You Work in Computers?

Several years ago I had someone ask me if I worked in computers. When I replied that I did, she told me that I must have any number of job opportunities because there seem to be so many computer job postings. I tried to explain that there are a lot of different areas and that while I may know databases very well, I am not a Java programmer nor would I be hired as a user interface developer. Unfortunately she didn't understand database, Java, user interface, nor the differences between them.

Today I had the chance to attend a series of presentation given by my company's staff of summer interns. My intern gave an excellent presentation on Kubernetes and I decided to stick around listening to others, trying to gauge how well he did. I quickly became aware of how many different disciplines there are in computer science. One person talked about a very in-depth graphics routine he spent the summer researching. Another talked about how she worked with game console software development kits (SDK's). It reminded me of how truly diverse jobs in computers can be.

Should you be interested in a computer job you might want to spend some time thinking about what interests you. My first professional experience with computers involved data and so I built my career around databases. My son has taken a liking to computer networks and so that is where he has found employment. Yes, the field of computers is large and varied. My only advice is that if you decide that a career with computers sounds right for you, continue learning. The field is always evolving and technologies from 20 years ago are different now. When I started out in databases, SQL was the language to learn. It is still applicable but now there are other data tools and to remain marketable, I have had to keep myself constantly educated.

In case you are interested, my intern did a magnificent job on his presentation and made the team proud.

Dueling Resumes

We are in the process of hiring a few new people for our team and had an interesting situation at the office today. We received two resumes for the same person but from different employment firms. To make matters even worse, the same thing happened with a second person. That poses a problem for us. If we pick one firm over the other, we open ourselves to litigation. A standard practice among companies is to throw the duplicate resumes out and move on to other candidates. The policy works well when there are lots of resumes from which to choose. That is the case with these two positions we are hiring and so throwing them out doesn't hurt us, only the person looking for a job.

The economy is very fragile right now and it is important to do everything you can to make sure you get a job if you are looking for one. While it may seem like a good idea to send your resume to every one you can think of, you need to be sure that you don't submit your resume to the same company more than once. That means you should have employment agencies check with you before submitting your resume to a company. Otherwise you may exclude yourself from even getting an interview.