Czajkowski

I’m sure I can speak for many people when I say job hunting can be stressful, frustrating and down right nightmare at times.  During the past 4 months I’ve had a lot of experience of recruiters, websites, and dealing directly with companies.  It still  boils down to this. Lack of feedback, job descriptions not actually matching what they eventually do employ, lack of updates and well frankly sometimes it’s clearly evident the person at the other end of the mail or phone does not want to be dealing with another application.

I did try on day 1 to use a recruiter, I tried a few in fact. Mother of sweet jebus mary and holy saint jack daniels, would they make you want to throw heavy objects at them. I am not a developer, no where on my cv says I’m a developer, clearly my skills are not developer skills yet at least three times a week I’d get developer roles. After a month of this you just want to scream! Clearly they see IT and sure it must all be the same right! Then if they see Tester, you get sent for dev and test roles, more annoyance! I did try to give them feedback, but at the end of the day they weren’t listening, and they clearly just had a number they needed to fill of  cvs to send to perspective employers!

So then I looked at job sites, now this was a little more useful, monster, totaljobs and more were all handy, upload a cv, a cover letter click search for stuff and bulk apply. Some I’d tailor cover letter for if I really was interested.  More often than not you get a reply saying you cv has been added to a queue you’ll hear back at some point, in fact today I heard back from a job I’d applied back in July! *sigh* really not good enough to be honest.

So then what next, I looked at companies I would consider working for or like the look of or were working on interesting projects. AS I said during these 4 months I’ve view a lot of websites, someone of them could do with a work over for usability never mind functionality! One horrible one to navigate is Rackspace, and I did apply once I finally worked it out, never heard back from them, not even a PFO.

Next up was searching companies out I’d like to work with, looking directly at their career pages, interesting enough to be honest, they changed on a daily basis. I did apply for a few, but when you actually get talking to a manager, what irritated the flipping life out of me was how their idea of the job differed from what the job spec said, so it wasted both of our time. If you want to hire someone to do X don’t advertise A, B or C and if they tick those boxes interview them and then change half way through the process, that’s just damn rude! Think about what you actually want to hire before you put the spec up.

I also tried poking people on irc or people I knew to see if there were jobs going, that was also a good way, and handy to chase up on things to get to know what was happening as feedback was often slow if not present at all. One role took over 2 months to get back to me after the interview to tell me I didn’t get the job, kinda gathered that after 3 weeks of hearing nothing, but it was frustrating.

Feedback, here’s a bone of contention, applying for jobs and not getting any word back, getting to an interview stage and not hearing anything back for weeks is frustrating, nail biting and results in hair pulling!  You can’t afford to lose the plot, you can’t say what the hell are you doing over there make a decision, you have to remain calm and professional, but dear gods tis hard!

Best way I found to find jobs was via twitter and linkedin, I found my current role via someone on G+ who then tweeted me the role. I went for an interview over the phone as I was in Ireland, got back to the UK, went for a face to face and started the week after so about 2.5 weeks from start to finish.  That’s professional and it leaves a good feeling for all involved.

I do appreciate it’s not easy processing applications, but dear companies, you could well do with improving your ways of dealing with applicants, especially if it’s a FOSS company and you’re dealing with communities, you’re going to nark people off and make them not want to consider working for you. Is that what you want? If not, work at better communication, work at better job descriptions and finally look outside the box, people may not meet all your criteria, bug given their enthusiastic for FOSS and their dedication to the community chances are they’re going to kick ass at a role if given the opportunity!

Moral of todays rant, recruiters are horrible to deal with, chase up on applications either directly or giving someone a gentle poking on email or pick up the phone, you can’t afford to just sit by and wait. Finally, look at other sources of job adverts, don’t be put off by twitter and linkedin, lots of roles on there nowadays.

Who knew people read my tweets, I got told my tweet made it on  to the official Iphone app as I had tagged it #RWC2011. I’ve had to take my twitter account off private so people can either search or block out the tag so that’s fair enough I do appreciate it’s not for everyone. I do love tagging events and being able to meet new people this way, but seeing your tweet on an official app just has a nice kick about it Thanks to Iarfhlaith Kelly for the photo!

Couple of weeks ago I blogged and warned people for the next number of weeks I’d be tweeting games, poor Neil Jagdish Patel even thought about coing up with a way to block #tags he does admit it’s not for the rugby but would be a nice feature for gwibber. Unfortunately during the RWC I’m using tweet deck as I need fast updates and replies and not a 5 min delay. Shame.

