It is quite popular these days to hire a headhunter when looking for work. And, on the surface, I thought it was a great idea. Why should I pound the pavement looking for jobs when these people do this full time and are willing to find me work without charging me? They get paid by the companies who are looking for employees and they get a percentage of my first year’s salary. This means that they would get me the largest possible salary and it doesn’t cost me a dime!
Or does it?
When speaking with the two headhunters that I was working with, I made it very clear that I was looking for a management position. It was also very clearly stated in my cover letter and in my resume that, while I was also very technical, I was definitely looking for a career in IT management.
At this point, the blinders went on. Both headhunters wanted me to rewrite my resume to emphasis my technical side. One headhunter even called me up later in the day and told me that she had a great leadership position for me. The position ended up being a tech lead, something that I did almost a decade ago!
Based off my, albeit limited, experience with headhunters, I have made some observations which may or may not apply to other headhunters:
Headhunters are not actually working for you. Rather, they are working for the employers and themselves. You are really nothing more than a trading commodity akin to cattle.
Headhunters are not motivated to find me the best job. Rather, they are motivated to fill as many open positions as possible. This keeps their bosses happy by keeping the actual clients (the employers) happy.
Headhunters are not motivated to get me the highest possible salary. If a headhunter can spend half an hour to get me a $40,000 per year job, do you really think that they are going to work to get me an extra $10,000 if it takes an extra five hours? Especially when they can place ten more $40,000 people in that time frame. This is typically referred to as the law of diminishing returns.
Headhunts will try to make you fit the job, not find the job that fits you. I was told that I would never get the type of job I wanted with my resume (even though I already had the type of job I wanted already) but that she had the perfect job for me. I was also told that my salary expectations were too high and that I would have to be more realistic, even though I was already making more that I was asking for and in a tougher market.
If you don’t fall in line, they will drop you. Once I made it clear what I was looking for and that I was not willing to settle for a job similar to what I had done ten years ago, I never heard back from my two headhunters again. I am assuming that the effort wasn’t worth it.
Now, as I stated, this is based off a relatively short time with two headhunters and I could be completely off base. Maybe I just got the two bad headhunters in the entire world. Let us know about your headhunter experiences, good or bad.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Red Green, he is the quintessential handyman/technologist! There is nothing that he can’t do with same spare pieces of junk and a roll (or two) of duct tape. For example, power windows:
I would be completely lost without my Internet connection. I had my central firewall die one day and it only took a few minutes for me to go into withdrawal! But, a lot of the times it is just sitting there doing nothing. And, like the lazy house guest who takes the trash out once a week, you really wish you could get more out of it.
One of the ideas that I have been working on is setting up my Internet connection with a WiFi hotspot so that people who are in the area and want quick Internet access can pay a small fee and get what they need.
This is a project that is still in the research phase but I have already made some really interesting discoveries.
I am probably going to use a piece of software made by Coova called CoovaAP. It is based on OpenWrt and allows you to turn several different stand alone commercial WiFi routers/firewalls into a full blown manageable hotspot. From the website:“CoovaAP is an OpenWRT-based firmware designed especially for HotSpots. It comes with the CoovaChilli access controller built-in and makes it easily configurable. CoovaAP is perfect for just about any HotSpot application - from WPA Enterprise (with RADIUS accounting) to Free WiFi with Terms of Service acknowledgment to commercial HotSpot captive portal applications. Use the embedded captive portal for a simple self contained HotSpot or use your own captive portal and RADIUS back-end. It is all up to you!” Other options that I have been looking at include WiFi-CPA and Worldspot.net.
If you are planning on doing this, make sure you read your Internet provider’s terms of service. You may not be allowed to do this without putting yourself at risk of being cut off!
You may want to look at boosting your WiFi signal to allow for the greatest amount of coverage. There are several ways to do this.
Make sure that you set up traffic shaping so that you can give your own computers priority over those who are using the hotspot. After all, it is your Internet connection.
Split up your internal network and protect it with a separate firewall. The last thing you want is your hotspot clients getting access to your personal information.
I’m still trying to figure out how to allow users to pay automatically when they create an account. It looks like PayPal will be the first most logical choice.
If you have a number of Internet connections in several different places, you could set up a single sign-on configuration to make it really easy for your clients.
It will be very important to determine how lucrative this will be because it could potentially be worth getting more Internet connections specifically for this purpose.
I think there could be some real opportunity here. What are your thoughts?
I have been getting a number of e-mail and posts asking how the job hunt is going.
Yesterday, I accepted a position with a consulting firm as Manager of IT Services (at least that is my working title). Now comes the fun part of house hunting, selling our house, packing, moving, etc.
I am really excited about this new challenge as I will have the opportunity to help shape and grow an entire company! So, if you are looking for a good IT consulting company in the Edmonton area, feel free to drop me a line and I’m sure we can help you out!
U3 technology is a really awesome way to use your USB drive. It provides menus and the ability to install software quickly and easily on your USB drive.
But, (You knew there was one coming, didn’t you!) what if you want to use your USB drive as a simple file transport? Or you work in a locked down environment that will not allow the U3 software to complete its job? Now what?
I found myself in this situation last week when my boss asked me for a USB drive to take some work home with him. I was rather embarrassed when he came back to me thinking that I gave him a drive infected with a virus!
Fortunately, it is a relatively easy process to remove the U3 software. Simply download the U3 uninstaller and run it against your USB drive.
Caution! You will need to move all of your data off the USB drive before running the uninstaller because it will reformat your drive and all of your data will be lost! Also, you will not be able to reinstall the U3 software if you change your mind later!
It is quite popular these days to hire a headhunter when looking for work. And, on the surface, I thought it was a great idea. Why should I pound the pavement looking for jobs when these people do this full time and are willing to find me work without charging me? They get paid by the companies who are looking for employees and they get a percentage of my first year’s salary. This means that they would get me the largest possible salary and it doesn’t cost me a dime!
I would be completely lost without my Internet connection. I had my central firewall die one day and it only took a few minutes for me to go into withdrawal! But, a lot of the times it is just sitting there doing nothing. And, like the lazy house guest who takes the trash out once a week, you really wish you could get more out of it.
I have been getting a number of e-mail and posts asking how the job hunt is going.
