Jobs
I'm not going to say anything much about job interviews at the moment as it's at a fragile point in the development and I don't want to jinx it. I will say that taking along some of my work, as requested by the client, did have a positive affect, so fingers crossed.
Job Centre
The last but one time I signed on, I was told to attend a little seminar called a Back To Work session. A group of us all arrived a bit earlier than normal (usually 1:30PM but this was at 11:30AM), were shown into a room and given a little presentation about finding work, as well as given an expensive looking little handout. Basically, this was a shot across the bows about reviewing our achievements so far, which will take place in about a months' time in October. There is also an oportunity to gain, through a free training course, a fork-lift truck licence. This is aimed at warehouse work, of which there is rather a lot in Basildon, as we were told.
Showing posts with label Jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jobs. Show all posts
Friday, 10 September 2010
Monday, 30 August 2010
Sunday: Deathwatch!!!
Deathwatch
As you may know, I have an interest in role playing games. It stems from when I was at University and was a member of the games club where I first played Traveller (I'm not a big fan of D&D). Recently, Games Workshop have collaborated with Fantasy Flight Games and produced a W40K series of role playing games, the latest of which is Deathwatch (it's best to pronounce the name with as much Gothic melodrama as you can muster: I do). Fantasy Flight have quite a good marketing strategy for these games. They produce a cut-down introductory adventure which can be played without the core rule book and just a set of percentile dice (two D10's, one for tens, the other for units). The Deathwatch adventures are called Final Sanction and Oblivion's Edge and are available as free PDF's.
Jobs
I've been a little busy recently coding in Delphi (?!?). The week before last, an agent rang me up and asked me for a copy of my most recent CV. The agent normally recruits payroll administrators, but one of his clients had asked for a Delphi programmer and he'd seen an old CV of mine on Planet Recuit. I sent him my latest CV and heard nothing more. The following week he phoned me back and asked me if I could attend an interview in London (Finsbury) on Thursday 2nd September. I'll be given a technical test but also, unusually, they wanted a sample of my existing work. The only Delphi work I've done at home in the recent past was to sort out problems at work: I'd e-mail a fragment of code to home from work and then e-mail the solution back, but I don't have anything standalone. So I've set about creating a little cryptographic application using the RC4 algorithm I mentioned previously. I've got a nice little front-end with big buttons and nice icons:
and I've used TDD for most of the class work. I'll also do a little documentation to explain how it works and the design ideas behind it.
As you may know, I have an interest in role playing games. It stems from when I was at University and was a member of the games club where I first played Traveller (I'm not a big fan of D&D). Recently, Games Workshop have collaborated with Fantasy Flight Games and produced a W40K series of role playing games, the latest of which is Deathwatch (it's best to pronounce the name with as much Gothic melodrama as you can muster: I do). Fantasy Flight have quite a good marketing strategy for these games. They produce a cut-down introductory adventure which can be played without the core rule book and just a set of percentile dice (two D10's, one for tens, the other for units). The Deathwatch adventures are called Final Sanction and Oblivion's Edge and are available as free PDF's.
Jobs
I've been a little busy recently coding in Delphi (?!?). The week before last, an agent rang me up and asked me for a copy of my most recent CV. The agent normally recruits payroll administrators, but one of his clients had asked for a Delphi programmer and he'd seen an old CV of mine on Planet Recuit. I sent him my latest CV and heard nothing more. The following week he phoned me back and asked me if I could attend an interview in London (Finsbury) on Thursday 2nd September. I'll be given a technical test but also, unusually, they wanted a sample of my existing work. The only Delphi work I've done at home in the recent past was to sort out problems at work: I'd e-mail a fragment of code to home from work and then e-mail the solution back, but I don't have anything standalone. So I've set about creating a little cryptographic application using the RC4 algorithm I mentioned previously. I've got a nice little front-end with big buttons and nice icons:
and I've used TDD for most of the class work. I'll also do a little documentation to explain how it works and the design ideas behind it.
