Employ me, please
July 21, 2001
I really need a job. I've been here in South Bend, IN for 4 weeks now, and I've only had one interview. I was interviewing with the Environmental Heatlth Laboratory as some sort of programmer, (doing maintenance on their wacky WebObjects/NeXTStep system it turns out) but when the HR manager asked me how much I wanted, I'm afraid I asked for too much. I didn't know what kind of work they wanted me to do, so I just told him what salary.com's site had listed as the median salary for a client/server programmer (which is what their ad implied they wanted) with no experience. I was also adamant about not actually needing that much money (since I don't even know what I would do with it), however, I think the high number scared him.
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<br>The IT manager there liked me, so I think I would have gotten the position, had it not been for my poor salary negotiation skills. Next time, I'm going to try to get the full job description ahead of time.
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<br>I've sent resumes out to several other companies. My best prospect right now is at the University, as a web service manager. Their ad had all the buzzwords, ASP, PHP, ColdFusion, etc. So I figured I have a chance, as long as my lack of "real-world" experience doesn't turn them off. I'm going to call Monday and follow up on my resume submission, and see if I can swing an interview.
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<br>I'm not sure if I'm going about this all the wrong way. Maybe I should just start sending resumes too every computer-related company in the phone book, or every company that looks big enough that they might need a programmer. And then call them all if they don't respond. I guess I'll try that if this University job doesn't come through. I could always try to get a job teaching CS at a private HS.