[oclug] [OT] Jobsearch 102

[Milan Budimirovic]

Rod Giffin wrote:
> 
> Oh crap.  It did it again.  Those are quote marks Jon, writtin in some funky
> unicode format.
> 
> Thanks for pointing the error out to me though!  I'm using a Java based web
> client, because I'm not at home, and wasn't at work.   Its text editor
> sometimes tries to do silly things with what it considers to be "special
> characters".  My apologies.
> 
> It's actually my own bug too, since I'm the one that tried to get the program
> to convert MS Word SmartQuotes to standard quotes, which introduced the bug.
> 


Good thing you weren't e-mailing your resumé. :=)

Actually when I was job-hunting three years ago, most places
understandably just wanted plain-text e-mail. I think I sent hundreds of
copies of my resumé, and none of them were hardcopy (OK, there were
about a dozen faxen involved). So I don't know how much the old rules
about cover letters and font sizes and types still apply. The weird
thing was that I ended up getting interviews for jobs which I thought
were a longshot, only to find out at the interview that a lot of the
skills they wanted were not advertised in the job posting.

Anyway Rod, with all due respect, it really is tough out there. Ottawa
has gone from 70,000 tech sector jobs in March of last year to about
50,000 now. That's a staggering 30%, and the telcos are not done laying
people off yet. Add to that all the temps and contract workers who don't
show up in the stats and typically have no EI or severance pay to fall
back on. I know the tech sector has always been cyclical, but it's
pretty bad right now.