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...
You are probably right...
/johnny
It is not dishonest to use the address where you will be living. I don't even think you need to put an address on the resume. Your phone number and email address are fine. Getting responses to advertised jobs is a needle in a haystack. My recommendation would be to move there and take a contract position that might become permanent.
Good luck to you.
Resume example:
Experience
Blah blah: 5 years
Yadda yadda: 8 years
Hoo hoo: 3 years
Employers
2010-present: Company 1
2008-2010: Company 2
2000-2008: Company 3.
Education
B.S. University of Something
Certifications:
Network blah blah
Security yadda
Stop using things on resume that reveal age...including college grad.
And do what is possible .... go to these companies you are interested in. You need to meet up with those already working there to learn who is really who....oftentimes meeting with a Dept. Manager in the area of your interest, rather than putting resume’s out there to HR., is far more productive.
Do lots of homework on company and dept head leadership first.
Make sure you complete work history but don’t spend a lot of time in your resume on those outside the realm of the company in which you are applying. Give lots of info that are relevant to the position.
Good advice...all my jobs have mostly come from going to the company and being prepared for an interview if it presents itself...it usually does.
When you upload a resume to an employers job board, the ATS parses the text looking for keywords and job description matches. If the "score" isn't high enough your resume will never make it to the hiring manager or department head.
I'm a 58 year old Network/Systems/Security Admin that recently had to go through all this after 15 years at one company. I finally got hired after 5 months out of work. Here's some advice:
-Tailor your resume to each employers' job description. Use the exact same descriptions for skills they require.
-Don't upload your resume in PDF format. I'm told that ATS's don't like that format. Use Rich Text Format instead.
-Network with people. Get on LinkedIn and upload your resume. Search for others in your field in the city you want to be in and contact them. This is a biggie. I made some good contacts.
-Join some professional association chapters in the region you want to go to.
Good luck!
My guess is its either the salary or too much experience. They may be thinking you wouldn’t stay long.
You probably have more experience then the people doing the hiring. They may also be worried you would take their job.
I should also mentioned that I’ve put my resume into the web sites of all the standard staffing firms - Mancan, Kelly, Manpower, etc. One of them did have a direct hire job I was looking into awhile back.
I have several local recruiters who call me on a regular basis, but none of them cover the WV areas and neither do their companies. I have yet to find an actual recruiter in the Parkersburg area to work with, although they’ve never gotten me a job in the past.
A lot of tech job postings that go unfilled are for show to justify an H-1B hire.
Depends on what you are doing, if you are doing systems admin, no 30 year olds need to apply as they don’t have the years of experience people want. Lots of greybeards in Window/Unix admin and security, not to mention Government jobs that need a clearance.
I am a little south of you, but Dice.com is pretty good for tech jobs in this area.
Treasury has an office in Parkersburg. I’ve applied to a few jobs there. They have this odd tendency to post jobs I’m qualified for, and then list a PhD as a requirement. If I had a PhD, I wouldn’t be taking a sys admin job at a government office in WV...
Also, many job boards are recycling older ads in order to look healthy.
I was laid off two weeks before Christmas. I have sent out over 500 resumes and job applications. I had very few responses other than auto bots, "Thank you for your interest in the position, but we have decided to move in a different direction."
Most don't reply at all.
When I could, I would call the HR dept and inquire. Quite a few were surprised that there was an employment ad running.
I'm in sales. I can sell an empty book of matches to an arsonist. I'm that good.
I finally found a terrific sales job on of all places, Craigslist. No resume. No application. Just a phone call for a face to face. NO HR. Just the owner. Interview lasted all of ten minutes.
I start Tuesday.
In a way, it’s Logan’s Run come to life.
Congratulations and good luck on the new job!
I hadn’t considered Craigslist. (Opens another browser window...)
Perfect advice. If you don’t have the keywords the machine is looking for, it will never make it to a human.
We do business with people we like and creative initiative is sometimes rewarded.
You are going to work with humans, solving human problems.
You might fix a machine but, humans rely on them the be productive.
you can mention some version of my posts as to why you are contacting them directly.
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