Posted on 08/30/2014 10:33:11 AM PDT by chrisser
Hoping to get some advice from FReepers who are hiring managers for tech positions - specifically system/network admins.
I've been in the field for almost 25 years. Been consistently employed with a consistently rising salary. Now mid 40s and currently employed.
But I would like to relocate to another city where we own property. I don't know anyone there other than our neighbors who are either retired, farmers, or both.
The area I'm looking at is Parkersburg WV. Not exactly a mecca of tech positions, but a few pop up occasionally on the job boards. I've been sending out resumes for about 3 years and haven't received a single response. There are two positions currently open - one's been open for almost a year and the other for more than a month. I've sent resumes to both (one to the latter, and resubmitted ever two months on the former's online portal). Not a peep. The latter is a small bank and I actually have banking experience. From their description, I'm a near perfect fit. Still nothing.
I send out a pretty detailed resume because these are technical positions. They run 3-4 pages because I've been at my current employer over a decade and, frankly, I've done a lot in a lot of different areas. Job descriptions these days are pretty vague so I feel I have to throw out as many different skills and areas of expertise as I can in order to catch the HR screeners with the right keywords.
Wondering if maybe I should condense my resume into a single page or maybe two. Or looking for any other advice on writing a resume to get through to an interview. What I'm doing now obviously isn't working.
BTW, after these last two jobs didn't even get me a nibble, I've started using the address of our local property rather than my current local address out of state. Even though I'm ready, willing and able to relocate at my expense, and I've put that on resumes and cover letters, I'm wondering if the non-local address is getting my resumes tossed. Would a potential employer consider that to be dishonest? It is a valid address for property I own and it is where I would live if they gave me the job, but it's not where I'm living now.
Any other advice more than welcome...
/johnny
Get on LinkedIn and upload your resume.
OTOH, just about anyone who taught me anything is dead now...
But your point is well taken.
I am on LInkedIn. Problem I have with LinkedIn is most of the staff at my current employer is on there too. So I have to use caution about being too obvious about looking. I think my current employer would be OK with it as long as I didn’t just walk out without notice, but it would still make them jittery to know I’m looking.
And considering I’ve been looking for 3 years, without a nibble, if the future is anything like the past, then I need to not rock the boat at my current employer.
Don't discount the jobs that Americans won't do.
And now, it's naptime....
/johnny
I'm more than a few miles beyond being able to even fake 35 ;')
The perplexing thing for me is how to convincingly demonstrate my track record at out performing the 20 somethings, 30 somethings, and even the 40 somethings that I routinely encounter and compete with.
Hot damn! Good to hear that.
I was only out of work once in my career for an extended period. It lasted fifteen months and I was one whipped dog by the end of it. I ended going back to work with a company I had been with earlier and they paid 8% more to hire me back because they then needed someone in my region and wanted to start back positive.
I thought that I had died and gone to heaven.
Be careful. There is a lot of crap on it. I lucked out.
Tho I've worked for large corporations, I was always more comfortable with smaller firms or owner/operators.
Also, from what I gather, my new boss was frugal in not buying an ad on Monster. Orthodox Jew, so I don't blame him He got me!
More money for me and him.
I had a chance to observe and talk to several of the personnel before he arrived. He comes across as a generous guy.
Actually, human intelligence peaks between age 50 and 60. I know a 90-year old who decided to take up programming as a hobby. A lot of the over 40 malaise is a choice.
Corporate jobs tend to produce two very different groups: complacent check-cashers and heroes who make things work. The complacent are often older because they can skate on knowledge vs accomplishments and they have the life skills to evade responsibility.
A young guy who gets lazy is just worthless. The older fellow can help others do the work, and this often leads them into management roles if they have the temperament.
Not everyone has the temperament for independent consulting either.
Here is my story:
When the Shuttle program ended I got laid-off. I was over 55. I had been a Rendezvous software systems engineer for nearly a dozen years and had started on the Shuttle program back in 1979. There was no demand for space navigation types.
So, I spent the last three years unemployed right? Or at least underemployed.
Nope. I had a new job, in a different field and at the same salary within a month of layoff.
How did I do it?
First, I found the intersection of what I liked to do, what I was good at, and what there was a demand for. That proved to be tech writing.
I put together a one-page resume highlighting my tech writing experience over 30 years. One page. That’s it.
I included everything that would make someone hiring a tech writer salivate, and left *everything* else out.
I also put the resume in terms of what benefit the employer would get by hiring me, rather than extolling my accomplishments. The employer didn’t care about my awards - just how I made his life easier.
If you cannot capture the attention of a hiring manager in the first half-page of your resume he or she isn’t going to bother with the rest of it — whether the rest is half a page or ten pages. So, why bother with a multi-page “ain’t I wonderful?” resume.
I got my last few jobs from being involved in User Groups and giving presentations, usually companies send representatives to these meetings and if you impress, you can easily find a job.
Unless it is a tiny company, resumes today are all prefiltered. Maybe your resume is poorly formatted for automated reading.
I think the biggest negative I see is that 25 years is considered too old. 25 years experience is OK for a senior executive, but is a big negative for anything below that.
You need to remove as best as possible any reference to your age and experience in years.
Wow. You said a lot of truth there.
I see a lot of check cashers here on FR that think they can pretend to be somebody.
/johnny
Another piece of advice: Are you on LinkedIn? If not you should be. Get an introduction to the hiring managers at the two companies at which you are applying. LinkedIn is a good way to make the connections.
Why not just dig us a grave already. :-) My husband had no trouble getting a tech job a few years ago. I might say the opposite, that the younger generation doesn’t have the work ethic, or experience, or standards of excellence that some of us middle-aged workers have. At the companies he’s worked at, there are people of a variety of ages. A lot of the kids coming out of college with computer-related degrees aren’t learning the same things the older people did when they went to college—thus they can be a bit one-dimensional in some ways. Just my opinion.
I would say tailor your resume to the specific job you want. Keep whatever applies to that job’s requirements, and leave off the stuff that doesn’t apply. One or two pages would be fine I think.
I would target Columbus OH for a job and go for the commute. Go for medical IT jobs which are low hanging fruit. Take a pay cut if the company looks good for promotions. Make sure you are putting away a lot of cash in case the job falls through and you are unemployed for a year or two.
Also you may just want to sell off the property and relocate based on the job market. There are lots of IT jobs in commuting distance to WV in the Maryland/Virginia/DC market
Nice to have the experience but nobody wants to read a book.
Buy a good book on resume' writing, here's one:
"The Resume Catalog: 200 Damn Good Examples" by Yana Parker
and sign on with a good recruiting company. It shouldn't cost you because they have their own client base that pays them to find the people they are looking for.
Post your resume on Monster.com and also use their database to find companies who are hiring............
Bfl
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