Recruiting IT Students? 631
spacemonk asks: "I teach at a community college and our enrollment numbers are down in our IT programs. We have found that many have the perception that there are few IT jobs. We feel this is causing many students, who might be interested in IT, to enroll in other programs. There is obviously a lot of conflicting information regarding the impact of off-shoring, and so forth, but much of what we have found indicates that the IT job market is improving, and IT is still a career that can offer job opportunities to students. For example, we have had internship opportunities that we have not been able to send candidates to, simply because we don't have the students. Needless to say, this is very frustrating. How would you honestly describe the IT job market to students considering this major? What can be done to recruit more students into IT programs?"
Time to let go (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, IT skills have been commoditized, and companies are paying standard wages for IT jobs. As a result, students are moving away from this ordinary job and either looking for something more lucurative, or simply choosing something that they are interested in (like Arts, History etc).
Since companies' needs ( as in wages, not the actual work demand ) for IT have been downsized, shouldn't colleges and universities do the same?
Cassette factory had its time, and it may still be producing cassettes, but it also has to make room for CDs/DVDs.
Well, what kind of IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people were pumped through technicial schools during the bubble. Many of those people were only chasing the supposed promise of big bucks in the IT field. Educational institutes make some pretty good money on their (and the tax payers') backs as well. I worked with enough of these people to become a bit bitter about the whole thing. If you're trying to drum up the same type of business from the same type of people, I can't say I wish you much luck. The world is always in need of throughly educated people who have a genuine interest in technology though.
My suggestion for getting a job in IT (Score:5, Insightful)
There are definitely jobs to be had for people who can support the infrastructure of what it takes to do business in today's world. You just need to be able to apply what you know to what is being done.
The good ol' days... (Score:5, Insightful)
The jobs are going overseas, as investors are mandating it either for cost reasons or because they now have a stake in some offshore concern. The jobs are emotionally frustuating because management expects programming to work on time and on budget like other engineering disciplines, but in practice its still an academic exercise with little thought to design and expectations. And, increasingly the vendors have turned the jobs into a vocational trade and not the creative and intellectual exercise it used to be.
There are still good jobs out there, but you'll have to make them yourself and hope you hang in there long enough to run the company and outsource the work to someone else. Otherwise, your a network support guy or sitting at a help desk in some cubicle waiting for the phone to ring for a question from an idiot in Finance.
But I'm not bitter...
Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
You could try and get the companies that have been hiring your grads to make a bit of a splash about it. Create literature to promote your school that contains testomonials from the companies that hire your grads. Have the companies come on campus to interview if you can and make it fairly high profile so that people notice. After that you'll have real proof that students from your program are getting hired and finding jobs.
Another path, not one you might like, but one nonetheless is to promote your school to foreign students. The local university in my town has quite a few foreign students and has traditionally had quite a few Indoneasian students. A lot of them come from word of mouth from other students. It another way to help your enrollment and from groups that are growing instead of shrinking.
Re:How would I describe the market? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be outsourced.
Re:Noooo kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps instead of trying to find qualified people for a low salary, you should try to find quality people that are intelligent and eager to learn, with minimal experience (they should be able to tell you about ssh and port 25). I have no sympathy for companies that complain about a lack of qualified people when they want the moon in skills but offer a smaller salary than a guy can make driving a fed-ex truck.
Training (Score:5, Insightful)
perception (Score:3, Insightful)
At least they seem to be very perceptive!
Any prospective IT student (Score:1, Insightful)
(a) watch office space
(b) ask yourself whether you want to give up nights/weekends learning new software versions or working through maintenance windows (if in tech field).
(c) be treated like crap by your employer.
in summation, ditch IT and do a trade like carpentry/house building etc where the skills you learn will last a lifetime, vs the vapourware knowledge of tech that will be out of date in 2 mths and require you to relearn it all again.
Sorta (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, but it *does* suck (Score:3, Insightful)
There are occasional jobs in the upper ranges, but no one wants to hire. It's even more ridiculous in the security field in the Midwest, as no one wants to hire someone with dangerously technical knowledge here, especially if they are young. There's a level of maturity that you just can't prove in a resume, and the more technical expertise you have, the more of a hiring liability you appear as.
