Where are all the IT jobs?

flhrci

flhrci

Final Approach
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Jan 26, 2007
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Groveport, OH
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Display name:
David
The local community college lied, didn't they? Lots of companies here, very few IT jobs hat I might be able to get. Zero "entry-level" jobs. Mostly "senior" level jobs.

Just graduated today with Associate's. Been applying for months with only one interview.

Frustrated.
 
flhrci said:
The local community college lied, didn't they? Lots of companies here, very few IT jobs hat I might be able to get. Zero "entry-level" jobs. Mostly "senior" level jobs.

Just graduated today with Associate's. Been applying for months with only one interview.

Frustrated.
Click to expand...

(1) Be prepared to move to where the jobs are
(2) Plus up the degree with certifications - CISSP, MCSE, Cisco etc.
 
Hang in there.

Most larger tech companies lay-off in October to avoid looking heartless over the holidays if they’re having business trouble.

And the ones doing well don’t do much hiring from Oct-Dec. Always someone “critical” to the hiring process out on vacation during holiday season, from HR to hiring managers, to staff who have to help interview.

It picks up in late January after the paperwork gets moving again. The layoffs from Oct tend to provide some candidates to choose from but new folk also get a fake shake early in the year.

Dell/EDS just dumped a number of hundred senior people into our market here in Oct. Most have large severance packages coming so they’ll get “serious” about finding a job after New Years.
 
Ohio?
I have a job opening in California. :/
 
The good news is more companies are hiring remotely. The bad news is that most of them aren't going to do that until you have some experience in the field. So as others have said expect to have to move to where the jobs are.
 
Yeah, not so much in Ohio unless you aspire to work on Menard's website. Pick a bay area FBO, use its address for your CV, and then get a google voice number with a 916 area code. Watch the response rate change dra-f'in-matically.

I did that ONCE and I still get 10-20 idiot recruiters contacting me a day. I mark them all as spam now. My Gmail filtering is an anti-India hate crime.
 
I recommend persistence and being willing to take any job that will get you some experience.

My son was in the same situation a couple of years ago. Finished up his associates, then knocked out a couple of certifications, but then couldn't get hired. He started doing volunteer IT support for some of the churches in the area while he kept plugging away, sending out resumes and going to job fairs and interviews.

Finally Apex picked him up for some contract work doing network upgrades and installations at USMC bases. Then when that ended they put him to work upgrading some TSA facilities at airports. It was sporadic - a few weeks on, a week or two off, etc., and he was travelling all over the US and living in hotel rooms. He kept at it, though, did a good job, and tacked on another cert along the way.

When a steady gig came along, and he was able to get the right security clearance, Apex put him on it. He spent all of 2019 doing IT hardware support at the King's Bay naval base and just got renewed for 2020. He's loving it.

Try schools, hospitals, churches, local computer stores, anything to get a little experience and then keep leveraging it up.
 
flhrci said:
The local community college lied, didn't they? Lots of companies here, very few IT jobs hat I might be able to get. Zero "entry-level" jobs. Mostly "senior" level jobs.

Just graduated today with Associate's. Been applying for months with only one interview.

Frustrated.
Click to expand...

"IT" has gotten pretty meaningless lately. 20 years ago, you could be an "IT Guy" and know everything you needed to know for damn near anything.

Now, you've gotta have a specialty. Security? Desktop/Server support? Networking? BI? Databases? Web development? Decide which aspect of IT you're most interested in pursuing, and keep getting education and certifications until you get a job.

Also, you need to computer-optimize your resume now. JobScan is a good tool for that - You give it your resume and a job listing, and it'll tell you what keywords you need to add to your resume to have a better chance of getting noticed. If you tell it what company you're applying to, they sometimes will even know what HR tool will be used to screen you and optimize their suggestions even further.

