He has a LinkedIn profile; how can he best leverage that? What's the etiquette for introducing friends-of-friends on LinkedIn? Until yesterday, he was a technical writer at a Large Software Company in Redmond, with consistently good reviews. Do people still use monster.com or whatever?

I apologize for the scattershot nature of this question; I'm freaking out a little bit. God, I hope they don't contest unemployment.

Accepted a job, haven't started, don't want to anymore.

doobiedoo — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:01:36 -0800

This all happened in a week - I verbally accepted a job offer from A company at the beginning of this week on the agreement that I bring in the rest of the signed contract next week when I start. Since then I've had an interview with B company (I applied to B before I accepted A) and received another offer which I prefer. I think I want to take up B's offer, what do I say to A company? I know it's bad practice, is there anyway to make it better? This question sounds quite similar, except I feel like my acceptance of A company was more absolute and binding, especially here in the UK and I'm in a small industry where it would be best to keep good relations with everyone. I'm risking a burnt bridge because B has offered much more pay, better conditions and is in a country that enjoys continuous sunlight for more than 5 hours a week, on the down side there will probably be less responsibility and it won't look as good on the CV as A company (but not by much).

What can I do to get an interview?

Anonymous — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:04:04 -0800

What can I do to get an interview? I was laid off from my first "real" job after just under a year. I'm now actively searching for a new job. I'm being a little picky so far, admittedly, because I'd really like to do something along the lines of what I was doing.

I've worked a very long time on my resume. I think I have a decent cover letter and make sure to tailor it to whomever I am applying to.

So far, I've applied to about 40 jobs. I use sites like Monster, Dice, Craigslist, etc. and apply either through those sites or through the company site directly. I generally get a "we got your application" automated mail, but that's usually it. I received two "you didn't get the job" automated mails. Sure, some of the jobs I'm applying for "require" a little more experience than I have. Other jobs, I read what they're looking for and think, "Perfect!" and then I never hear back.

When I was applying for jobs last year, I ended up getting most of my interviews through contacts in those companies. This time around, though, everyone I know is in companies that aren't hiring (or aren't looking for what I do).

So, what can I do do get an interview? My girlfriend recommended finding a "real" person from HR or whatnot to email and be like "hey, I just applied for this job, I really want it" but places don't generally list email addresses. In some cases, I have 2nd Degree LinkedIn connections with either people in HR or people with whom I would be working. Should I try to "Get Introduced Through A Connection"?

FWIW, I'm in the computer industry, so the whole "go and get an application in person and hand it to the manager" thing doesn't really work. Hell, these days even people at job fairs mostly just say "go see if there are openings and apply online".

Posting anonymously because I'd rather not give potential employers a starting point to try and dig stuff up about me. Throwaway email: gimmebackthatfiletofish at g mail dot com.

How can two Seattle residents best go about looking for jobs in London?

Anonymous — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:46:37 -0800

How can two Seattle residents best go about looking for jobs in London? My wife and I have been talking about moving to London for a while. Ideally, we'd like to both find jobs in London, live there for 2-3 years, then move back to the U.S.

We would like to have jobs and be living in London 1 year from today. We love Seattle... we just want an adventure before we have a baby.

- What has been your experience with finding (or not finding) a job in London?
- What should we expect with regard to potential time lines, snags, red tape, and pitfalls?
- What tools to job searching/networking have you found useful?
- What government agencies/government connections did you use in your quest? (i.e. if your Senator/Congressman was a good friend, could he/she help speed things along, side-step hang-up, and/or
- We want to live in London... not a 1-hour Tube ride from Central London.
- What have I not asked that I need to know?

Our employment backgrounds:
She is 26, I am 28. My background is business (primarily sales & marketing) and I've been fairly successful, despite my age. Her background is architecture, though she's looking to switch her focus to humanitarian efforts. Potentially working with organizations as a project manager for different efforts.

Our current combined income: $105,000/year (pre-tax)

My resume is very unhappy

danb — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:29:02 -0800

How do I mitigate my lack of experience when searching for jobs? I just graduated last month with an oh-so-practical degree in English and music. Even worse is that I have next to no job experience. I didn't work while at college, and so now all I really have to show is a couple summers of being a camp counselor and some miscellaneous short-term volunteering.

So yes, I was dumb to not get work experience or find an internship when I had the chance, but what should I do about it now?

Academically I did quite well -- high GPA, summa cum laude, various awards, etc. -- but in looking for jobs the requirements seem slanted much more towards practical experience than good grades. I'm not sure how to get an interview when I'm not suited for much of anything on paper. Any advice? I'm not picky about fields at this point.

job offer ethical dilemma

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:46:39 -0800

I'm in a job offer dilemma. I've verbally accepted an offer that i'm excited about. BUT, a job that I don't hesitate to say would be a dream company for me just had me interview again for one of two positions they are considering me for. Sounds like it is a slam dunk that i would get an offer from DreamCompany but it's the end of their quarter and they are wrangling a few details around, shifting head count, etc and won't have anything firm for a few more days but SortaExcitingCompany needs papers signed TODAY. Ugh - dilemma..... SortaExcitingCompany does not know anything is up yet. I'm tempted to see about getting a few days extension on the offer but worried about just retracting it all together. I know everything in the US is "at will" work anyway - but ethics still come into it for me at least.

Suddenly I'm the belle of the ball

matildaben — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:07:20 -0800

I find myself in the novel situation, upon being laid off, of having a large number of potential job opportunities. I'm in the tech space, so most organizations work through recruiters, and I'm getting over a dozen calls and emails a day since posting my resume. Many of the job descriptions look like a good fit, so I know I can have my pick of location, type of organization, benefits, salary, etc. It's quite early in my job hunt, and I have the leisure of about 2 months to do it in. I'm looking for tips about how to keep organized and be in control of the situation. I'm keeping a spreadsheet with their contact information and any notes that I have about the opportunity, but I'm already feeling pretty overwhelmed. I probably just need to spend an entire day catching up with everyone on the phone and doing the get-to-know-you conversation. My soon-to-be-previous employer is fully supporting my efforts to job hunt during my last weeks here, so that's not a problem. I'm mainly concerned with keeping good contact with these recruiters, not burning any bridges, remembering which opportunity is which, gleaning the right information to weed the wheat from the chaff, and doing the appropriate follow-through. If you've been through a similar situation, how did you stay organized and keep track of everything? Any potential pitfalls to watch out for?

I'm fully aware of how good this situation is, by the way, and I'm not at all complaining. Believe me, I've been on the other side far too often to take this for granted.

How to move to Europe and find employment?

barrakuda — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 09:41:15 -0800

I decided to move back to Europe, however I will need a job. I have about 3 years of work experience (all of which in the US) and have no idea what the job market looks like in Europe. About me: MA in int'l relations (BA in econ and int'l relations) - both degrees from American universities - the MA from a quite reputable one; 3 years of work experience at an international organization; speak 4 languages fluently; EU membership.

My vague plan: to move to Europe, considering the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland. Catch - I am not sure if I would want to continue working in International Development - my possible interests include investment banking, marketing/advertising, journalism.

Specific questions:
- Can you recommend good European Job Search engines?
- Can you recommend any particular companies?
- Can you recommend any interesting careers (that are possible for me to get into without further studies)?
- Can you tell me about job search culture in Europe? How is it done? Here in the US it's all in 'networking'?
- Can you recommend any other particular countries? Why?
- Can you tell me where to start?
- Any additional advice for jobhunting and applying for jobs in Europe?