I have told my younger brother's and sister's friends looking at IT-related jobs to look at other majors first. Just because they like their iPods and Bittorrent does not make them technically skilled to compete. I think the real problem lately has been rewarding "management experience" over "technical experience" by some of the major Fortune 500s.
You can reward your managers all you want, but if you aren't hand-over-fist for your geeky tech-types, you're just providing less incentive for truly skilled people to work at your place of employment. And you'll end up getting management-heavy, which ultimately will end up costing you money.
Major choosing (Score:5, Insightful)
1) They think they'll make a lot of money doing it.
2) They think they'd enjoy doing that the rest of their lives.
Seems like you're worried too much about group 1. Don't. Ignore them. You're better off if they major in business or Chemical Engineering or Sports Medicine or whatever else strikes their fancy. They're not really interested in the field. There are worse motivations, and many people are successful who are mostly looking for a payday, but that's not who you should focus your attention on.
For the second group, that are already interested, you need to convince them that they'll be able to make a living at it, and that this is more interesting to them than another field. I can't offer super specific advice, since I don't find IT interesting in the least (I'm a perl programmer) - but you probably want to give as much real world examples of what kinds of jobs people actually get in IT and problems they actually solve. The people who are drawn in, those are the ones you want to keep.
And really, above all else, treat the students with respect. This will be so strange and rare, you'll instantly be a step up on how most people seem to approach them.
They See the Future Correctly (Score:5, Insightful)
I run an IT Consulting company and cannot recommend this to family or friends. I am not pessimistic about my company's ability to earn money and keep me comfortable, but in general it is an ugly market to enter.
Here is what the typical college graduate in IT will encounter.
. You will start at fair wages and long hours. Under difficult deadlines and penny pinching companies you will be squeezed for everything you can produce.
. You are considered an "expense" that must be controlled. More often than not you will get an "good boy" instead of a bonus.
. You are as respected and appreciated as a union laborer.
. There is a pervasive belief that you are interchangeable with any other developer at half the price.
. Unlike other industries where age implies experience (and we can all argue whether it should), in IT age is taken as an indicator of being "behind".
. If you do not work at a software company, you salary will top out around 35 and you will get slightly lower than COLA in subsequent years.
. There is always someone willing to do your job for less than. They will be in two categories Offshore or Fresh out of University. It does not make sense logically, but bean counters do not use logic of this type.
. Your experience is weighed against your age/salary and with few exceptions age/salary will do you in. I often (too often) hear people say for what they pay a 40 year developer they can get three out of college - and then they do.
. Churn is high, making job security low - It is a myth contractors are fired first.
As I said, I make my living on this and while I hire and pay well, most of my competitors do not. They often win bids because they can low ball me. I often win second rounds because the first round was spent with nothing produced and we put a team on the ground that gets results. However, success does not matter these days, its all about price. I can guarantee a project for $700,000 and someone with next to zero experience bidding $675,000 will get it. Most often they bid $250,000 figuring once they get in it will be hard to get them out. (There is a reason recruiters for programming shops are called pimps)
Well, now that I vented most of that, I feel better. I am guessing this will end up flame-bait or troll (of which it is neither). It is a reflection of my frustration as I watch good developers move into other industries so they can have a family and pay a mortgage.
If you really want to help your students, stop teaching regular IT and focus on niche markets - embedded systems, AI, robotics. Things that are bleeding edge. Make the course horribly difficult so only the best and brightest make it through. It is better to choose another career in college than at 40. Add project management courses and "learning to learn" because anyone entering this as profession will need to stay on the bleeding edge or be unemployed. The difficult part for you will be replacing the instructors you have with those that can teach these topics.
Now I am guessing people will reply to this with - "Hey - I am doing fine" and that's good for them. I see the industry as a whole, not just the individual programmers and it does not look pretty for a career. For the top 20% sure - the rest...
Recent History (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Noooo kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, lemme see if I understand your predicament...you want to hire an entry level admin at subsistence wages, complain you can't find anyone with the qualifications you expect and, apparently, won't hire anyone with fewer qualifications and train them , and then have the gall to tell students to go out and get more experience ?
