well, after black friday at qwest, the green fairy has been handed his walking papers. he's OK with it though. he's very on top of the situation and handling it well. his boss did the classy thing and let him know wednesday morning. let him have a couple days' headstart. it was the best he could do for him. i took him and his spouse a
large bottle of beringer white zinfandel; it's their 7th anniversary this weekend - they'll find plenty to celebrate. he's got a great skill set and is one of the best operations troops in the state of colorado. plus he hit it right on the bounce. if he's learned anything from being a job fairy, it's timing. if he'd been laid off before october first, he'd only have gotten two months' severance, not three. if his division had merged with qwest cyber colutions already before his layoff went through, he would have gotten
nothing as opposed to the three months' severance he will be getting. he has a couple months' expenses in savings already. you can't predict change. but you
can do contingency planning.
Unethical as Fucking HellAtlantis Partners –
with friends like this, who needs enemies?There’s this chick I’ve been having to deal with in order to be put in for jobs. And when I was there the last time, she was riding my ass about wanting to know what other places I’d been interviewing at. I responded, in the usual evasive fashion, that I didn’t release such things and it was private. In addition, we discussed that she would contact me before she put me in for any jobs anyway. So, we left it at that.
Well, I interviewed for a position this week through Atlantis Partners, and wanted to find out if the client had made a decision yet. So, I made the
mistake of calling her. She waffled and weaved about how the company hadn’t let her know yet. Then, she insisted again on knowing if I’d been interviewing and where. I told her that I kept that private. The she told me that she
didn’t feel she could go forward with me being a candidate for the next round if I was just shopping offers, and that she was going to remove me from consideration. I told her that I did not have any offers yet, but when I did, I would let her know. That wasn’t good enough for her. I then pointed out that if the company liked me and if Atlantis Partners
wanted to make the sale, why not go forward with the process?
She continued to push. So I thought fast and made as if I was blurting the answer out, “Well, if you must know, IBM and Verio”. She zeroed in on the Verio immediately. She wanted to know if they had a lot of positions open, or were they possibly only filling one? Then she told me some kind of “cautionary” story about some
deliberately vague and unspecified telecom company that (wonder of wonders, it was the same kind of business that Verio was in,
now, isn’t that a coincidence?) that was interviewing and interviewing for positions and all of them were on hold so nobody ever got hired anyway and she didn’t know why they were interviewing in the first place. Well, I knew she was lying because companies don’t “build up their database of resumes” or conduct interviews for no reason;
only recruiting agencies do. (Liars tend to “project” if they deviate from their script, so I knew she’d tell me what was up with her. Atlantis has been reposting job positions on Dice; they’ve been claiming that Dice did it
accidentally. Now I know why.) That’s why companies don’t have to – agencies collect the prospects; that’s what they’re for. She didn’t ask question one about IBM. She only mentioned that they had recently gotten rid of all their contractors. (Also another lie; almost all the positions that have been open with them recently are contract.) I told her that Verio was a company I had dealt with before, and they had contacted me again directly, not through a recruiter. She told me that IBM and Verio were both client companies of theirs. Not true on the IBM side; I saw the recent ad for the SAN Engineer only on a handful of listings and none of them was through them.
So we ended the phone call all nice-y nice; I told her I’d wait to hear from her. She seemed pleased that she had gotten the better of me. I was pleased because I’ve never interviewed at either company, and she still has no clue where it is I’ve really been. Moreover, with an environment as big as IBM, she won’t be able to find out. The only reason she wanted to know is so that she can
put other candidates in for those positions that have similar qualifications to mine – and so she can get the referral money. She only has an interest in putting me somewhere if she can profit from it. Why should I let her depth charge me? I have an idea though… Next time I need to mention a toss away, I think I’ll namedrop Corporate Express, Charter, and AT&T Broadband. It’s not like I’ll be going any of those places any time soon.
It's A Small World, After All...
Talked to a recruiter today from a company which is pretty well known in the recruiting world. He's only been here (in Denver) four years. We chatted for half an hour like friends, even though we didn't know each other initially, because his former co-worker at this company used to be a recruiter at my old recruiting company. Better yet, my old recruiting company is on its third name change, and this former co-worker of his was there way back in the day during its original name.
He remarked upon the small-town feel of Denver. He compared the population in size to places like St. Louis, but that cities like that "felt bigger" because people didn't know each other there. He thought it was "wild" how everyone knows everyone else in IT in Denver.
Better yet, his best friend works for one of the telecom companies that I used to work for, and he told me how they have really turned things around since they got rid of the old NY-style free-spending CEO. ($170,000 grand pianos... $20,000 executive chairs... Tent parties in the parking lot with open bars and bands... Christmas parties at the Broadmoor for the then 1200+ employees and their spouses...) Nowadays, they're actually booking sales and not spending beyond their means... well, as far as anyone on the outside can know. I applauded their efforts, but... pookie, I used to do their sales forecasts and actuals (financial) reconciliation. I still have spreadsheets that show where all the bones are buried... should anyone ever care to take a look. Old habits die hard; we'll see if they really do reform, won't we?
Even funnier is the interview I had yesterday; with the colleague of my former MCSE instructor. Last time I saw him he was in full happy hour mode; I didn't remind him of that though. He has his own consulting company now. I enjoyed the way he didn't pick me apart to verify my credentials!! We laughed, gossiped, had a good old time. He was totally blown away by what I had managed to achieve professionally since I went through training at his old company. Apparently, few do what I do, and
women who do what I do are even rarer. So he remembered me. Hopefully, in a way that will get me hired! At the very least, my name's out there as an achiever, and our paths will cross again. Somehow, they always do.
