[PLUG] FreeGeek...

Mike C. mconnors1 at gmail.com
Wed Apr 12 22:39:01 UTC 2017


"Nobody in Portland seems interested in inexperienced computer scientists."

Color me skeptical about this claim. I find it hard to believe you can find
even a software tech support, QA or DevOps job wouldn't at least pay
$15/hr, especially as a contractor. I recently quit a contract gig at Intel
as Network Software Test Technician that paid $30/hr. Although I was a CS
major prior to the Internet, I don't have any real world programming
experience and just have some now expired SysAdmin / Networking certs.
Their ideal candidate would have some programming knowledge from
Powershell, Bash up to C / C++.

It's interesting to me that almost every Sys Admin job I look at or get
contacted about wants someone with programming skills that I don't have and
somehow I'm able to still get jobs. Not the dream jobs. Although I have a
few good references and a lot of varied work experience on my resume due to
my struggle to stay at a job longer than a year and a half or so. But I'm
nothing special in today's IT world. In fact I've been struggling with
finding a Linux Sys Admin job because I don't have any
scripting/programming experience.

Anywho, here's some ideas that might be more fruitful in your job search
than an internship at Free Geek.

1. Go to some of the many daily Tech events in Portland that are listed on
http://calagator.org/events . Some are meetup groups, some are study
groups, some actually work on projects and others are talks. But all of
them will provide you with the opportunity to network with people who work
in the Tech industry in Portland. I import the Calagator calendar into my
Thunderbird email client via gmail to stay abreast of all the events.

2.  There's a Portland tech job fair coming up on April 27th.
https://portland.craigslist.org/wsc/sad/6066445489.html

3. LinuxFest NW is coming up. May 6th & 7th. Another networking
opportunity.

In my 20 years of working in the tech field, I've found nary evidence that
finding an IT job isn't much more than doing the work to get a job. That's
a good resume, cover letter, phone calls, emails, networking, interviews
and good ol' fashioned persistence. I dare say that being a decent human
being, with a well written resume and cover letter who knows how to take an
interview that is so often stiff and awkward and turn into a conversation
about the problems the hiring manager is currently trying to solve and that
you have the skills, knowledge, experience and/or personality
characteristics to help solve those problems gets the job.

I hope that's helpful.

Cheers,

Mike



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