Am I the only one to see the irony here ?
Are you in India? (Score:2, Insightful)
Although in the longer run we see Indian employers themselves outsourcing to Vietnam, Bangladesh and Malaysia. Not so much China though.
Re:Noooo kidding. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not easy coming from a UK College (Score:1, Insightful)
Due to the [apperant] lack of oppertunities I enrolled on a Computer Science degree at a university in the North East [UK] but might soon have to pull out for financial reasons and find a job at a local Tesco again.
Many employers complain there are not enough qualified students ready for the workplace. In my experience employers seem to demand almost every skill related to IT imaginable instead of fresh techies showing potential and granting them the oppertunity to create and develop skills.
There are plenty of students applying to vocational programmes such as the BTEC and university courses but I often have a hard time spotting potential sys admins from between my peers. This is becoming the generation that's used to auto update and letting the OS take care of itself. As far as installs go, wizards take care of the job. Config options are always provided in a nice dialog.
Sorry, that's my rant over. CV's available
Re:Time to let go (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the 90's, people got into IT mainly because they had an aptitude for it and that was the type of job they liked.
But in the 90's, because of the salaries, many people who had no aptitude for IT got into the field. And they could get by because they could do an adequate job and companies needed warm bodies to get the work done.
Now the market is correcting itself. Companies are trying to reduce cost, some by outsourcing (and seeing how that won't work for the most part) others are trying to get by with fewer people and are finding out that out 4 out of 5 people in their IT dept are just warm bodies and can be removed without reducing the amount or quality of the software.
Simply put, IT is going back to becomming an area like other jobs: those who have an aptitude for it are being drawn to it. The people who have no aptitude are being pushed out or drawn to the latest high paying fad: health care (woe to anyone who gets sick today!).
If you are thinking of going into IT for any reason other than you like that sort of work, you are setting yourself up for career failure.
But, then, I'd make that statement about any career. Careers should be chosen by what you like to do - which relates directly with what you have a natural aptitude for - and not just because you can make a certain salary.
From the perspective of a recent IT graduate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if you agree with what I've just said, take into consideration the following: the private sector does not hire IT workers without experience. The notion that there are 'more jobs' available is probably true -- but look at the requirements. This is not the dot-com era any longer -- it's impossible for a no-knowledge, just out of school, wet behind the ears college graduate is going to get an awesome job without the skills necessary to help the company they work for achieve their business goals (and this is a large reason why the dot-com era went as bust as it did).
Pick up a paper, or check Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice -- all the IT positions are looking for *seasoned* employees. "5-7 Years experience." "Senior level position." These are some of the tag words that will put college graduates out of business when it comes to looking for a job. And *that* is the reason why nobody wants to get into IT.
There was a recent article in Information Week that explained the HUGE age disparity between IT workers. The reason is, that *most* companies aren't changing things around every day -- it's very cost prohibitive and it requires way too much overhead. They stick with the same technologies, so companies continue to run Windows NT 4.0 and the like -- and as a result, the same people stay in their jobs. This creates no openings 'on the bottom', and it's the most glaring thing to me in the IT world.
If you want to solve the problem of low enrollment in IT programs -- it's not to do with the job market. It's to do with the lack of INTERNSHIPS and REAL EXPERIENCE that employers are looking for. Unfortunately for me, the career services center in my school was useless, and I had a VERY tough time, and after lying on my resume about experience in years, I finally landed a crappy IT job. I'm much better off now, but the fact remains -- how can you expect students to line up for IT programs in a school, if you don't teach them what BUSINESS needs are important to keep met, instead of teaching them about "blahblah theory of x and y". Those theories make you competent programmers, but the 'quick and dirty' method of coding is often what's used and in business, it's what people want -- results.
So as a college professor, you have to work with major companies to get REAL internships to these students. They have to become PART of the curriculum. The idea of going to college, completing X number of credits, and graduating to a great job is OVER. The year is 2005 -- and money talks. Numbers are what counts, and if that number is how fast they want you to complete a project, how often they upgrade, how many years of experience you have, or the retention length on IT workers it translates into only ONE number -- the paycheck you're going to be bringing home. And if you don't have the skills from college to make it in the BUSINESS WORLD, then the doors that open so infrequently for entry level IT workers simply won't exist.