Also, be persistent, and pick up the phone and/or visit in person. I'm still getting email alerts from ZipRecruiter, GlassDoor, LinkedIn, etc. about jobs that I saw open a year ago. Convince them you can do the job and you're a great person to work with.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Also, you need to computer-optimize your resume now. JobScan is a good tool for that - You give it your resume and a job listing, and it'll tell you what keywords you need to add to your resume to have a better chance of getting noticed. If you tell it what company you're applying to, they sometimes will even know what HR tool will be used to screen you and optimize their suggestions even further.
Click to expand...

This is sadly true. And also be picky about what you add. We’ve had candidates come in with all the buzzwords on their resume to get the recruiter’s attention, we bring them in, and they can’t answer anything past a Google search on any buzzword but maybe one.

It’s really awkward to end a group interview only one round of questions in for everyone involved. “Anyone have any other questions?”

Obviously these got rushed during the phone interview process. It happens. Should have never made it past that screening.

I swear a couple of them were just doing interviews to tick off the required job hunting tasks on unemployment insurance here. That or they hated the place the second they walked in. Either way. Weird.

Our shop leans toward open source tools and such and I believe at least two of our developers have been hired by networking with our other devs and their boss at a local user group for one of the major technologies we use.

Sysadmins we rarely need more but we seriously grill folks. Mostly to see not only knowledge but depth. They’re still hired without being super deep in everything, but we have to know where they fit and where we’ll need to mentor. Most sysadmins are jack of all trades types with a specialty or two. If the specialty is complimentary, great. If it’s not, we have to decide if someone more senior wants a new speciality while the newbie comes up to speed.

Business need is huge. If a customer just dropped a huge security project in our lap, guess who we need to hire? :) Networking can help in this case. Folks talk about their upcoming challenges at events, online, and such.

I’ve also seen the opposite of what Kent was talking about. Someone so bent on a speciality that they showed outright disdain for doing anything else. That never goes well for them in a small company. We had a candidate once at a bigger place than I’m at now who said flat out he was a DBA and he wouldn’t do anything else. Okay, there’s the door bud.

And then there’s the guy who was great, knew lots of stuff, got along with everyone, and lied to three bosses who had seen the surveillance video of him putting a 40 ounce Coke on top of a rack of $300,000 worth of servers and argued with the data center tech who caught him and told him to get rid of it. Guy threw away a nearly six figure salary over lying repeatedly about a Coke. Stupid son of a...
 
Are you trying the tech hot spots? Boston, triangle, Texas, Bay Area? Gotta be willing to go where the good jobs are located. Especially if your single and can jump location easily.
 
Clip4 said:
You graduated today and you are frustrated you haven’t found a job?
Click to expand...
The concept is right, even if the tone is a little abrasive.

With a few exceptions, the concept of "How do I get experience if nobody will hire me because I don't have experience" is universal and enduring.

The best advice I can give is please, do not rely on internet job searches or electronically submitted resumes. There are techniques to network that may get you in touch with a real human being that may have some sway. I got one of my first jobs after I returned to school to pick up an additional certification. (Don't laugh, it was COBOL). I was walking to lunch and saw a guy in a suit with a flat tire. I offered to help him and in the course of conversation he mentioned he worked for a company I was interested in. He gave me his business card and asked me to call him. I got a job out of that. It was a crappy low level job and we both knew it wouldn't last, but it gave me something to put on my resume while I continued to look. My next job was a low level IT position with a company that 3 years later became a Fortune 500 company and 20 years later, I left to open my own business. When I left I was an internal IT consultant to the office of the President.

edit: The advice you have already received to open yourself up to geographic relocation is probably the best advice. Locking your self to one area is self limiting.
 
Look up “The Ken Coleman Show.” All episodes are also available via podcast. Ken’s wisest saying is that a resumé without a relationship is useless. It really is largely who you know... and you know more people than to think.
 
denverpilot said:
snip

I’ve also seen the opposite of what Kent was talking about. Someone so bent on a speciality that they showed outright disdain for doing anything else. That never goes well for them in a small company. We had a candidate once at a bigger place than I’m at now who said flat out he was a DBA and he wouldn’t do anything else. Okay, there’s the door bud.