So far Ireland are topping pool C having beaten Australia against all odds, one last game against Italy, and hopefully one weekend I’ll actually get a sleep in until then:  To the brave and the faithful nothing is impossible! 

May as well come straight out and say it, I’ll be looking for nomination and support as I would like to take a place on the CC.

No I’m not mad (although I am Irish), I love being on the LoCo Council and that’s not changing as I love to work with loco teams, trust me it’s interesting, motivational and extremely heartening to see and hear the stories of what teams and members do.  I’m also on the EMEA, which in itself gives me an insight into how our community is changing, where people are coming from, how they interact with the community, internally, with Canonical, upstream and on the projects that give us our user experience of Ubuntu, Launchpad, and my saving grace of back up Ubuntu one.

So why would I like to add the CC to my list of monthly meetings eh not to mention more email in my inbox. Well I think we can do better, we can always do better, the current CC are great don’t get me wrong, but I think we’d be foolish to say we can never stop trying to improve or open up a better dialogue between groups.

I would like to see better community between Canonical Organisation and the Greater Ubuntu Community, sometimes I feel announcements come too late, we learn of things when they land in Ubuntu or when a change has been made yet not been conveyed more publicly.

Not so long ago I signed the Ubuntu Code of Conduct I hold that to quiet a high standard, both by my actions and interactions with people. I believe it truly is what makes our community stick together. It encourages people to get involved, empowers them to want to get contribute more to the project which is how we grow our community.

The CC like the LC works with people teams and issues that are sometimes difficult, controversial and does need mediation.  I think my experience on the LC here has helped me learn how to deal with these areas and how also communication and working closely with people clears up ambiguity and gets things resolved.

For me to be elected to the CC would be another way for me to help the Ubuntu Community, but also another way to give back what I already believe in, working in the Ubuntu community promoting Ubuntu and helping the community grow is what I do truly want to do and I’m good at it.  I’m good at getting things done, organising and getting things in motion, sometimes through no fault of anyone, things can sometimes fall on the long finger, I’m cattle herder and I tend to push things along and if I was fortunate to be elected, the cattle prod would be used at times to push things along that are brought to our attention.

Lastly, it’s not a case of being elected or not.  For me it’s a chance to help you the Ubuntu community and if not it’s not going to change or alter my involvement in the community, I’m not going anywhere any time soon!

Thanks Laura

Last Thursday and even again last night I got to meet and hang out with people who use, develop, and advocate Ubuntu.  It was really interesting to put the faces to the names sit down and talk to them. Some of the people I’ve not met since I’ve moved to the UK yet been talking to them for the last two years like Dan Fish.

It’s interesting to talk to people who work in Canonical also and see things from their point of view also, talk about how they see things going, their views on the Ubuntu community and how the two sides can work better. It was great to see some of the folks from Millbank come down to the pub last Thursday and meet some of the Ubuntu-UK team, we had some drinks, chats and I think everyone enjoyed it.

What really pleased me  was seeing the Canonical folks come down, after their days work to hang out with members of the community, it’s the one thing I think in the UK we can work on as a team, have greater interaction with the folks who are here.  I see it in the USA the whole time, more and more people who work on Ubuntu coming to the events.

Don’t underestimate how putting the face to the name behind the bug you’ve had issues with helps and also empowers you to want to work and get involved more in Ubuntu.

What I would like to see less of is how people refer to people are you Canonical or are you Community.  Lets not forget folks, the folks in Canonical are part of the Ubuntu Community and should also be referred to as Community.

We all work in some way to improve the Ubuntu project by being involved in the community, either by advocacy, running a loco, giving a talk, or working on bugs or being employed by Canonical, you are the Ubuntu Community. 

Nice to meet folks and hopefully we’ll do it again!

Running Oneiric, so I know I expect to have bugs and I do try my best to report them when and if possible, poor folks in #ubuntu-desktop have been extremely patient with me and helped me report and add content to my bugs. So thanks.

This weekend have had to stop using Unity 3D as it just keeps crashing, and when you minimize things it slowly redraws things so I still see an outline go to click the current application in focus but mouse things it’s clicking on the previous application I’ve closed down. Long story short gone to 2D

Last night came home was doing something simple, like opening my home folder, and boom, crash. So yes I go to report it and then I get told no I can’t due to the following applications are in my system. HOW_FLIPPING_ANNOYING

I wouldn’t mind so much, only I’d just done update! My main point after this morning rant and before the rugby starts is, messages like this are pointless, useless annoying and frustrating to a brand new user to Ubuntu. Me I go ok shall wait another few days!

Now back to the rugby. ( France V New Zealand)