Re:Time to let go (Score:0, Insightful)
Why would you expect that?
Bit of advice. (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly beleive you have 8 years of experience. But if you do the math, you show your professional career began at 16.
When someone sees this in an hr department this resume will immediately go to the bottom of the pile. It appears to have been padded.
I am 35, and have been working with computers since I was 12.
I start my work experience from age 18. By which time you are normally out of school.
A resume looks good with all of your skills, just don't say the length of time if it started in your teen years.
I had an interviewer call me on this a long time ago. Took his advice.
Another tip is your years in the business should be matched by job dates on a resume.
Puto
Re:Sorta (Score:3, Insightful)
And then there's the part where they ignore your domain-specific knowledge: no, you've not coded that type of app in that language before, but you -have- coded that type of app in another language, for a similar company, with similar purposes, and you know what to expect. Too bad, nobody cares. (And it seems much, much harder to go down to the bookstore and buy a book about an industry, that explains how everything ties together, than to buy a language-specific book. And users? They don't know the whole picture. You'll have to talk to every damn person there, and then sort through the lies and misconceptions to get down to what you need to know. And then you won't document it, and
[/rant]
That kind of qualification smokes my baloney (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly the kind of "qualification" that is irrelevant. Do you know the COM3 default base port on obsolete PCs (0x3E8, INT 4)? If not, you are an ignorant poseur who should go back to tending cattle in Elbonia.
I have considerable Delphi experience yet am passed up constantly for Delphi jobs because my experience is either too old, or TOO NEW, FFS. This kind of microfiltering of qualifications is bullshit. I'm a computer scientist. What I need to accomplish the task, I learn. I've written Perl scripts. Can I even write a simple Perl script during a job interview? No. Can I learn enough in a couple of days to hack it up like a pro? Hell yes.
I hate the programming field, it's full of paradigm-driven morons who are too busy playing with UML and "Design Patterns". You can have them.
Specialties are a weakness (Score:2, Insightful)
That, sadly, really is the case. To be good, to be really good - not just mediocre - you have to be well-rounded. That is true in any field. However, IT isn't just another field. It is a study of the application of tools to enable others to study the application of data in other fields. But if you know nothing about how the other fields operate, how can you know what tools are appropriate or how to apply them to enable others to do their work?
An IT person in a scientific environment should, therefore, understand science. An IT person working in a corporate environment should understand the basics of commerce. Don't expect to be told what is needed - the average dork in such places doesn't know the first thing about the underlying principles of technology, they only know about what is visible to them. The IT guys have to not only know their subject, they ALSO have to bridge the gap. And you can't do that from a position of ignorance.
So, what does a real IT person need? They need a wide selection of transferable skills, for a start. That is an absolute must. They should have completed at least one degree-level course in the discipline in the area they wish to target their IT skills. They should ALSO have three to four years of theoretical training in IT and one to two years of internship - but where the internship is solid work. I wrote a matrix-based filesystem for a nuclear research center for mine, and I consider that to be about the MINIMUM level IT interns should be exposed to.
A four-year degree program for IT really isn't adequate, if you want to get into sufficient depth in any of the subjects to do more than just confuse people. Six to seven years full-time (ie: 40 hours lecture time per day, 30 weeks per year) would be much more reasonable. It is also vitally important that lecturers be (a) on the bleeding edge - they should be doing research alongside their courses and should update the courses accordingly in real-time, and (b) good thinkers.
The second of those is important - too much theory is taught at University that has no basis in reality. Anyone using a "Fat Tree" for high-performance networks is a thrice-damned fool, for example. The moment anyone (lecturer, student, outsider) finds a flaw in any of the thinking, that thinking should be acknowledged as flawed immediately, and replaced ASAP.
Someone who had taken such a course would be qualified for work in many fields - not just IT - because they would have a great many transferable skills, a degree, some qualifications in other fields they could leverage and professional experience.
Someone who has a degree that is isolationist and dead-brained has no market value if their profession bottoms-out, no matter what that profession is.