Monday, 16 August 2010
Monday: Drupal
Drupal
I've been playing around with Drupal over the past few days. Actually, it's taken so long to sort out the LAMP stack that I haven't had chance to do any real development yet, so it's very much a work in progress. I had a look at Drupal a few years ago when I was looking at developing a Wiki. In the end I found MediaWiki, which handled all the problems for me, but I quite liked the idea of a web development framework which didn't require any real programming. When I did it, it was Drupal 5, but Drupal 7 is about to come out and there was recently an article in Linux User & Developer magazine which sparked my interest again.
I've been playing around with Drupal over the past few days. Actually, it's taken so long to sort out the LAMP stack that I haven't had chance to do any real development yet, so it's very much a work in progress. I had a look at Drupal a few years ago when I was looking at developing a Wiki. In the end I found MediaWiki, which handled all the problems for me, but I quite liked the idea of a web development framework which didn't require any real programming. When I did it, it was Drupal 5, but Drupal 7 is about to come out and there was recently an article in Linux User & Developer magazine which sparked my interest again.
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Friday: Job Interview
Funny. I never thought I'd be sad about a job interview.
I went to an interview for a web developer job at South Essex College. The job title was actually "Informations Service Analyst", but you read the job spec. and it was HTML, ASP, JavaScript, VBScript, etc. and Oracle. None of these skills I have in abundance, other than a bit of Oracle I did many years ago when I was a contractor. How I managed to get an interview I don't know, but the money was a bit low (£20k) for anybody experienced.
So if I got the interview, why was it sad? There was another candidate for the job, a chap called Frank. He was about late forties, early fifties, a bit dishevelled, hadn't shaved properly, so nervous his hands were shaking and was generally a bit of a mess. As we talked throughout the day (the interview process lasted about three hours) it turned out that he'd been made redundant from some firm that specialised in pharmaceutical software about two years ago and hadn't had an interview since November.
It's the first time I'd been interviewed like this, at least as far as I can remember. Mostly, you are interviewed on your own and, although you are aware that you are not the only candidate, you don't normally see the others face-to-face.
We were both shown around the place, although the job was in Thurrock, not Southend, and given a technical test. Most of the SQL was straight forward enough, although there was some Oracle I just guessed at. There wasn't really much web stuff, no HTML for example, and there was some basic object-oriented design questions I could do in my sleep, but obviously no Delphi or Java. We were sent to lunch while they marked the test and then afterwards they told Frank that they wouldn't be interviewing him. Why they couldn't have done so, I don't know: it wouldn't have cost them anything other than time, and he may have shined in the interview.
My interview went OK, but was over in about twenty minutes. They asked me a few stock questions, actually written out in front of them. Although it was all very professional, it did seem like they were going through the motions: I clearly wasn't the guy they wanted, but I was the only to survive the technical test.
The punchline is, I didn't get the job. It did strike me that Frank was me in two years time, assuming that I don't find anything. He'd worked faithfully for a firm for twenty years and here he was scrabbling around for a job. A sobering thought.
On a different tack, I re-applied to the FTSE, but instead of doing it through the job site, I did it through the company web site. This gives me a bit of feedback.
I went to an interview for a web developer job at South Essex College. The job title was actually "Informations Service Analyst", but you read the job spec. and it was HTML, ASP, JavaScript, VBScript, etc. and Oracle. None of these skills I have in abundance, other than a bit of Oracle I did many years ago when I was a contractor. How I managed to get an interview I don't know, but the money was a bit low (£20k) for anybody experienced.
So if I got the interview, why was it sad? There was another candidate for the job, a chap called Frank. He was about late forties, early fifties, a bit dishevelled, hadn't shaved properly, so nervous his hands were shaking and was generally a bit of a mess. As we talked throughout the day (the interview process lasted about three hours) it turned out that he'd been made redundant from some firm that specialised in pharmaceutical software about two years ago and hadn't had an interview since November.
It's the first time I'd been interviewed like this, at least as far as I can remember. Mostly, you are interviewed on your own and, although you are aware that you are not the only candidate, you don't normally see the others face-to-face.
We were both shown around the place, although the job was in Thurrock, not Southend, and given a technical test. Most of the SQL was straight forward enough, although there was some Oracle I just guessed at. There wasn't really much web stuff, no HTML for example, and there was some basic object-oriented design questions I could do in my sleep, but obviously no Delphi or Java. We were sent to lunch while they marked the test and then afterwards they told Frank that they wouldn't be interviewing him. Why they couldn't have done so, I don't know: it wouldn't have cost them anything other than time, and he may have shined in the interview.
