job hunting rant

slee335

i hate job hunting i keep hearing news about how low the unemployment rate and people are hiring. i can't even get a job interview i applied to about 300 jobs only got 1 in person interview 5 phone interviews out of the that. horrible odds. i hate this job i'm at. im kinda scared to quit before i find another because it seems so hard to find one but i can't stand it at this place anymore getting so depressed can't sleep.

BlackBeret

Take a deep breath. You're doing better than a lot of people by having a steady job, and smarter than some by finding a new one before quitting you're current job. A lot of it comes down to your location and the local market, what you're qualified for vs. trying to do, and the pay you're looking for.

cyberguypr

One step at a time. What the story here? I see a resume draft on your other thread but where's the final version? Also, how are the conditions on the market you are targeting?

markulous

With 300 jobs applied to it's almost guaranteed that it's your resume. Either your qualifications are severely lacking or the formatting is bad.

bpenn

Yep, most likely the resume. I am 30 jobs in and 4 call backs so slightly better odds but I owe my resume to it. What are your credentials? What kind of jobs are you looking for?

E Double U

Are you just submitting applications via job board sites or contacting companies directly? I never got desired results by making profiles on company sites. To land my current role, I sent an email to the bank's HR team with the subject "Job Seeker". I mentioned that I did not see any jobs that I was interested in on their website, but still wanted to know if they could use someone with my skills. I used my cover letter as the body of the email and attached my CV. I received a response from the VP of HR saying there is an Info Sec Analyst role and the rest is history.

Another tip: if a position mentions the name of the company recruiter then reach out to that person directly via email or phone.

If you are doing the same thing repeatedly and it isn't working then it is time to try something else. I am assuming that your resume isn't crap and you have the right skills.

srabiee

I agree, the resume would be the first and easiest thing to address. Could be lack of experience, lack of education, or simply that the resume doesn't convey your actual skills and experience effectively.

You could live in an area with a bad IT job market. I am in a very similar situation. The wife and I are packing up and moving soon. This may be something else to factor in. What area do you live in?

Have you been contacted by many recruiters? If not, you may want to try seeking them out in this case.

Have you covered all of the job search sites such as Dice and Indeed?

bpenn

E Double U wrote: »

Are you just submitting applications via job board sites or contacting companies directly? I never got desired results by making profiles on company sites. To land my current role, I sent an email to the bank's HR team with the subject "Job Seeker". I mentioned that I did not see any jobs that I was interested in on their website, but still wanted to know if they could use someone with my skills. I used my cover letter as the body of the email and attached my CV. I received a response from the VP of HR saying there is an Info Sec Analyst role and the rest is history.

Another tip: if a position mentions the name of the company recruiter then reach out to that person directly via email or phone.

If you are doing the same thing repeatedly and it isn't working then it is time to try something else. I am assuming that your resume isn't crap and you have the right skills.

To piggy bank (intended, as E Double U works at a bank ) on this, I added 6 IT recruiters on my LinkedIn and two of them have actually called me and are going to help me find positions. I recommend utilizing any networking resource you have available!

slee335

here is a copy of my current resume. i recently passed my security plus and ITIL in the last two month hoping those would boost my resume no luck in that . in the first 3 month i was mostly applying directly to company that had job opening i saw on indeed big company like fortune 500 company's. the next 3 month expanded the search on career builder monster indeed and dice. recently the last month started to talk to recruiters. i hate talking to recruiter all they do ask what position i'm looking for my salary expectation. then they tell me i got this i said it sound good they submit it i never hear back from them. i emailed two week later to find out either the position is on hold or went with someone else. i started my search this year end of jan. just recently applying to almost any position out there like i'm desperate and unemployed.

srabiee

Are you still looking in the New York, NY area?

kohr-ah

Resume formatting looks pretty good, but remove all your personal data off and repost it if this is correct info. :P
Also education at the bottom did you get a degree at all? Are you attending there?

Mow

There are some gaps in employment on there, but I would think you would still get calls. Have you tried for contract roles?

TR4V1STY

kohr-ah wrote: »

Resume formatting looks pretty good, but remove all your personal data off and repost it if this is correct info. :P
Also education at the bottom did you get a degree at all? Are you attending there?

That would be the big question for me as well. The education section down there is very vague.

kurosaki00

markulous wrote: »

With 300 jobs applied to it's almost guaranteed that it's your resume. Either your qualifications are severely lacking or the formatting is bad.

This^
Resume gets you interviews. If you're not getting calls then by basic math it's the resume.

BlackBeret

As others have said, add what education you have from the University. Also, there are capitalization errors in CompTIA on your certs. Otherwise it looks good if you're applying to roles that match your experience.

slee335

Education i got a degree at university but it was in B.A in economic unrelated to the field i left that part.

Yes I'm still looking in NYC Scrabiee.