Re:Noooo kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
That should tell you that what you are willing to pay is unreasonable for the area. That's not a lot of money for an experienced sysadmin, especially for Silicon Valley. I suggest hiring people to telecommute. You can probably find someone living in a cheaper area (such as the midwest) willing to work for what you are willing to pay.
I have worked for several companies that allow sysadmins to telecommute. It works, but you might have to shift your thinking.
Re:Noooo kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's literally an education thing for business - if they want the market of available employees to be better, there has to be flexibility in every environment for people to learn. This not only includes NOT burning their employees out but also giving them the ability to promote a learning environment.
HR - Fight back when someone says I want "All This" and ask the hard questions - What do you really need this person to do? Without this person, what business impact is there? Shouldn't we pay this person decent money if they can help prevent loss and risk?
Re:Noooo kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't find people to hire.
Won't hire folks without senior level experience.
Advice to college students: Go find a job without senior level experience and get learned up so we can hire you.
Only problem.... that's what every business is doing. The place I work for hires -only- senior people with at least 8 years experience. Everything else (175+ positions) is done by entry level people in india.
CLUE???
Re:Specialties are a weakness (Score:3, Insightful)
I know it's supposed to be funny, but I can't say that I agree at all. I'd say the average person only knows a little bit about a handful of things, and much of that is incorrect or incomplete. "Skilled" people tend to have a lot of very narrow knowledge, often much of it simple rote memorization. Specialists tend to be the ones who know the why as well as the how, or they at least understand the importance of learning the "why".
IT Field...from a Student's point of view.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Part of the problem that I've noticed with many IT students in my program is that they're not interested in computers. I've performed just as much (Windows) tech support for my fellow IT students as I have for students who aren't in the IT program. For our Senior "capstone" class, we were asked to give a presentation on a piece of software. Over half the class had to have one assigned by the teacher because they didn't know of anything unique that they wanted to present.
Look for kids that are interested in IT. They're going to be the ones who take what they learn in the classroom and try to extend it. They may even come back at you with more complex and complicated problems that they discovered while, learning on their own.
Re:How would I describe the market? (Score:5, Insightful)
C-level bigwhig says "We have an opening in IT, pass it on to HR
HR says "We have an opening in IT, put out an advert"
Response to the advert is 1000+ resumes, which takes HR 3 months just to weed down to 12 perspective candidates.
6 of those candidates have taken other jobs. The other six are put through another 3 months of interviews.
At the end of the interviews, they're lucky if they have ONE candidate suitable.
C-level bigwhig says "It took 6 months to fill ONE IT position? There must be a shortage in IT".
How do I get an interview? (Score:2, Insightful)
There are plenty of jobs out there that you can get right out of college in IT.
I've looked, and despite sending my resume [pineight.com] for every IT opening located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that I can find on CareerBuilder and Monster, I can't even get a ******* interview anymore. After having tried for 30 months, what am I doing wrong?
Re:That kind of qualification smokes my baloney (Score:5, Insightful)
The correct answer is simple, and shows an important piece of knowledge -- a sysadmin who doesn't at least grasp the importance of cryptography will get his servers 0wned and r00ted within about ten minutes.
See, that's how you filter out interviewees -- by asking them questions.
I also ask applicants about their favorite command-line tools and whether or not they run a Unix at home. The ones that use Unix for their home systems invariably have an excellent grasp of the command line and know how to troubleshoot, whereas the people who have just 'played' with Linux/BSD, installing it on a spare box and never using it, don't. How is this somehow bad?
Re:Noooo kidding. (Score:2, Insightful)
I am lucky enough to be studying Software Engineering at a good university in the UK.
As part of my degree I am required to take a year long industry placement.
While many of my peers went to large companies such as Sun, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley I ended up working for a very small company indeed.
I must admit I was bitter about this at first, after all when I leave uni I think it would be good to have a year long placement with a company like Sun on your resume.
However I have changed my mind, working in a small development team means that I actually get more all round experience. Let me explain-
Finally my year long project involves building a telephony system (using asterisk, Postgres, Java and PHP) for a new customer service centre. This is critical to their business and I feel as if I am being given important tasks, and not just there to make the tea. Overall I feel as if I will come out of this placement with a good range of experience and with something to offer future employers.
