DigiTan

Yeah, I'll post up the resume excerpts sometime soon. And I don't know who started the LinkedIn page. I might have done it in 2004, but I don't know if anyone reads that stuff.

I've been fighting the wrong battle. If someone's sabotaged my reputation, they need to be exposed and punished. I've only made their job easy by not posing a threat. My advantage is that this blacklisting network is massive to a fault. But still illegal. All I have to do is put enough careers in peril to trigger a panic. Seriously: Who's going to touch a blacklisting network that puts their own job at risk? By the time I'm through, they'll be so busy washing their hands of it, the system won't sustain itself. You don't have to get off the list. You make people quit using it.

But what the heck. It's still May 22nd, and that happens in June. I've still got nine more days to lay to waste sending out pointless resumes and emails. If nothing else, I can just widen my list of suspect companies.

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rjvh

Sorry to here that you still think like that

personaly i think you will not do yourself a favour going that way

Robert-Jan

Hank Fletcher

I've thought about this a little more, taking into consideration your 200+ applications, and the specific market (Pacific coast) you're applying to. My conclusion is that your level of success (or failure, if you insist on being a pessimist) is entirely consistent with a fairly-run job market.

When I was looking for work that resulted in my present position, I paid for the use of an agency. This particular agency had a monopoly on teaching positions in Ontario - just about every district website insisted it was the only way they would accept applications. So I paid for an agency service that still required me to do all the job hunting, setting up of interviews, etc myself. The result? I got a handful of interviews that were essentially a waste of my time, because the hiring schools were required to interview at least three people for any position, even though they'd often decided before-hand who they would hire (some of the position-winners I know for a fact were children of the people hiring).

To cut to the chase, what's that all mean to me? If it's a rotten game, but it's the only game in town, what can you do? Answer: change towns. Think of it like a pick-up game of basketball (or perhaps more apt to this forum's clientele, a multi-player FPS). If a group of people are playing, and you start playing with them, and they start acting like jerks, what would you do? Out of pure self-interest (your health, your happiness, your resources) your best option is to simply find another game.

What you want me to tell you (or someone else, I don't know) is that railing against the machine, or system, or a group of people, or one person in particular will result in some kind of cathartic climax of resolving justice. What I'm going to tell you is: you're wasting your time and energy if you're expecting, or even just trying, to make that happen. There's a time for protest. There are battles (even just metaphorically) to be fought. But this isn't one of them, at least, it's not in your own interest to fight. Don't make your life a battlefield, just move on.

If there are no jobs, or the competition is higher than you're willng to tolerate in a given market, move on. It's nobody's fault that that's the way the cookie crumbles in various markets every now and then. Regardless of what you may have endured in the past, there are no guarantees against your having to deal with adversity at any given time.

Get to the facts, stick to reality, and stop wasting your time on these stupid revenge fantasies. If you think about it, the revenge fantasies are just another way people, systems, or whatever you want to call it are wasting your resources. So just avoid it. Drop it. You can rail, but you can make your life a rail and not get what you want, need, or will make you happy.

Post your resume, and where you've been applying. There's more to this story than what you're letting on, perhaps more to it than you're immediately aware of (for instance, you haven't really responded to the challenge of looking for a job in a fairly specific geographic region).

If your resumes shit, and you're making ridiculous applications, you've got no case and you're wasting my time.

DigiTan

Here it is: Resume 2008, revision D. I've had this thing reviewed by the university career center, the undergraduate Dean, the engineering internship coordinator, a former professor, Score 22, and my own parents. The February - May revisions leading up to this one included tab/margin adjustments, removal of two irrelevant jobs (cashier), and generalizing the skills list ("Eagle and PSpice" -> "CAD").

I've only been using the cover letter since March, but I get the same positive feedback. Everyone says it's one of the more laudable resumes to come from an undergrad. And I'm not exactly showing up for these interviews in tennis shoes either, it's always the suit and tie. Yet my resume always lands in the hands of some dumbass HR clown. They should cut themselves on it and get a MRSA infection. That's my career goal.

Attached Files

Resume2008d.pdf (86.8 KB, 18 views)

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DigiTan

Anyway, please don't it as a rejection of your advice. Maybe this situation will resolve itself. Maybe it will turn out better than I expected. But these "people" are making it impossible to hold back. If nothing else, a lot of people owe me some answers. Their actions are inexcusable.

