1.21.2003
Expressions for Women on High Stress Days
Allow me to introduce my selves.
And your crybaby whiny-butt opinion would be...?
Can I trade this job for what's behind door #2?
Chaos, panic, and disorder - my work is done here.
Earth is full. Go home.
Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.
How do I set a laser printer to stun?
How many times do I have to flush before you go away?
I can't remember if I'm the good twin or the evil one.
I just want revenge. Is that so wrong?
I'm just working here until a good fast-food job opens up.
I'm not crazy; I've just been in a very bad mood for 30 years.
I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert.
I'm trying to imagine you with a personality.
Is it time for your medication or mine?
Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?
Not the brightest crayon in the box now, are we?
Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.
Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you weren't asleep.
Well, this day was a total waste of makeup.
Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.
You - off my planet.
You say I'm a witch - as if it's a bad thing.
All these gems courtesy of the Black Fairy. My, she's a thoughtful little thing, isn't she?
1.19.2003My New Year's Resolution Is To...
If you're planning on taking courses this year, or pursuing a concentration in a particular technical specialty, I recommend browsing through the list below. These skills are sorted alphabetically by section. Each section commands a better price for the skills, and assumes you know the relevant skills in the tier under it. Note that programming skills are not necessarily the best compensated these days. Note also that having the ability to use your skills in a Unix-based environment (HP-UX, Sun Solaris, AIX) can dramatically increase your price. Multiple platforms' experience is a Good Thing. This list is not a comprehensive list of all possible job skills, but is meant to illustrate a selection of skills to consider acquiring in the near future if you do not already have them. These are skills that have been noted as being more marketable than others in recent months.
- Tier One:
- CVS/VSS
- DNS/BIND
- NT/Windows Server Administration
- Palm Programming
- Routing and VPNs
- Tomcat/Jboss/any Java server
- UNIX Administration
- UNIX Backup and Recovery
- UNIX Security
- Web Performance Tuning
- Windows Security
- Tier Two:
- Access
- Apache
- C/C++
- Cold Fusion
- Crystal Reports/Business Objects
- Dedicated Server Administration
- DNS on Windows
- Firewalls/Pix etc.
- FreeBSD
- General Database Architecture
- IIS
- Java
- Linux
- Microsoft Visual InterDev 6.0
- MySQL
- Network Design and Management
- Oracle
- Routers/Hubs/Cisco
- Secure Certificate Renewals/Installs
- Secure Certificates/Verisign etc.
- Secure Web Server Software
- Sendmail
- Shell Scripting
- Solaris/HP-UX
- SQL - Windows/ PL/SQL
- SSH/SSL Accelerators
- Windows Backup and Recovery
- Windows Exchange Server
- Tier Three:
- Active Server Pages
- Basic Networking
- Cascading Style Sheets
- DBM/Perl
- Domain Registration/Transfers
- Dreamweaver
- Dynamic HTML
- E-commerce
- Flash
- FrontPage
- FTP
- JavaScript
- PC Hardware Troubleshooting
- Perl/CGI
- PGP
- PHP
- Stopping Spam
- VBScript/VBA/Visual Basic
- Virus Detection and Elimination Service
- WAP
- Web Clippings wireless
- Windows NT/2000/XP
- XML
Let them whine. Let them eat cake. Let them wade through a sea of resumes!(link lost)
P.S.
Don't bother listening, except on the e-mail blasting thing. Just be a reasonable match to the skills and do your resume in the nice clean easy-to-follow Job Fairy format. Imagine that. In a world where you can search a database by keywords, they're still favoring the look of the resume over the content! Even a Fairy could never have imagined that recruiters were that shallow...
It's Time to Fight BackJob Fairy has been on hiatus due to some urgent family problems. We're back now, even if not full time. And we're grateful. Compared to others' problems, ours are barely worthy of mention. Please visit this site - http://www.savemom.net/. This woman could use a helping hand. This is a classic example of when bad companies happen to good people.
I don't usually recommend starting at a place other than the beginning, but take a look at http://www.jobfairy.com/resume_mechanics_week2.htm. This Resume Help section goes over the mechanics of posting your resume to various job sites. As you can see, by the end of the second week, you cover a lot of ground. Now, what brought on this comment? Well, in Sunday's Denver Post, I read an article about a guy who was having lots of trouble finding a job (like the rest of the world). Turns out he was "filling out five applications a week" and "nothing had happened". Well, you have to hustle a little bit more than that, honey. You sign up for 50+ boards in a two week period. More if you can manage it. And you apply for every open position that could possibly fit. Even the ones that don't seem all that good a fit at all. Porn sites Spam you all the time; GO AHEAD AND SPAM THE RECRUITERS (with your job applications/resumes). Don't worry about them firing back a nasty reply. If they have the time to do that, they're not selling a whole lot of candidates, are they? Don't worry about them blocking your e-mail address. One, most of them don't have that level of technical expertise and Two, most of them move around so much that you can count on them being elsewhere long before they have a chance to obstruct you on an ongoing basis. Most of us Job Fairy folk send out between 125 (when it's slooooooow) to 350 resumes a week. When the market was hot, I could personally send out 500+/week - and that without resume zapping services and the like. And that was only within the State of Colorado! How come this works? Well, because job ads are written badly. We've said it before, and we'll say it again - it's like you're on the receiving end of a game of Post Office. So, by the time the hiring manager has conveyed their wishes (which may not have been accurate) to the HR person (who generally has no technical background either), what is posted bears little resemblance to what is needed. The HR person will present candidate after candidate to the hiring manager, who will not like any of them because they aren't what is needed. However, they are precisely what is asked for. Hence you will see re-posted ads that differ slightly from the original iteration. Better yet, an HR person will call you up and present you for a position that doesn't look a whole lot like your skill set. Then, when you get there, you'll find your skills match all sort of things the hiring company wants. Get hungry, get motivated, and get looking. Apply for anything and everything. Getting your name noticed is the best thing of all.
By the way, there are still a lot of really mediocre employees out there. You'd be surprised at this maybe, thinking that companies got rid of all the dead wood. Well, they missed some. A lot, to be ruthless about it. Most people are so fed up now they're going to start looking for a job come the spring whether there's much of a market or not. Employers are counting on this. They know they have some dead weight on their hands. And if the right candidate came along and was available...? Well, let's just say there are more openings than you think. Take it from some Fairies who should know... that "there are a lot of opportunities, if you know where to take them".
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