Re:Training (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got 15 years experience working AIX, Linux, Macintosh, Sun, but mostly (by far) Windows. I've done some VB programming, shell scripting, perl, java - not really my bag baby, but I can do it.
And I would have failed your questions.
And I would have passed the Windows equivalent of your questions.
And in the real world, were I confronted with those questions, I would have used google or MAN and found answers in under 60 seconds. Inside a week, such trivialities would be second nature to me.
I know Windows, because that's what I'm exposed to on a daily basis, and our company had Linux gurus for Linux problems, and I focus my skills on what's in front of my face on any given day.
If you would fail me on an interview because I couldn't answer those questions, you'd be making a huge, horrible mistake. If you would take it on faith that such questions would not be any trouble for me in the real world where I have resources and can recalibrate, and then offer me $60k, I would laugh in your face. For the Bay area, or where I live today.
Your problem is your hiring policy.
Re:Wallstreet (But only geniuses) (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think this is the case. You're not talking about just genius programmers when you mention "new, unexpected stuff" -- you're talking about brilliant programmers who happen to be creative geniuses. I think that the push away from CS as a major has to do with the exact thing that's wrong with your above statement.
Chinese, Indian, Albanian, ... any other programmer may be able to write computer code very well, but in both an anecdotal and (what I beleive to be) a measurable sense, the United States and specific European countries actually teach their students how to be creative and competent at their jobs. It probably has a lot to do with the learning culture, and a lot to do with how people from these societies learn to cope with risk.
In my opinion, what you will find is that many of the creative genius programmers sense that the software culture in the US is no longer very concerned with innovation. There is definitely a perception that IT salaries are lower, and that will change with time, but the more relevant perception is that (because of IP laws in the US, and coming soon to a government near you) unless you're working for a top-10 employer (Google, Microsoft, Sun, Apple, etc.) whose business is IP, they don't want you to be creative. And if you don't work for a top-10, your creativity may bring the wrath of litigation down upon your head.
People are more willing to take 'normal' jobs and use their free time to express their creative ideas. Individuals who are truly interested in expressing themselves creatively, often care little or nothing about monetary recompense. The individuals we really need in Computer Science, the creative geniuses, don't need the hassles of the IT industry to find a creative outlet, and I'm sure many of them are just as happy to write stories and design video game maps in their off-time instead of using it as a primary means of income.
The jobs whose salaries were referred to are just that -- jobs. They pay a salary, and they can find a foreign programmer who can code to spec faster and for more money. If you really love what you do, why would you want to compete on that level and concede the commoditization of your talent?
Jasin NataelRe:Time to let go (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to let go. IT is just a regular job now. Get used to it, or move on.
Re:Training (Score:3, Insightful)
If you would have failed those questions, then you're not qualified to be a Linux admin. It's as simple as that.
I would have passed the Windows equivalent of your questions.
No, you wouldn't have. For two of those questions, the "Windows equivalent" are the questions verbatim.
If you would fail me on an interview because I couldn't answer those questions, you'd be making a huge, horrible mistake.
No, if she hired you to be a Linux admin, she'd be making a huge, horrible mistake.
Re:How would I describe the market? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well apparently your curriculum (like many) didn't skip arrogance. But as a former CS major I would have to disagree with you. Most of the classes you take are just filler stuff, and some simesters I found myself taking only 1 or 2 classes in my major. All the best people I have worked with are people who are just passionate about what they do but do not have degrees.
Re:That kind of qualification smokes my baloney (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyone that thinks ssh is on port 25 (mail) and attempts to ssh into a system via telnet shows to me that they have no knowledge over the standard TCP/IP ports.
I certainhly would not hire a "Unix guru" that ssh'ed into a system via telnet to port 25.
That "guru" knew nothing about ssh. I expect he heard about it and thought secure telnet=ssh and was accessible via port 25 or something along those lines. Why he specified the port I have no idea.
I certainly would not want him trying to ssh into the servers at my workplace (1500+) via telnet [hostname] 25
That being said in the DC area 60k is not a whole lot of money (I think it is the same with the bay area). I would not accept a job in the DC area for only 60k a year.