I've already applied all over the US. The Southwest, Midwest, East Coast, West Coast, even Coast Rica. If there's one thing I learned to recognize in college: it's a futile situation. ...The absence of progress, the endless setback, the failed attempts to reinvent oneself. I can spot it at a glance. I've sacrificed too much for too long to just let a world of arrogant, bigoted engineers throw my life away. I don't know if I said something the other day to suggest I'm on some fantasy mission. I mean, you should be as pissed off about this as I am. For crying out loud: there's a class of people out there making a sport of shattering young lives. People need to have their eyes opened. What I need here is just job search advice so that when someone asks, I can say I tried everything. I'll deal with the others on my own terms.

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Miles Prower

Yeah. I also did the whole EE school route, and that's exactly how I look at it: waste of time and money. Believe me, I learned onehelluvalot more sitting in the basement with a hot soldering iron and a big stack of Rat Shack components than I ever did sitting in some classroom with a hundred other guys (and a few gals) listening to some TA drone on and on. I can tell you that for what I do, there was not thing one ever even mentioned about it. I had to learn it all on my own because there was no other alternative: nothing, nothing, nothing about how audio equipment works, how it should be designed right, how distortions affect the sonics. Is it any wonder why all "Big Box" amps sound so terrible these days?

"...and being a minority automatically cuts my opportunities down to half."

I doubt it. The problem is that the kinds of jobs you want have long been outsourced. They aren't here anymore. I gave it up a long time ago to work on my own. Still, the &^%$*$# gov't seems determined to louse me up every step of the way.

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DigiTan

I used to believe that was true, but I factored in all the times I can waltz onto Indeed.com or CareerBuilder and find 20 open positions that I'm perfectly qualified for. People always say "It's the job market. It's a slow market," but if that were true, there wouldn't be postings. They just don't want me around.

I really don't care that my school didn't offer me anything. I've been a peace with that for years. What burns me is every recruiter on the planet wants to throw my life away. I was gonna be an adventurer in life. Travel to Europe, do volunteer research, start my own business, and even try a marathon before age 28. All I need the smallest spark. Even at only $48k/year (well below average pay for engineers), it puts every goal in reach before 2011. I've calculated it a hundred times.

Now I'm gonna be trapped making minimum wage the rest of my life.

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zanes

Digitan, I'm not sure how the resume/CV thing works in the US of A, but I'll make an observation on it from the perspective of me in the UK:

What about other things? Although it's a massively strong engineering CV, there is practically nothing that isn't electronics/engineering related on there, ie. sport and other activities.

As I said I don't know how it works over there, but if I submitted that to an average HR department (sorry, but it'll nearly always be processed/passed through HR) they'd look at it, and think "Hold on, this guy does x,y,z etc, but what does he do when he's not doing electronics?" They're probably worried about burnout/stress levels- Doing electronics to get away from electronics will not sit right with an HR bod.

It doesn't have to be massive things, just things to show a more diverse you.

Keep your chin up, life has an odd way of sorting itself out no matter what happens.

I'm not having a go, and as I mentioned maybe over there a resume is only focused on job skills, and all I've written could be totally irrelevant, but that is what struck me when I read it. Life WILL improve.

DigiTan

Another rejection email:

Translation: "Thanks for letting us get your hopes up. You are useless to us. Go somewhere else."

Today I had to sell my television and Nintendo Wii to cover my bills, which was basically the last of what I have that's worth anything. I would literally have to resort to crime to pay off any additional bills. I've calculated my budget dozens of times and there's no way out.

Amazing. Simply amazing. You start electronics at age 10. Build your first state machine at age 12. Start a GPS internship at 17. Invent 30 devices before you're 24. Graduate. And this is how you're treated.

If that's not blacklisting or racism, nothing is. Jesus Christ! Why does everybody hate me?

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DigiTan

Here's my 5th revision. This format was suggested to me by the Undergraduate Dean and Associate Dean. The "activities" section is more reminiscent of my 1st revision, where it list more "past time" activities and not just the student orgs. The pitfall is that no one gives you straight answers as a job applicant, just generic rejections. Even if asked directly, the response is always "We're not allowed to say" or some garbage to that effect. They would literally have to be bribed or coerced before you can figure out the why behind their reasoning.

But anyway, here it is. 5th revision...

...maybe there's some minor parts that needs improving, spelling or whatever. But there's positively no excuse for the rejection patterns I've had to put up with. There HR recruiters are blithering imbeciles! I mean...what do I have to do to get through to these idiots? Build a freaking space shuttle? What the hell do they want from me?

