There must be a better way than a job board with hundreds of applicants. My son-in-law keeps running into things like that. As a recent college grad with a computer engineering degree but no experience, he can’t seem to break through to people who really want to hire a beginner guy at a beginner salary. He’s keeping body and soul together right now by working as a security guard. I think job hunting is a truly awful undertaking.
Imagine what it was like 45 years ago without the Internet. I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal “Careers” supplement which came out every week and landed a great job that way. I went to the library frequently to peruse the Help Wanted sections from the major newspapers around the country. I was a mechanical engineer with five years experience starting power plants. It was a real challenge to connect to the job market, especially without any sort of a personal network. You talk about isolated!
I was pounding out every single letter from scratch on an old Smith Corona portable electric typewriter that I had used in college seven years earlier. I used carbon paper to make copies. I used manila folders to keep track of who I had contacted and when.
You wrote “I think job hunting is a truly awful undertaking.” — I tell you, it’s a piece of cake today compared to the old days.
Write a generic cover letter, apply to everything, hundreds, daily even. Focus on US companies and American recruiters. Indian recruiters are total waste of time and are simply going through motions and then placing Indians and H1B. I do consulting—any contract W2 or C2C, any length, focus on remote. Apply everywhere, do periodic follow-up with anyone that responds. As they say, it is a full time job to look for work.
When I returned home to Idaho, another co-worker was selected to cover my Linux sysadmin tasks inside the closed area. I couldn't do that remotely. That went well for a few months, but ultimately he and his wife took new positions in northern Virginia where salary and housing costs allowed them to buy a house...something that was impossible for them in San Diego. I had to remotely train a new sysadmin.
You also run into idiots in the HR departments. I remember reading an interview with an HR person of a large high tech company about 5 years ago.She said if she receives a resume from someone that has been out of work for more than 3 months, she just throws it in the trash without reading it. Her reasoning was if they couldn’t get hired within 3 months there must be something wrong with them.
In the computer field, the applicant has to approach it like it is combat against a huge genocidal machine.
Indian firms are trying to monopolize the entire IT industry, and their goal is to eliminate ALL US citizens, and force the employers to hire only Indians.
A few years ago, after 20 years of trying to do business with and around the Hindi insects, I started blocking their emails, and avoiding any application process wherein any Hindi accents or names popped up during the process. I started getting more results, and less dead ends.
Monster, Dice, and Linked-in are too saturated with them. Indeed is still an option, but the Hindis are beating it down as much as they can.
RedBalloon.work is another possibility, geared toward the non-woke, conservative businesses and workers, although newer and smaller.
The start is always bad. HR says they want a beginner with 5 years experience.
I can only tell you 2 things
1. It gets better after 5 years working
2. Tell him to get a job anywhere as IT support, eden for a small company. It’s a start.
The start is always bad. HR says they want a beginner with 5 years experience.
I can only tell you 2 things
1. It gets better after 5 years working
2. Tell him to get a job anywhere as IT support, eden for a small company. It’s a start.
Tell him about Adam Karpiak’s job listing on LinkedIn.
Networking is the best way to get a good job.
He needs to know somebody who knows somebody.
The breakdown of community has made this harder.
When I was a young man (many decades ago) I could get a serious face to face interview with almost every significant employer in the area. Inevitably they knew somebody who knew someone in my family—or a family of my friends.