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.
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.
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.
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.