I mean...I've tried everything. I even researched the supernatural possibility and read books on prayer, Ch'i, and curse removal spells. I can't do anymore!

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kchriste

Don't take it personally because you were rejected by a Web Bot! The important thing with applying on-line is to use specific key words. In the past, I've simply cut and pasted the requirements and reworked the sentences into a cover letter to get past the "Bots". If you don't meet a specific requirement (Say they wanted AVR experience but you only knew PICs) then state some thing like "I have experience with Microschip's PICs (similar to AVRs)." Stupid and annoying, but it's one way to beat the system.

Brady, you need to remove stuff like this from your site:
Link: DigiTan: Programming and Hardware Center
From http://bmayes.unitedti.org/
No trained HR person will hire you with stuff like this posted in your name. It makes you come across as someone with a bad attitude who will be difficult to work with. Delete all negative comments from all your web sites and focus on the positive even if you don't believe it yourself.

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mneary

WHO put this in your sig line? You need to track that saboteur and straighten him out. Have a long heart to heart talk with this person! You will never get a job unless this negativism is halted.

An army of ONE. YOU. So fix it already.

DigiTan

Look, I'll let everyone on a little secret here. HR people are stupid as hell. No one investigates, and no one follows up--other the credit checks and industry blacklists. Even then, it's the database doing all the work. I've yet to meet one interviewer who's read either webpage. That's why I quit sending them out on CDs. Half the time, they'll ask me a face-to-face question that's blatantly been answered by the resume/cv in their own hand. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't it the HR managers job to study and scrutinize? Common sense says yeah. It's Human RESOURCES after all. Who tries to tap a resource without even looking? The HR department is a human junk pile of dim-witted xenophobes who could be out-shined by trained capuchin monkeys if not for the speech barrier! If no one is going beyond the resume, anything I write is inconsequential. Literacy is dead.

Oh and don't get me started on the interview questions. "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "What's you biggest strength?" "Are you a team player?" Seriously, let's see a show of hands: who doesn't know how to respond to those? Anybody? Anybody? This doesn't test anything but my access to "Common Interview Q&A" searches on google. And maybe my patience. These people can't even come up with an original line of questioning. "Where I see myself in five years? Giving you 50¢ to scrub my windsheild, you dumb HR scum!!" I'm totally using that my next interview.


My negativity is just a reflection of my mistreatment. Put yourself in my scenario. If you were fired tomorrow, only allowed to work minimum-wage jobs, and no one would explain why; would you be dancing in the street? Hell no, you'd wanna to kick some ass! Britannica says an "army" is a large force trained for war. That's my opposition. The past 6 months was a carefully-orchestrated campaign to bar me from the field. The interviews are staged. My contacts are actors. The rejections are choreographed. It's all about keeping me under their heel the only way they can: social abandonment. There are times I wonder whether this world is real, or whether it's a constructed hellscape of planned obstacles.

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Marks256

In order to succeed, you must want to succeed.

Perhaps your attitude about this whole deal is effecting your reasoning skills.

Keep looking.

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kchriste

That's your first mistake. Underestimating your opponent. A good HR person, while they may know nothing about engineering, will screen out people who are difficult, negative, abrasive, arrogant, etc. The HR person is the person you see at your first interview and are the key to getting the second interview. It is in the second interview that your technical skills, as well as personality, will be put to the test usually by your potential future supervisor.
You are missing the point. Your resume demonstrates that you can write. The 1st interview is testing your personality and verbal skills.
And you wonder WHY you are on a so-called black list?
No, I've been unemployed before with a mortgage at 9.5% over my head, etc. And no, it wasn't easy finding my next job but I kept at it for 3 months with the bills piling up but I didn't give up.
Been there done that. I had an interview with a board room full of 10 people interviewing me at once. It was a very stressful interview and I wasn't hired. Because I kept my cool, one of the interviewers took me aside after and complemented me on my performance. She also apologized for the fact that the job was predetermined/rigged to be filled internally but for legal reasons was open to the public. At least I got a reason and knew that it wasn't my lack of skill, qualifications, etc.
You need to find out what you are doing wrong. There is a reason behind 200 rejection letters and it is not a conspiracy. It is something about YOU and/or how YOU present yourself. Once you find out what it is, you can adjust your job search to compensate.

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