Re:How do I get an interview? (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Find a real, living recruiter. Monster and CareerBuilder are not the answer. They are one of many possibilities, but you gotta work your contacts and make new ones to expand your reach. It helps to have a human contact that you can talk to once in a while.
3. Move.
4. Ft. Wayne? No offense, but that just isn't a hotbed of technological development. Try Austin, Raleigh-Durham, Denver, Boston, Northern Virginia, NYC, LA, or Silicon Valley. Hell, move to any MAJOR city (Indianapolis is cute, but probably not gonna be all that hot when it comes to finding tech jobs). Find a friend to move with you and share the rent for a while. Yes, some of those places are more expensive than Ft. Wayne, but they also have jobs that pay better and offer a bigger variety of opportunities. The tradeoff in the long run is more than worth the initial sticker-shock.
5. Borrow money from family, live with a relative, do *something* before you get stuck taking a crappy job for 5 or 6 years and realize you've wasted your time and energy and haven't achieved a goddamn thing and are no closer to finding a technically intersting CAREER. Do it while you are young, it gets harder and harder to make major changes like that as you grow older, trust me. If the jobs are not in your area you HAVE TO go to where the jobs are.
6. Network yourself like crazy. Follow up any and all leads.
7. Good luck.
Re:Well, what kind of IT? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah that's the problem with people these days. we want programmers who know how to get the job done. But not how to get the job done PROPERLY. Formal education teaches you so much more than just how to do it, there is also an emphasis on team work and a structured approach towards solving problems. The problem with the job industry is that too many self-proclaimed OSS gurus are out there claimimg to be better than those with a degree. And upon hiring them employers (such as myself - I admit) may find that they are stinky geeks with no regard for rules and team and formality. At this point I only hire college grads, with or without relevant knowledge. I prefer the formal structured diplomatic approach they bring to the company.
Re:Noooo kidding. (Score:4, Insightful)
Be fair - it's not "someone" saying this... from the look of it, it's everyone.
"I don't think it's that dire, though."
With respect, you appear to be in the minority. As your problems hiring someone for this money would also tend to indicate.
"I'm the CEO of the company and my salary is less than $60K/year. My techs are paid hourly -- sometimes, during rough periods, they get paid more than I do. I maanage to live just fine here in San Jose on a $50K/year salary."
Funny thing - you're starting out on a new(ish) business. You admit you still aren't profitable. You (presumably) own the business, you have something invested in it, therefore you should accept lower wages since you're making an investment for the future. Your employees (from the sound of it) do not have any investment, therefore they do not stand to benefit substantially from your business growing, therefore they will require their motivation in decent wages and good working conditions, not in jam-tomorrow "if the company grows we all benefit" rhetoric.
The dotcom era is over. People no longer trust an entrepreneur with big ideas and a business plan that leads to staggering profits in five years, and certainly won't exchange their present comfort for what amounts to a bet on your success as a businessperson.
If people don't own part of the business, they won't be willing to trade present wages for future success. And frankly, even if you offer stock options or some other method of "ownership", you'll still have to find someone who really, really believes that you're going to be successful.
And, not to be rude, but you aren't Google, or Friends Reunited, where you could secure venture capital, grow exponentially and those stock options end up worth a lot. You're an ISP - essentially a commodity vendor, and one who could even ultimately end up being squeezed out by something like municipal wi-fi access.
"The highest salary I've ever had here in the Bay Area working for another company was $49,500. It wasn't easy to live on, but I did it."
Well then - there you go $50,000 wasn't easy to live on, and from the sound of it $60,000 still isn't easy to live on now. And how long ago was it that you were living on $49,500? Don't forget to factor in inflation...
"I'm a little bit better off now that I have my own business, but the fact is that most of my business's revenue gets reinvested into the business. That's what we have to work with. Sorry, folks.
Indeed, and this is the proper method for someone who owns a small business (I do too, so don't think I'm just talking out of my arse about this). However, you aren't going to find employees who are willing to take the same risk as you without the possibility of the same reward as you.
The company is your baby, so you'll make sacrifices to help it grow. Either make the company your employees' baby too, or make the pay for babysitting worthwhile.
Re:How do I get an interview? (Score:3, Insightful)