Bogieblog

The Real Story

I had emailed the Burt, my main contact for the Documentation Specialist position that I interviewed for last week, and asked him what I could have done differently in order for them to have been more prone to hiring me (email is his preferred method of contact). His response was enlightening, and seemed to confirm something that I have feared for the last couple of years.

You portrayed yourself and your qualifications honestly and with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately there was another applicant that had more experience in the area of documentation control and AutoCAD drafting.

I have had 6 years of Document Control Experience and 4 years of light drafting experience (light drafting is all they said they needed). However, I believed my many years of experience in Tech Writing and MRP implementation would help me because that is what they said they wanted. I also have experience with many different side disciplines that are related but not technically part of the job. However, what they wanted was an expert in just a couple of the fields - and I am not an expert in any field.

It used to be that companies would look at a persons experience and go with someone that has experience in a broad range of job skills because they figured that people that were willing to branch out were better for the company. Looking at the help wanted ads, Burt's response and listening to managers at job interviews seems to confirm that this is no longer the case. Companies are looking for people with 10+ years in one or two disciplines and don't care if a person is willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. They no longer care if a person is multi-talanted and is willing to further their education or experiences in order to help the company out. They no longer want someone with broad-based experience or someone that is flexible within the scope of a company. They don't want someone that has taken on additional and broader responsibilities in order to further the goals of the company.

Oh, they tell you those things are what they want, but actions and written words tell the real story. What they want is someone that does one or two jobs; someone that only wants to do the same thing over and over again (not that that is a bad thing for a person to do - just not what many companies claim they want). In other words, what they want is not something that I can give them.

Someone is Desperate

Yesterday, early morning (it was one of those hours that Billy isn't aware exists) I put in my resume for an Administrative Assistant. They need someone that can start immediately, and that would be consistant with my current circumstances. This is not a job that I have ever done, but most places seem to want a person that is skilled in MS Office, writing and grammar so it is something that I should be able to could cross over into.

The company representative called me about 9:30 (that would be AM) and set up an appointment for an interview. I'm not sure this is a job I want as it would probably mean a large drop in pay compared to what I was making previously. However, it is in a completely different field than high tech or manufacturing, so I would be busy learning a lot.

It is at least worth it to talk to them and see what, if anything we can work out.

Great Backyard Bird Count

The Great Backyard Bird Count is in the process of receiving and tallying bird counts across North America. If you want to see how your state or territory did you may veiw the results here and click on the appropriate link. You can also see how certain species did within the entire count region. Keep in mind that the reporting is still going on (so far 33,250 checklists with almost 3.5 million individual birds counted have been submitted), so details may change from day to day.

Let Down

I didn't get the job that I interviewed for last week. I got an email that said:

Thank you for visiting with us last week. Although you have excellent qualifications and terrific attitude, Company X [Name changed - bogie] has decided to hire another applicant. Your resume will be kept on file in the event future openings more closely match your qualifications.

All right, that either means that someone had the same qualifications except they had RF experience also, or I got a form letter. "In the event future openings more closely match your qualifications" indeed - my qualifications couldn't get much closer according to the job description. Oh well, maybe next time.

Westminster

Lacy was awarded Best of Breed in Westminster this past week. For a in-depth explaination of the prep-work and show go here and read the many posts (top to bottom is the correct order to read it in). Unfortunately she did not place in the Group competition (Hounds), but many times in a show the placing goes to crowd favorites and not neccessarily the dog that is most representative of a breed. Those favorites are oftentimes dependant upon what breed of dog is currently in fashion, and Borzois do not fit that bill. There are also favorite handlers or breeders that crowds tend to get behind, regardless of how their dogs actually stack up to the breed description.

To illustrate this point, read the reaction of the crowd when Lacy won Best of Group later that week at a Denver show.

Congratulations to Lacy, Greg and his Lovely Bride in their outstanding work at both shows!

Holiday Weekend

We had a busy weekend we didn't seem to get a lot of stuff done, but it was all time consuming.

• Harry finally got to come over and finish the trimwork for the slider so I had to move everything that was remotely close to that area into a non-combat zone (harder than it seems when in conjunction with the next item). Now I get to stain and polyurathane the trim and sand/polyurathane the one floorboard that he replaced.


• I got the rest of the living room painted which incluced not only moving furniture but washing about a million collector's plates. Each portion of the room got two coats of paint. I also got part of the stairway painted.


• WS helped Harry trim out the slider


• WS showed and sold the car to a guy he works with, so there is one more thing that no longer clutters up the yard!


• WS finished a trail he made in the back yard so the neighbor and Jim can come over with their snowmobiles nad have a little fun.


• WS washed both our vehicles since the weather was fairly mild Saturday. They desperately needed baths; mine hadn't been washed at all this winter and his had only had one rinsing.


• Regular chores on a weekend; dump run, hit every most of the businesses in town, laundry etc.

And that was jsut Saturday and Sunday. Monday, we didn't get much done but went into Concord and shopped for a bunch of stuff (didn't get most of what we were looking for, but had a good time looking). Then we ate a late lunch at Chili's and headed home to relax.

Nothing like a nice relaxing holiday weekend!

Ticking Me Off

Essay Canajun tells us of a battle she is having with a company about trying to get on their Do Not Call list.

I have had this battle before (not with the same company or anything, but very similar). Can anyone tell me why some companies say that it will take 4-6 weeks for the change in status to take effect? For goodness sake, everything is done by the computer except the actual talking to the customer, so why isn't there a little checkbox that the telaperson can click on to tell the database not to bring up that phone number again? What, does it take 4-6 weeks because it is done compeletely by pen, paper and then by searching every dang field to find that number and manually deleted? Even I can add one of those nifty little checkboxes to the database, so I would assume that they could employ someone to do this for them!

And another thing I'm ticked off about is a company that I sent my resume to, sent me an email with an "Invitation to Self Identify" - you know, that piece of paper that you usually fill out after your hired that tells the government what species you are and whether you have ever picked your nose in public. Okay, really it tells the gender, race, military status (or lack of) etc. Sounds like a sneaky way to find all that info out before tendering an invitation to an interview to me. Silly me, I thought they should look at a person's qualifications for that!

Happy Birthday

Go say Happy Birthday to Wichi Dude (and no, I won't tell you how old he is).

Interviewed

All right, where was I? Friday? Yep, Friday.

I went to the job interview where I talked to 3 different people. The company has been around for about 8 years. It started with 4 people was up to 12 people 4 years ago and has since grown to 48 employees. The company resides in one of the old Mill buildings where it started on the top floor (reserved for start ups) and the moved to the second floor last year. They recently expanded by 6,000 sq. feet and now take up the entire space. They have also aquired another company within the last year, so it sounds like it is really growing.

It sounds like the perfect job; they need someone for light drafting, document control and technical writing. In addition, they just went to an MRP system and are trying to not only incorporporate old data (such as BOM's routings and costings) into it, but need someone that knows how it all integrates together. This is exactly what I did at the job I held a couple of years ago. There is one slight problem in that I don't have any RF experience, but it seems that is the only area that I am lacking.

Valentines

I would like to say

Happy Valentine's Day
To all my friends and family.