If you’re giving a talk why not let people know so they can attend, just add your details to the wiki, there is also a dinner on the night organised so keep an eye on the page for details.  See you there, I’m taking part in a panel session on working with community contributors where I’ll be discussing locoteams.

What I’ve had to do to find the artwork necessary for logos to be used to search all over Google for their logos, look at their Twitter icon or their G+ icon to see if the sizes are suitable for use.  They really don’t make it easy at all, it’s rather frustrating to say the least and I’m sure they’d be the very ones who would give out if they logo used was not up to their standards.

I’ve also come across organisations who’ve updated their branding for their site and products yet when you go to their press area or branding site it still refers to the old logo. Bit of  a contradiction there! I do wish groups would think a bit about their branding and logo use possibly add a link on their website for press releases make it a bit easier for people to help promote their work, recently I had to spend time searching for the CrunchBang logo it was impossible to use the one off the website searching for a #! on Google isn’t really helpful so again having to use the Twitter icon just doesn’t really seem like a professional way to go forward.

If the likes of Ubuntu, Redhat and Google can make it easy then so should the smaller groups it’s in their interest if they want organisations and people to write about their excellent projects they are working on.

I look forward to working with the rest of the council and working on future plans and if you want something raised let me know as I’ll be poking and prodding and hoping to improve things where I can.

The results of the elections are HERE

What is also great to see is, there are 3 women on the Ubuntu Community Council well done to Lyz and Amber.

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.

]]> http://www.lczajkowski.com/2011/09/27/frustrations-of-job-hunting/feed/ 4 http://www.lczajkowski.com/2011/09/25/rugby-rantings-and-ravings-pays-off-on-iphone-app/ http://www.lczajkowski.com/2011/09/25/rugby-rantings-and-ravings-pays-off-on-iphone-app/#comments Sun, 25 Sep 2011 07:21:41 +0000 Laura Czajkowski http://www.lczajkowski.com/?p=1125 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!