Gissa job!

[gjm 3258]

Round 4(17)...

I have applications for roles being reviewed in Tauranga, Napier, Gisborne and east Hamilton. 

And if all that fails, a local Repco have offered me a job.

[richard 384]

would you get a big staff discount.

[gjm 3258]

17 hours ago, gjm said:

And if all that fails, a local Repco have offered me a job.

15 hours ago, richard said:

would you get a big staff discount.

Yuss. And the guys I'd be working with are genuine car nuts - one is a successful ex-rally driver, the other drives a Skyline and races an AE86.

 

Edited May 3, 2018 by gjm

[gjm 3258]

How useless are recruitment agencies?

3 that I have spoken to this week, are now listing a role which nearly-perfectly matches my CV, and is certainly exactly what I have told them I am looking for. I spoke to them all on Monday or Tuesday; the role would have to have been submitted for listing yesterday.

Not one of them has been in touch to say they have anything.

Maybe they don't think I'm suitable?

Another agent who I emailed on Tuesday with a request to 'call me ASAP' (I'd tried calling him) emailed yesterday morning - "I'll call back later today." First - why not call instead of emailing, and second - why didn't he actually call (or email again) at all?

If the pay at Repco wasn't so totally, horribly atrocious I'd make a career of that! (Apparently buying a few $k of parts every week and selling them for profit on eBay is frowned on...  )

<sigh> .... And - breathe.

Apologies. Just needed to vent a little.

Waiting to her about a great job in Newstead, and a friend is presenting my CV to his boss(es?) in Hawkes Bay today. And I'm writing something which I'll send to @Gabe79.

It does get a little draining, spending 4+ hours every day searching, applying and chasing. It's harder work than going to work!

[richard 384]

what are you like picking kiwi fruit

[gjm 3258]

2 hours ago, richard said:

what are you like picking kiwi fruit

I saw there's a shortage of fruit pickers... Never picked Kiwis. Potatoes, brussels sprouts, apples, oranges...

[gjm 3258]

Just saw a job advertised in Hawkes Bay. Not for me, but one of the requirements had me scratching my head...

"At least two years New Zealand experience of working with Photoshop, 3D Studio Max and Archicad."

Presumably NZ has it's own versions of Photoshop and so on...?
This is exactly the issue I faced after landing in NZ - everyone wanted NZ-based experience. Nowhere else came close.

[lord_jagganath 421]

2 hours ago, gjm said:

New Zealand experience

The absolute bane of my life. maybe a form of passive discrimination?

[qube 3570]

Think you need to change your name like Frank.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12077415

 

(what kind of last name is that though..?)

[gjm 3258]

58 minutes ago, lord_jagganath said:

The absolute bane of my life. maybe a form of passive discrimination?

I had this when I first arrived in NZ. 'Experience in NZ' killed jobs for me, especially given Telecom (now Spark) had just released so many people into the jobsearch market. The functions are the same... There may be some cultural differences, especially around Maaori culture, but it's no a complete change.

3 minutes ago, qube said:

Think you need to change your name like Frank.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12077415

 

(what kind of last name is that though..?)

I'm not culturally profiling, but I have found a lot of Asians do change their names, sometimes fundamentally, when moving to an English-speaking country. It's not a new thing - so many are known as Paul Kwong, for instance. We had a homestay student whose name was 'Samantha'... Except it wasn't - that was her Western given name. At home with her family she was still Wing.
I suspect it is for same the reasons 'Frank' did the same. It meant he appeared more familiar to those he approached , in his case,for work.

But yeah... that surname. Wow. 

[B.M.W Ltd 950]

Don't keep spelling it like this Graham (Maaori) if you want an admin job or executive job in NZ

[lord_jagganath 421]

47 minutes ago, gjm said:

but yeah... that surname. Wow. 

Common Faarsi/Persian Indian surname though 

[dirtydoogle 383]

Move to the Hawkes Bay and I'll hire you as a mechanic, then make you work 60-70 hours a week? 

[gjm 3258]

12 minutes ago, dirtydoogle said:

Move to the Hawkes Bay and I'll hire you as a mechanic, then make you work 60-70 hours a week? 

It'd be less than I worked in the UK...

[dirtydoogle 383]

41 minutes ago, gjm said:

It'd be less than I worked in the UK...

Perfect! Hope you love lying in muddy paddocks undoing farmers abuse

[gjm 3258]

31 minutes ago, dirtydoogle said:

Perfect! Hope you love lying in muddy paddocks undoing farmers abuse

That actually sounds quite tempting at the moment...

[dirtydoogle 383]

Could certainly do worse things for less money

[SmithyInWelly 212]

I'm on gardening leave from this week 'til the end of the month - time to crank up the job search. Awesome*.

 

 

*may not contain actual awesome - but here's hoping!

[gjm 3258]

1 hour ago, SmithyInWelly said:

I'm on gardening leave from this week 'til the end of the month - time to crank up the job search. Awesome*.