Snip
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Hmmm, looking back through the years, I don’t think I ever interviewed with your place, @denverpilot but maybe I did? :)

I do Oracle ... have done Oracle since version 4 ... I’ve touched Ingres, Informix, Sybase, RDB, RBase, dBase, MySQL, NoSQL, even rescued and revived some SQLServer stuff that my Oracle database needed feeds from, but I’m still an Oracle database engineer. So yeah, I’m kind of “that guy”. But with 35 years of Oracle product experience, 10 years as an Oracle employee, 20 years as an independent consultant, why would I say anything else? You’re not going to hire me to be your SQL Server guy ...

Granted - you said he said “wouldn’t do anything else”, whereas I will do what it takes to get the job done. But I’m still your Oracle guy.

Greg
 
denverpilot said:
I swear a couple of them were just doing interviews to tick off the required job hunting tasks on unemployment insurance here. That or they hated the place the second they walked in. Either way. Weird.
Click to expand...
Sometimes it's:
"Excuse me, did you say that you are the hiring manager? Which door is the exit?"
 
I work in IT in Higher Ed so have some insights to both. I don't doubt that the Community College painted a pretty picture.

What type of entry level jobs are you applying for? What is your skill set (programming, database, security, desktop support)? The IT industry wants people that can hit the ground running typically with very specific skills.
 
Ok, FWIW, try USAJOBS.gov. I am not an IT person, but at the DOD facility that I work at, I am told, that they are desperate for IT people. So depesperate, in fact, that they hired one off of the web without any interview. That turned out to be a huge mistake which is another whole story. Anyway, all of the programs are custom jobs so I do not know what kind of certs would be helpful.
If you are interested, a couple of things to remember, the format for civil service resume’ is COMPLETELY different from everything else so look up how to write them in the governmental way. Second, don’t be in a hurry. It can take up to six months from resume’ to job offer.
Now is a good time to apply as the economy is good so most people go private sector for better starting pay. Once the economy tanks you will be in a steady position.
 
The company I work for is hiring fresh out of college. Check out the careers section at MorganStanley.com
 
School districts can have pretty large IT depts. That might be an idea, or city or county IT jobs might be something, too. Like any job, it’s all about getting your foot in the door for that first one.
 
Some companies have paid intern tracks. Some of them rotate recent graduates through several departments, and give them a few months OJT in each, hoping they will land with the company at one of the positions. It sucks when you find one you want, who likes your department, but they still have several months of rotations to go through before they are hire eligible.
 
write-stuff said:
IT is a pretty broad category. What kind of job are you really looking for?
Click to expand...
Yeah, this ^^^^.
You want to keep a large network going? Want to install and setup new computers? Want to develop software? Want to answer customer service requests?
 
IT jobs can be a lot of places, and I've heard Ohio is picking up. I know there are IT gigs in Phoenix, and the salaries are catching up to California from what I've been told. It will depend on what you want to do in IT. e.g. Development, QA, Network, Infrastructure... different areas have different capabilities/needs.

I will share that the IT industry overall is challenged anuymore. It was a good industry, but companies are chasing cost reductions, and one of the larger area for spend (besides Marketing) is IT. And since Marketing is revenue generating, and IT is an overhead cost... you can guess where cost cuts hit first. At least, that's been my experience.

Hang in there, opportunities will come along after the holidays.
 
Cybersecurity is a good field to get into. Boards are starting to understand that spending money on cyber is necessary if they want to stay out of the headlines for the next big leak.
 
Heftiger said:
Cybersecurity is a good field to get into. Boards are starting to understand that spending money on cyber is necessary if they want to stay out of the headlines for the next big leak.
Click to expand...


Or, you can start holding hostage small town databases. Small towns often skimp on protecting their data, but many have insurance coverage, so as long as you don't get greedy and you keep your demands within insurance coverage you'll probably get paid.

