Sri Addanki:
- If you are in USA, I would try the following.
- If you graduated from USA college, then talk to employment services of that college. The three colleges that I attended (Univ of Pgh, Penn State Univ, and Lehigh Univ) all offer career service help to their alumni.
- Lehigh Univ actually has an alumni network to help out of work graduates find employment.
- Only bad part about the above - is that you have to be an alumni of the respective college to use their career services.
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- So let's say you can't go that route.
1. Talk to the local community college in your area. See if they have a career services center. You should be able to use their career services center (at least to look at their listings) - even if not a student there. For some reason, the community colleges I visited let me look at their job listings with no problems.
When I say job listings above - I mean employers that have contacted the university looking for students to employ.
2. Look in the paper for "pink slip" parties. I know that
www.jobcircle.com used to have these in the Philadelphia area. You will have to look around for ones in your own locale.
3. Again, do cold calling. Go to bookstore and research companies in your area and send them a cold-call cover letter and resume.
4. Keep sending resume's to folks on the job boards.
5.
www.ora.com -- This is O'Reilly Book web-site. They have a job listing section. Tough to find on their site - but totally dedicated to
J2EE jobs.
6. Study - Study - Study.
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I've said this before on this board.
When I was laid off (been through this 4 times in past 3 yrs). I decided whether I wanted to play or work.
When I played - I played hard. Went fly-fishing until I literally dropped from exhaustion.
When I wanted to find work. I turned my job search into a 60+ hour/week affair. It starts out slow - but the momentum builds.
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Getting a job is like fishing - only easier. You need to dangle your "worm" in front of the "fishies". But unlike fishing, you only need to land one "fish". In fishing, you gotta stay all day.
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If (after 3 months) you are not finding work, then you need to do a re-assessment.
- Is it something I am doing (resume, interview).
- Am I lacking certain skills.
- Do I need to expand job search geographically.
- Do I need to think about grad school?
- Do I need to switch fields?
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Right now, of course, it's a bear out there. So you have to work harder, possibly consider career change if you are new to the field. Possibly consider grad school if you want to stay in this field.
My own personal advice is to maintain a positive attitude and keep learning. I have too much investment tied up in this industry to walk completely away from it. Fortunately, am employed, but that can change at any moment.
Hope this helps.
John Coxey
(jpcoxey@aol.com)