Re: The Lambda lambada...Why embedded SQL is becoming irrelevant and why you should s

Re: The Lambda lambada...Why embedded SQL is becoming irrelevant and why you should start looking at
<docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:eth8ig$6ln$1@reader2.panix.com...
> In article <1174138175.015526.30680@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
> Alistair <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> [snip]
> 
>
> 'Your resume says that you have IBM mainframe batch processing experience
> for the past (n) decades... but I don't see much about JCL.'
>
> 'Your resume says that you have IBM VSAM KSDS experience... are you
> familiar with IDCAMS?'
>
> 'Your resumes says that you're a certified Oracle DBA... the only database
> experience I see is all this DB2 application stuff, starting in 1987 or
> so, do you think you can manage with Oracle?'
>
> These are all statements I've heard from pimps, more times than would be
> interesting to recall.
>
> DD
>

That matches my experience exactly. (I have had this problem from the "other
side" when I have been trying to recruit people for projects. The pimps have
no idea what they're talking about and so they filter people who could be
very useful. If there is a pool of 100 or so applicants (and sometimes it is
more than this), I don't have time (or inclination) to interview every one
of them myself; that's what we pay pimps for...

How to resolve it?

Don't give pimps a job spec loaded with acronyms. Tell them you want people
with Database experience or COBOL experience or application experience or
whatever skills are going to be valuable on this particular project. Don't
circulate the requirement to every cock-a-meemie cowboy agency; develop a
working relationship with three or four who are reputable, don't take more
than 12% off the clients, and are likely to be around for a while. Ensure
they are on the preferred supplier list for the Company, and make sure they
get enough placements to keep them interested.

On the last project I managed in Auckland I would have been very happy to
have people with in depth "solution" experience. Although we were using
Java, I had a base of outstanding Java people so anyone with a good
programming and analytical background would have been considered potentially
useful.  (As long as they had some basic Java knowledge and could hit the
ground running, support form the team would get the right person productive
in a very short time.) I spent many hours interviewing people, some of whom
had come a long way...one girl flew up from Dunedin at her own expense. We
used a web site primarily for recruitment although there were agencies as
well.

From the contractor side, your life is in their hands. If you don't get an
interview you can't get a job, and you won't get an interview unless you
have the right acronyms on your CV. It is frightening.

Fortunately, the Internet is changing it and more and more companies are
recruiting directly from Job Placement websites.

Pete.
Post Follow-up to this message
Pete Dashwood
03-18-07 08:55 AM