Looking for job (USA)



  • @WernerCD said in Looking for job (USA):

    my AA was through a local community college

    Alcoholics Anonymous?


  • kills Dumbledore

    @homoBalkanus Automobile Association



  • @homoBalkanus said in Looking for job (USA):

    @WernerCD said in Looking for job (USA):

    my AA was through a local community college

    Alcoholics Anonymous?

    AAnon is for quitters and momma didn't raise no quitter here. But she did raise a college graduate with an Associates Degree from the local college.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @WernerCD AssociAtes degree?



  • @Gąska said in Looking for job (USA):

    @WernerCD said in Looking for job (USA):

    Also... where did you get educated?

    Nowhere. That's a major part of my problem - no degree. I was studying at one Polish university, but had to choose between a green card or completing education.

    Plenty of places simply round-file your application without a BA. If you can get enough experience you can bypass it but it does make it more difficult.

    I've only gotten my 2 year degree because I've been working since I got it - and ~6 years experience as a programmer is worth more than the extra 2 years. I intend to start back up have had to delay it a couple times due to life.



  • @Jaloopa said in Looking for job (USA):

    @WernerCD AssociAtes degree?

    Associate of Arts (A.A.)



  • @WernerCD said in Looking for job (USA):

    @homoBalkanus said in Looking for job (USA):

    @WernerCD said in Looking for job (USA):

    my AA was through a local community college

    Alcoholics Anonymous?

    AAnon is for quitters and momma didn't raise no quitter here.

    Active Alcoholics then 😛


  • Banned

    Bump. FML.



  • Can you tell us anything about your progress so far? Are you meeting any recruiters, doing phone or in-person interviews or coding tests? What kind of feedback are you getting? Or are you not hearing back from anyone? It's been over 2 months since you first posted, if you're working full-time on finding a job, in a big city like Chicago, and you aren't getting anything, something must be wrong.

    IME, if you can write up a good resume/work history and put it up on LinkedIn and other big job boards, Monster, Dice, StackOverflow careers, etc, you should have more recruiter contacts than you know what to do with.

    Yes we all know that tech recruiters are roughly as sleazy as used car salesmen, but despite roughly a billion startups trying to "fix hiring", most jobs are still filled through them, unless you have a really good network of industry contacts already or are internet famous. They are all paid by and could be said to work for the hiring companies, but are still plenty willing to meet candidates, go over positions they are trying to fill, give you advice for improving your resume and targeting positions you qualify for, and tell you what the hiring manager there is like. Infact, never mind willing, it's kinda hard to get some of the sleazier ones to stop trying to contact you. Of course, even the better ones advice should be taken with a grain of salt, but it beats sitting around on your butt.


  • Banned

    @UndergroundCode I didn't do much last couple weeks TBH - getting any job at all was more important than getting programming job, and moving into new house took most of my time, and I've been doing lots of overtime lately for various reasons. Anyway, I think I sent my resume to about 30 or 40 postings, and only got a response from one of them, but the contact stopped after second stage (either because my code wasn't good enough, or they don't have C++ opening right now - it seemed like a contracting company that stockpiles candidates). Either I really suck at writing resume, or lack of degree really is non-starter.

    @UndergroundCode said in Looking for job (USA):

    IME, if you can write up a good resume/work history and put it up on LinkedIn and other big job boards, Monster, Dice, StackOverflow careers, etc, you should have more recruiter contacts than you know what to do with.

    You can't do much if you only worked in one company and only for three years and only on one project, and didn't do much open-source.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Gąska said in Looking for job (USA):

    or lack of degree really is non-starter.

    I suspect this is a big issue for you, unfortunately.



  • @Gąska they are probably trying to reply you, but they can't type this "ą" character on your email 🐠



  • @gaska @boomzilla Is it hard to get a job as an intern there? That's usually what we do here when we lack experience enough to get a decent job.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @wharrgarbl Interns are usually college students in my experience.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Gąska said in Looking for job (USA):

    You can't do much if you only worked in one company and only for three years and only on one project, and didn't do much open-source

    Sell the benefits of what your involvement in the project contributed. Did it increase revenue? If so, by how much? Did it reduce helpdesk calls? Again, how much? What percentage.

    Look at your CV/resume from the point of view of a hiring manager and ask yourself why you'd want to employ the person it's describing. What benefits can you bring to prospective companies?

    Also, make sure there are no grammatical or spelling errors. That's a killer. Ask a native English speaker to look over it for anything you might not pick up. My wife does proof reading and specialises in ESL if you want a professional look over it. PM me if you want her details.

    I'm coming at it from a UK perspective, but IME 3 years of experience would make the lack of a degree a lot less of an issue



  • @Jaloopa said in Looking for job (USA):

    Sell the benefits of what your involvement in the project contributed. Did it increase revenue? If so, by how much? Did it reduce helpdesk calls? Again, how much? What percentage.
    Look at your CV/resume from the point of view of a hiring manager and ask yourself why you'd want to employ the person it's describing. What benefits can you bring to prospective companies?

    I'd recommend taking a look at Resume Help (warning: Lounge topic). Over the past 5 years or so, there's been a change in what many US hiring managers are looking for in resumes. The change might have started before that, but the resume style I used 6 years ago, and when I was testing the waters 3 years ago, totally failed when I started job hunting this year. If you are using the same resume style that landed you your last job, it might be time for a complete redesign.

    @Jaloopa said in Looking for job (USA):

    I'm coming at it from a UK perspective, but IME 3 years of experience would make the lack of a degree a lot less of an issue

    That depends on the company, mostly based on their size. Sure, a lot of postings will say "Bachelors Degree in IT related field, or equivalent experience", but the big companies have HR drones going through the resumes first. They wouldn't know equivalent experience from a pile of 💩, and they often look for any excuse to make that pile shrink. If there are enough applicants, some of the smaller companies will do the exact same thing.

    Even then, the "equivalent experience" typically means 4 or 5 years of experience on top of whatever experience they have listed. They want a BS and 5 years experience? Equivalent would be something like 9 or 10 years of experience without a degree, or an AS with 7 or 8 years experience.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @abarker said in Looking for job (USA):

    That depends on the company, mostly based on their size. Sure, a lot of postings will say "Bachelors Degree in IT related field, or equivalent experience", but the big companies have HR drones going through the resumes first.

    Getting past that usually requires knowing someone and having them pass your resume along to the next level past the HR screen.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @abarker said in Looking for job (USA):

    Even then, the "equivalent experience" typically means 4 or 5 years of experience on top of whatever experience they have listed

    That's pretty silly. You're going to learn more in a few months on the job than in a 4 year degree course. This might be another example of UK and US practices being different, or maybe my maths degree counts as close enough to a CS one that I don't need the extra experience but just over a year ago I got a pretty senior developer job with about 5 years of programming experience, none of which was in web development which is what the job was for. I did also have the benefit of knowing they were getting quite desperate to fill the position


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