:devil:
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Dallas
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I’m in Dallas and my uber driver was a furloughed IT guy. Said he was laid off at completion of the job he was on. Expecting to get a job after New Years. Four year degree and 10 years experience. Perhaps he’s not good at his job. He could drive a Honda just fine. So he has that going for him.
 
I should start a thread “Trying to get laid off but still employed.”

Hope you find something soon.
 
I've been in IT a long time. At one point if you asked me, I may have said that I felt like I generally had a solid grasp of the tech-ecosystem. But I was looking over some resumes recently that had been posted on Hacker News and there were so many things on the resumes that people said they had expertise in that I had never heard of at all. I guess most were development frameworks, but it was a little eye-opening to feel like I was that disconnected from technology. I still have to be a jack of all trades with my job, but the tooling is so vast these days that I no longer find it possible to keep up with specifics.
 
Where are all the IT jobs?
Click to expand...

Maybe this guy knows...

cousin-it.png
 
A lot of the work has been automated, companies like Tivoli(IBM) have systems that handle low level day to day work.


Tom
 
Challenged said:
I've been in IT a long time. At one point if you asked me, I may have said that I felt like I generally had a solid grasp of the tech-ecosystem. But I was looking over some resumes recently that had been posted on Hacker News and there were so many things on the resumes that people said they had expertise in that I had never heard of at all. I guess most were development frameworks, but it was a little eye-opening to feel like I was that disconnected from technology. I still have to be a jack of all trades with my job, but the tooling is so vast these days that I no longer find it possible to keep up with specifics.
Click to expand...

A lot of the tech you see on resumes these days like ansible, docker, kubernetes, chef, various AWS and Azure buzzwords etc. are just layers to make underlying infrastructure easier. It's pretty easy to get experience in them and I get tons of resumes of people saying they do. Most of the time though it's a specialist tool that takes a few hours to master. There's a lot of them but they're hardly impressive.

What you DON'T get so easily are people who actually have underlying fundamentals. e.g. Sysops who know how TCP framing works. Sequence Numbers, ACKs, Retransmission, sliding windows etc. I was a network engineer in the 90's before I formally became a developer, and I can't imagine having done half my job without knowing it. TCP framing knowledge was so commonplace back in the 90s that people were telling sliding window jokes during the keynote of conferences that were attended by 1000s of generalist IT professionals.

I still can't imagine how you'd optimize a network today without knowing that, yet people somehow do? We recently went through a whole bunch of sysop resumes I was thinking that "oh, in my day we only used IPv4, surely young sysops today will now know how to do it in both IPv4 and IPv6". In reality no applicant knows anything about TCP framing anymore - I had to stop asking. I mean, we're not talking about ATM or ISDN here, this is TCP. 99.9999% of all network traffic.

But still, they can list a set of frameworks they have experience in that spans multiple pages. Bizarre.
 
deonb said:
I still can't imagine how you'd optimize a network today without knowing that, yet people somehow do?
Click to expand...
Simple, there is no optimization today, at least not outside the megacorps running the 'cloud', who still do hire people who can spell RFC. Individual devs just write the code, then throw it into some framework and engine that just scales it if it gets too slow. No need to optimize for network or memory or CPU use.

I sometimes think about getting into IoT/Microcontrollers which are the last vestiges of optimized programming. Then I remember I don't like programming and go back to automating stuff for my customers.
 
Matthew said:
Any headhunters that you can call?
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That.
I've had students who had issues getting jobs after graduation for various reasons - going the agency route got them in the door.

Flhrci: Who has reviewed your resume and cover letters for you? Could very well be room for improvement... Are other students finding work?
 
Huntsville, AL.
Oklahoma City, OK.
Austin, TX.
St. Louis, MO.

There are newish Consolidated IT support centers in those Cities. There are others, but I don't have firsthand info on them...
 
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