I'm looking for system engineer, system administrator, it system support, it specialist, IT security positions. i'm looking for full time not contract i don't want to leave full time for contract that could end anytime. i guess looking back i really just seriously started looking but it feels like forever.

there is small gap a year of unemployment after i got laid off used time to relax and study for the ccna

i just hate when people say oh get into IT security its booming i'm like how i don't have experience in the security field then they said oh its easy start off with the security plus thats your in. i got my security plus every security position i saw requires at least 5 year experience i still applied i didn't get any call back. now i feel like that was a waste to get my security it hasn't open any door for me.


any feedback on resume beside the education i should i put economic b.a even though its unrelated? reuploaded removed personal information.

slee335

bpenn wrote: »

Yep, most likely the resume. I am 30 jobs in and 4 call backs so slightly better odds but I owe my resume to it. What are your credentials? What kind of jobs are you looking for?

do you include a cover letter? did you do the quick apply from monster or career builder? or apply directly with the company and do the whole profile thing?

I've been doing the quick apply i got tired a bit doing the long profile from applying directly. i did that a few times.

Danielm7

I'll chime in on the security part specifically, just getting the sec+ doesn't mean a whole lot. Nothing else in your entire resume says anything about security at all. I know you said you don't have security experience, but have you done security related tasks in your past jobs? To be completely blunt, without anyone able to see even a lick of security on your resume outside of one entry level cert, why should they call you back for a security role?

You should tailor your resume to the type of job you're going for. If you want a networking job, tweak your job duties, summary, etc, all to emphasize your networking skills specifically. When I got into security I had 10+ years as a sysadmin. What I did was highlight my security tasks in past jobs. I configured firewalls, monitored logs, deployed AV/malware solutions, got X certifications, learned Y and Z security related software, etc. You need to tweak your resume for the type of job you want. Even if they are smaller parts of your past roles, list them higher in your bullet points, you want them to be obvious and the first thing the company sees, don't make them dig into the end of page two to find out you MIGHT be worth looking at.

Even with all that, it took networking, the people kind, not the cabling kind, to get into the industry. Just putting a test you can study for in a few weeks into an otherwise completely unrelated resume is not going to get people knocking down your door.

slee335

Danielm7 wrote: »

I'll chime in on the security part specifically, just getting the sec+ doesn't mean a whole lot. Nothing else in your entire resume says anything about security at all. I know you said you don't have security experience, but have you done security related tasks in your past jobs? To be completely blunt, without anyone able to see even a lick of security on your resume outside of one entry level cert, why should they call you back for a security role?

You should tailor your resume to the type of job you're going for. If you want a networking job, tweak your job duties, summary, etc, all to emphasize your networking skills specifically. When I got into security I had 10+ years as a sysadmin. What I did was highlight my security tasks in past jobs. I configured firewalls, monitored logs, deployed AV/malware solutions, got X certifications, learned Y and Z security related software, etc. You need to tweak your resume for the type of job you want. Even if they are smaller parts of your past roles, list them higher in your bullet points, you want them to be obvious and the first thing the company sees, don't make them dig into the end of page two to find out you MIGHT be worth looking at.

Even with all that, it took networking, the people kind, not the cabling kind, to get into the industry. Just putting a test you can study for in a few weeks into an otherwise completely unrelated resume is not going to get people knocking down your door.

I thought i'll get a junior entry position to build up the skill set and learn. i thought it would be like hey you want to get into the IT field get comptia test to show you know the basic. i thought that would be the same for security. i notice there isn't alot of entry level position for secruity the two people i know who got into it was promoted or moved into that role from the inside from doing IT work. they had no experience in the field before that. they said we opening up a new role security do you want to join it. thats how they got in. i learned its all about networking and who you know in the IT field.

Danielm7

True, there aren't many entry level security positions because in that field you're usually expected to know about systems, networking and everything and how it works. If you don't know how the other things work you can't really secure them well. But, you mentioned entry level security, but also mentioned 5+ years experience, so it's not really truly entry level.

You're in kind of a difficult spot too in that you have a bunch of IT experience, so if you wanted to start at like a jr analyst sort of role, they probably feel you'd want too much money so you might not be getting a fair shake. But, like you said, it's about people networking and really knowing how to do what the employers need. Just telling someone to get a sec+ and you should then be able to get into the security field isn't really accurate minus some fringe cases.

You can either go full bore into trying to get into that field, which would mean picking a specialty and then gearing your studying and certs towards that specialty, or you can continue on your same track of support/admin and just work on trying to network/linkedin/meetups/etc to get a good inside contact.

cshkuru

Part of the problem here is the grammar. Speaking as one of the world's worst grammarians i- t is bad. Get a good proof-reader to go over your resume with you and clean up the language and I bet you will get a much better response. As an example -

"Maintained and monitored critical systems with SolarWinds and Geist to maintain network health and power usage to minimize downtime. "

What does that sentence even mean? There are a lot of ways to reword it and someone will have a much better suggestion than this, but you should be saying something like:

Monitored critical systems using tools including SolarWinds and Geist to maintain network health, minimize downtime and effectively regulate power usage.

again that's a quick suggestion and there are probably better ways of phrasing it, but you get my drift. Make the sentence flow and tell a story. The same type of problem exists in your professional summary. It is choppy and hard to read. I know this stuff is hard to write, I suck at it, but that's why you need a good proofreader.

docrice

I normally don't read resumes posted here, but I'll give this one some feedback. I skimmed through it like I would when I'm reading other resumes at work. While not bad, I think this one needs to be more "punchy" - something has to grab my interest within the first 5 seconds starting from the top.

