Interesting responses. Part of weeding out the weak from the strong is to see people's reactions to negative and uncertain situations. Your interviewers will want see how you would respond to an "oh my god the world is being fed-exed to hell in hand basket" situation to see how much objectivity is left in the world. The last message was posted to stir people up and see what the mood is out there. Prospective employers are going to want to know how you all react to uncertainty. The tone of your responses defines how you perceive the world and what kind of employees you are going to be. Rare skill sets are one thing, the emotional package that supports these is much more important. Remember, instability in the workplace is a very bad thing. The one thing I hate is when I send a person with a rare skill set into an interview with out foreseeing shortages on their people skills side of things. recent example:- I sent a fraud forensics guy to a consultancy to get interviewed by a bunch of ex-policemen (plain clothes) who gave me a shopping. Interview was run by a poker faced ex police guy who'd been around the block in the flesh -you can imagine what the interview was like. What happened? the kid got interrogated and torn to shreds. Employer feed back: Technical skills 100% people skills 13.2%, attitude 24.9% "nope we don't want him. This job isn't only about technological skills and buzz words or cv's." Security is a skill short market and it will be thriving regardless what happens. This is true, but when companies start whacking people all over the place in massive job cuts and you have 250 Baltimore PKI guys running around looking for new jobs, all the other competitors can pick and chose which ones they want and what salaries to give them because they are one of 250 guys they can choose from. Unless he has an outrageous skill set. if this is your case, it aunt applicable to you all. For the non believers: FT.com has a technology job cuts watch worried? Tips: Don't talk to head hunters or recruiters that deal with HR people. HR people are a bureaucratic exercise. The keen guys have a direct line with all the technical directors, so make sure you're talking to them. Until the market re-regulates themselves and the telecom people finally get 3G of the ground, (£5bn for UK licenses? (!!!!) what were they thinking?) We now have to deal with the recession. The "dot com era", which we will define as: a massive lapse of reason and reality where conventional business rules and basic economic principles went out the window (along with a few venture capitalists), was a brief period where all business laws were suspended and every entrepreneur and his dog got the chance to rake the system for 30 million dollars to go on line. I think this was best described in recent posting by one MR. James Merit. There are some very successful ventures that resulted, but if we do the math, these are but the exception. Which leads us to over inflated unrealistic salaries: I was chatting with a sales guy who sent me a buzz word ridden cv that said he had a 6 month guarantee salary agreement with his .com employer. Won't settle for less signing in a new role. Any new employers out there willing to play along? -6 months guarantee on signing? ZERO. no matter how many buzz words were on his cv. About Buzz words: here's a new one ".com refugee". I get contractors seeking permanent calling me up that want 80 grand a year for FIREWALLING -(!!!!)- so I ask them, you know how to run a port 80 attack? ever use IRIS? "uh, no I just do firewalls at a bank..." these kids think the contract market is what it was during the boom. Optimism is a good thing in a candidate, but this is stretching it. So how did these attitudes come about? I was speaking to a guy who was involved in a start up, a company which shall remain name less to protect the not so innocent. This is how their spending spree went. Expenses: Launch party, poster girls for the trade shows, head hunter fees, celebrity promoters, more poster girls for the trade shows, ,£25,000 shopping spree in London with poster girls, east coast launch party, head hunter fees, more poster girls for the trade show.... They were sitting on 30 million dollars and signing anything and everything left right and centre. In this this kind of world it was not surprising that some of the signed documents that went left right and center included employment contracts that read: "As acting CEO from joehollywooduntilthewheelscomeoff.com I here by agree to the following terms of employment: candidate x will jump ship from his current company with this here by written guarantee and special provision of a golden parachute which states that if anything should go belly up, candidate x will be remunerated $300,000 a year for the rest of his life. This is the sort of attitude that led us here. (hey the head hunters didn't mind, they made a killing and we're going to keep making a killing as the market regulates itself.) Conclusion about the dot coms: technical skills will never make up for business skills. All that said it's hardcore reality time. The recession is here and it's cutback time at the board room. As Adam Smith says: The system will regulate itself. welcome to regulation. It will provide mechanisms for it's regulation and this is where the head-hunters play an important role. Let's hope it just takes a few quarters to get back on track.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Jul 02 2001 - 10:54:41 PDT