Archive for the ‘job hunt’ Category

Job Hunt Tip: Make sure your camera is covered

Wednesday, February 26th, 2020

There are interviews which are simply just not meant to be.

Such was the case for me and a certain storage company. I have an old Dell laptop and needed to do an interview. No problem! Just install webex.

Righhhhht. When the webex started; I forgot the defaults were in play so up popped my camera. Luckily I had cleaned up.

However, I decided to use my “man cave” and that’s were things went bad. I wondered why the manager (a female) said I was echoing and needed to kill my camera.

Later, on I did a simple check and found the issues. I am a fan of anime; on the back wall was a couple cloth posters of anime girls. Add in my weapons (a couple swords, axe and a Highland targe and rounded off with a large stack of books.

After that I figured the interview was toast. Didn’t even get a thank you but no thank you rejection.

The dumb things we do.

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Job hunt tip: Don’t forget to keep practicing your skills.

Saturday, January 18th, 2020

There is all this talk of an exploding economy and yet it’s no simple matter finding a job especially if you are a system administrator. That classification seems to be getting devalued.

One thing I have noticed is more “text book” quiz questions and if you aren’t frequently using commands and you draw a blank for the answer, it registers as you really don’t know what you said you have done. Case and point. Applied for a Citrix job and failed the interview. Quizzed over a config issue with the console. I get see the screen but could not remember the option. This has been from being out of work for five months.

I am learning AWS and I will have to set up a small Citrix setup to refresh.

At least I have found one recruiter who isn’t just a resume forwarder. He told me I answered the hard questions fast and even answered ones people tended to miss. I missed the textbook questions. “What is the name of this process” He explained that is the mark of experience as people tend to forget the textbook and remember what parts do what in a system.

I am hopeful on that front.

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