 

 

*may not contain actual awesome - but here's hoping!

It's fun for a while...

Good luck!

[jom 98]

On 7/2/2018 at 12:40 PM, gjm said:

"At least two years New Zealand experience of working with Photoshop, 3D Studio Max and Archicad."

One of the roles I went for wanted 5+ years experience of the cloud (!).  I think that there's a new breed of manager around that don't understand previous experience.... they want people who are similar to them ("millenials") but with 10 years more experience. It doesn't exist. I find that I can't communicate with the interviewers lately. Never had a problem before. Thank goodness I can  retire....

[Gabe79 410]

1 hour ago, jom said:

One of the roles I went for wanted 5+ years experience of the cloud (!).  I think that there's a new breed of manager around that don't understand previous experience.... they want people who are similar to them ("millenials") but with 10 years more experience. It doesn't exist. I find that I can't communicate with the interviewers lately. Never had a problem before. Thank goodness I can  retire....

Hmm, depends how that's defined, I suppose, but EC2 was the first true 'cloud' (I'm a fan of the saying "There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer...) offering, and that came out nearly 12 years ago. 5 years of Cloud experience, I'd want to see solid experience with OpenStack, AWS, OpenShift, etc, all of which are older than 5 years now... Docker is 5 years old, LXC is 9. Saying "Cloud experience 5+ years" means they want someone who doesn't just know Kubernetes/Azure, or who has been on the ground for these things for a long time relative to the technology. Granted, even working in this space, I know a handful of people who fit that description, but hey, if I'm looking for a senior person in that space, it isn't an unreasonable ask. 

[M3AN 4016]

I'm not sure, 5 years is towards the edge of feasibility in this market. Give me an OpenStack engineer with 2 years experience over somebody who drew a cloud on a whiteboard at an architecture conference 5 years ago any time. 

The thing is these often aren't hard requirements. If I believe I can do the job based on the description I'll ignore the list of qualifications.

 

[Gabe79 410]

1 hour ago, M3AN said:

I'm not sure, 5 years is towards the edge of feasibility in this market. Give me an OpenStack engineer with 2 years experience over somebody who drew a cloud on a whiteboard at an architecture conference 5 years ago any time. 

The thing is these often aren't hard requirements. If I believe I can do the job based on the description I'll ignore the list of qualifications.

 

It depends entirely on job description/requirement. I concede OpenStack as a specific example hadn't been around very long then, but the point I was getting at is if the role is senior enough, 5 years of Cloud experience is perfectly reasonable. Even 5 years of OpenStack experience is reasonable, it's just limiting on your candidate pool, and you should consider bringing in high budgets for that, or re-assess what you really need. In fact, from the top contributor companies to OpenStack, I am fairly confident there is exactly one person in New Zealand who'd meet that description in a meaningful, and he's happily employed.

Anyway, Cloud is a special topic for me, and it's a biased view, but 5 years of actual working experience (not including having drawn a diagram five years ago...) is not unreasonable. Sorry.

 

EDIT: You're right that these are almost never hard requirements. Job descriptions are more like a wishlist. If you tick enough boxes, that's all that matters. 

EDIT2: My pet peeve is jobs that ask for Masters degrees, or other irrelevant higher qualification.

Edited July 3, 2018 by Gabe79

[gjm 3258]

I've found the devil is in the details and that the tiniest straying from a role description has sidelined me. In fact, meeting every requirement is insufficient - I need to exceed, by some margin the experience stated, in time-served, qualification and breadth, before I make first interview.

I have to consider that I am doing something wrong,  but the feedback I get (when I actually get any feedback, which is very rare) doesn't support that. I seem to be consistently second, in areas I know back-to-front and inside-out.

By deciding I don't want to work in Auckland, or live more than 4 hours from Hamilton  (where Bex is at Uni) certainly does limit the field, and I accept that.

[jom 98]

On 7/3/2018 at 9:37 PM, Gabe79 said:

Hmm, depends how that's defined, I suppose, but EC2 was the first true 'cloud' (I'm a fan of the saying "There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer...) offering, and that came out nearly 12 years ago. 5 years of Cloud experience, I'd want to see solid experience with OpenStack, AWS, OpenShift, etc, all of which are older than 5 years now... Docker is 5 years old, LXC is 9. Saying "Cloud experience 5+ years" means they want someone who doesn't just know Kubernetes/Azure, or who has been on the ground for these things for a long time relative to the technology. Granted, even working in this space, I know a handful of people who fit that description, but hey, if I'm looking for a senior person in that space, it isn't an unreasonable ask. 

Should have made it clear that this was for a project management job... anything more than 2 years of familiarity is going to be pretty irrelevant. Some of us can pick up the tech bit quite fast. It's the people skills that should be the focus with a PM.

And while we're on the cloud... god help the NZ government if the Trans-Tasman cable ever goes down....