"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Friday, September 6
My Life As A Dog
Haven't posted in forever, and with good reason. For the past 2.5 months I have been searching frantically for a job. So far it's been an intensly frustrating experience. No one is adding IT people right now, and those that have jobs are hanging on to them, so there are very few openings to be filled.
When I was laid off, my wife and I made the decision to go ahead and move to Dallas. We'd been thinking about it for some time, mainly because our son was going to start kindergarten soon, and we were in one of the worst school districts in Shreveport - and that's saying something. And Dallas is one of the top 5 high-tech cities in the country, so when the economy comes back, so will the jobs.
The problem is that every industry in Dallas is getting hammered right now. Dot Com? Check. Telecom? Check. Airlines? Check. True, there are jobs out there, but I haven't made the personal contacts I need to find them. With so many applicants to choose from, employers can get who they want, and everyone knows somebody who's out of work.
Another problem is the policies of many of these companies towards job seekers. I have a neat appearance, good attitude, I get along well with others, etc., but nobody will ever know it, because everywhere I go, I'm instructed to submit my resume to the company's web site (incidentally, this is the policy at the company where my wife now works, and she still doesn't think it should make my life any more difficult). It's very frustrating to be turned away everywhere I go.
On the other hand, my wife was able to find a pretty good job here in Allen, a suburb of Plano, which is itself a suburb of Dallas (yes, I live in a sub-suburb). She's now an accounts payable clerk for a local telecom equipment maker. She writes hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of checks every week. I'm hoping that gets all the spending out of her system. And our kids are doing well in school and preschool, and love the apartment complex where we're living, especially the pool. We've probably gone every other day for the past three weeks. I'm going to end up looking like a prune. A bitter, prematurely gray prune. With no job.