• Having a professional summary that sounds like an professional objective statement is sort of debatable these days. A lengthy one increases drag on the eyes though. A bulleted list is better.
• Re-articulate your points based not on what you did, but how you improved the organization. That will angle you as someone more interested in delivering proactive improvement to the company rather than just doing a set of predefined responsibilities.
• Entry-level security roles are usually not entry-level IT roles. A Security+ quite frankly isn't going to catch that much attention. It's a start, but cert-wise there needs to be more built on top of it.
• There's a bit of an art to delivering your work experience as a 20-second elevator pitch. Find ways to shorten your sentences but keeping the spirit of the point intact. Unlike what I'm doing here in this post. You'll likely be able to consolidate many of your statements into fewer, more direct ones which gets the point across.

In summary, look at your resume from the perspective of a very busy hiring manager with 500 other resumes in the same pile as yours. You have to capture and hold onto the attention of your audience.

alxx

Have a look at the free version of Grammarly https://www.grammarly.com, it and the built in spell checkers in web and office save my butt all the time

twodogs62

Don't ever quit job without having a new job lined up.
easier to find job when you have one.
so, hang in there.
to me sounds like problem with your resume.
are you writing cover letters for each job applying for or just dumping your resumes?
you may have to look closer at job postings and make your resume and cover letter fit each job posting.

i'll add too, don't make it hard for hiring manager to read resume. I've seen a few that are just paragraphs and hard to read. I immediately discount them when they are totally hard to read and in strange format.

Stick to 2 pages or less.

sounds like you need to change resume.
change your bait!

slee335

update i still haven't quit yet but i'm getting closer to quitting they keep changing my hours around. had a potential job offer recently finally! a interview actually had 3 with this company the last one was about salary then a week later they went with someone else. so close i thought i had it. the position wasn't really want i wanted to do but i like the growth opportunity its a start up company. anything is better than my job now. probably priced my self out of the position

Update
i checked indeed.com where i applied it says its in 70 plus i asked for 75 didn't price myself out i just suck

Update

i emailed them asking what i did wrong and how i can improve myself. is it possible to talk your way back into the job consideration? i know its a stretch. back to the job hunting grind.

Danielm7

slee335 wrote: »

Update

i emailed them asking what i did wrong and how i can improve myself. is it possible to talk your way back into the job consideration? i know its a stretch. back to the job hunting grind.

I wouldn't think so, if they've already gone with someone else then they made up their mind. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole part about asking what you did wrong. Maybe if I was going through a recruiter where I could get feedback, but if the hiring company passes on me then I just view it as done and try to analyze what happened and how I can improve by myself. When I've interviewed people myself I never had someone come back asking what went wrong, but I'd imagine if they did I wouldn't tell them much outside the fact that we chose someone else. Even from a HR/legal standpoint, depending on what you tell them it might get tricky.

scaredoftests

I hear you. I could tell you stories of job hunting that could make your head spin. It is awful and it is really hard not to take it personally.

slee335

so i slept on it not as mad as i was before. just got to get back on those job board site.

SpetsRepair

What jobs are you looking at? What's your skill level and background?

slee335

update:
the director contacted me back about how i can improve on my interview skills. she said i was a pleasant to talk to but it was too much of a one way conversation. she said i need to more interactive and ask more questions about the position or about the company. i don't mind asking question about the position but asking question about the company doesn't really have anything to do with the position. like oh how much does the technology department get or how much money does the company make. i could care less. she said do a little research and be more interested in the company. blah i'm not a company man i'm a employee get the work done and leave. when the company makes billion i don't see cent. if i was in finance where i could possible see some huge bonus maybe. maybe because its a start up company fairly new 4 year old i should ask those question. i still honestly think it came down to salary and not me being interactive enough we had good conversation but she started the conversation first i didn't ask the question.

I'm looking for system admin engineer or analyst position. my skill level is over 10 years of experience this is my first NOC Job and i hate it. i kinda regret taking it thinking i will learn more about networking. it just made me hate it and that networking is not for me even though i have my CCNA. main reason i took this role is my old job i was about to get can because they lost the contract to the company i was working for and my old supervisor called me to take this position. now i feel like i'm typecast as a NOC or network guy thats the only position recruiter are calling me for i have to keep explaining to them i don't want NOC or heavy networking role. i am a system desktop kinda guy more interactive with the users.

docrice

Having interest in the organization, its mission, and the role's contribution to the overall mission says a lot about a candidate, actually. I've interviewed many "just want a job" vs. "how can I help the business" candidates and the ones we'd ultimately lean towards are those who have a holistically-viewed approach to the bottom line. It shows a degree of personal investment towards an organization as opposed to just putting in a strict set of expectations. So yes, the attitude and approach can certainly be a factor in how you're viewed professionally.