IT Werkz Sometimes

An agent told me this morning that every day he receives between 200-300 resumes via email.

He then has to go through and filter out those resumes where the person is from Asia and they have the Highly Skilled Migrant Program (HSMP) visa. 90% of the resumes he receives are from people with HSMP visa’s which he immediately disregards. No wonder the contractor market is so screwed up.

The search for a job continues but I’m starting to lose heart a bit. There are loads of testing jobs going right now but for people with about 3 years experience.

The latest negative I got was for a company I had worked for a few years ago and where I know I have a good reputation. One of the guys I worked with put me forward for a position, and this is the second time he has done that, and today the response came back negative. The position was for a test manager and this is the kind of company where just about everybody is a manager so it’s not that big a deal. The hiring guy did some talking to some people who I worked with and one of them said that I was a business analyst and not a test manager. So that was the end of that. There are several people at that company that want me to go back as the projects I was on before worked OK, were under budget and weren’t late.  

That was the fifth time I have been personally recommended for a position and each time it’s gone negative. I would have thought the chance of failing to get 5 positions where I have been personally recomended was a bit inlikely. Is my resume scary? Possibly, it does show a lot of stuff. What about where they have got used to the resume and I have an interview, which fails, do I have 2 heads? Am I seriously ugly with foul habits, lousy dress sense and bad skin? Nope. Do I look like someone’s boss? Maybe.

Some of the reasons for the interviews failing or even my resume not being put forward are:

‘You’re not really hands-on are you, you’re a manager’ - said by an agent who was determined to get me off the phone.

‘He’s not a tester, he’s a developer’ - said by a UAT manager after grilling me for 15 minutes about Test Director, an application I know well.

‘Not enough testing experience’ - said by an agent for a team leading role. When I said I had 18 years experience she said that their test managers are expected to have 15 years experience. Go figure.

‘I need someone I can work with’ - said by a test manager, after the interview, that had very little experience and was a bit shaken by mine.   

In addition two positions that I went for put the company into such a spin that they ended up saying ‘We are looking at this whole area’ and put the positions on hold.

My partner wants to put me forward to her company who develop software, but they don’t really do testing in any structured way so they wouldn’t understand my resume and would end up shrugging.

She did interview a young guy recently for a business analyst position and he did embellish his accomplishments a lot. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, providing you can back it up. Anyway he was found out and not offered a position. Since then she has said that she wishes that she had taken him on because, though he had come out with a lot of bullshit and was found out, he was perceived as being dynamic and the kind of person they needed to take on. Hmm…

Someone has suggested I go to Starwest in LA in September. Suppose it would be good to meet fellow testers but it’s unlikely to help me find a position.

I finally managed to get an iPhone 3G yesterday for the great price of £99. I would have preferred the 16gb version but there just were none around.

First thoughts: not that different to my previous version. Our 3G coverage where we live is pretty non-existent so I will only get a chance to play with that when I am out. That also kaputs me playing around with the GPS functionality when at home. I was able to install all of my email account setup stuff from iTunes rather than hand rolling it, very painfully, from the iPhone which I did with the previous iPhone. These are both push and pull email accounts so now I just have to figure out how this Fetch New Dara/Push functionality works and whether I need to sign up for the mobileme service.

I have downloaded some of the apps from the App Store and some of them are decidedly underwhelming but then they were free. I got Mandelbrot which is OK but somehow reminds me of software designed to demo a graphics card in 1991. The Apple Remote application though is great. It turns the iPhone into a remote control for playing back music on iTunes on your PC using wireless. You get to see playlists, artists, podcasts but does lose connection sometimes. More testing needed on this by me in case it’s something I can help with.

Then there is Tanjas SOS Flashlight which is supposed to do what it says but all I can see that it does is display a white screen. Maybe that is a flashlight. I coughed up for the Super Monkey Ball by Sega and that works OK. Facebook took a while to get going and is not that great but no doubt will get better. Last.fm seems to work, though the last time I tried it it rebooted the iPhone. That’s more like it, now we are entering Windows Mobile territory.

Most of these apps I’ll get rid of sooner or later. It was more just a case of seeing what the initial tranche of apps was like. In the following months I’m sure there are going to be some great apps released specially using GPS and the iPhone knowing exactly where you are at any time. Creepy.