My interview went OK, but was over in about twenty minutes. They asked me a few stock questions, actually written out in front of them. Although it was all very professional, it did seem like they were going through the motions: I clearly wasn't the guy they wanted, but I was the only to survive the technical test.
The punchline is, I didn't get the job. It did strike me that Frank was me in two years time, assuming that I don't find anything. He'd worked faithfully for a firm for twenty years and here he was scrabbling around for a job. A sobering thought.
On a different tack, I re-applied to the FTSE, but instead of doing it through the job site, I did it through the company web site. This gives me a bit of feedback.
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Tuesday: Rain! Rain! Rain!!
It's finally raining after what seems to be weeks of dry weather. It started lashing it down about six this morning, hard enough to wake me from my slumbers. I've checked the weather on the Met Office web site and it looks like it's in for most of the morning.
Oxfam
I did my shift at the shop yesterday and worked from 8:45AM to 4:45PM, with a half-hour break for lunch. It was mostly sitting behind the counter and shifting large boxes full of books into and out of the little lift that we have. We got the delivery from the book bank, based at Sainsbury's in Springfield, a suburb of Chelmsford, which was huge, in addition to a couple of house moves, so, as you can imagine, I was knackered yesterday evening.
I did manage to listen to some tunes in the morning, though. I got through the latest Mojo freebee CD, which had a selection of old blues numbers selected by Robert Plant. Not bad, plus I got part way though the previous months as well which was also quite good.
We also got shop-lifted. I was out at lunch, but apparently a customer saw someone slip books and a few records into his bag while in the shop. Everyone got a code red (we had to change the bulb), Gill phone the police, and Mark, who'd turned up for the afternoon shift, tracked him through the shop and out into the high street. He'd twigged that he was being followed and put a sheaf of records that he'd nicked back onto the shelf and scarpered. The cops came round and took descriptions off people. They said that they would look on the CCTV footage for the shopping area to see if they could find anyone of fitting the description we gave them. Good luck with that, boys.
Jobs
Half way through the morning, I got word from an agent about a Delphi job at the London Business School. This started a few weeks ago, but they've only just put together a shortlist, so here's hoping.
Also I've applied for another £65k/year job that's just popped up on the web, so you never know.
Oxfam
I did my shift at the shop yesterday and worked from 8:45AM to 4:45PM, with a half-hour break for lunch. It was mostly sitting behind the counter and shifting large boxes full of books into and out of the little lift that we have. We got the delivery from the book bank, based at Sainsbury's in Springfield, a suburb of Chelmsford, which was huge, in addition to a couple of house moves, so, as you can imagine, I was knackered yesterday evening.
I did manage to listen to some tunes in the morning, though. I got through the latest Mojo freebee CD, which had a selection of old blues numbers selected by Robert Plant. Not bad, plus I got part way though the previous months as well which was also quite good.
We also got shop-lifted. I was out at lunch, but apparently a customer saw someone slip books and a few records into his bag while in the shop. Everyone got a code red (we had to change the bulb), Gill phone the police, and Mark, who'd turned up for the afternoon shift, tracked him through the shop and out into the high street. He'd twigged that he was being followed and put a sheaf of records that he'd nicked back onto the shelf and scarpered. The cops came round and took descriptions off people. They said that they would look on the CCTV footage for the shopping area to see if they could find anyone of fitting the description we gave them. Good luck with that, boys.
Jobs
Half way through the morning, I got word from an agent about a Delphi job at the London Business School. This started a few weeks ago, but they've only just put together a shortlist, so here's hoping.
Also I've applied for another £65k/year job that's just popped up on the web, so you never know.
Friday, 6 August 2010
Friday: Jobs
Since being made redundant from City Financials (the web site still exists, I noticed, even if the company doesn't), I've been casting around for a job.
I've been interviewed by JHC, a big firm up near London Bridge who were looking for an experienced Delphi developer. After three interviews over four or five weeks, they withdrew the job vacancy. Although this was a bit disappointing, I get the feeling that the job would have been quite a tough one and I'd have been on a learning curve for the next few years, although it would have been quite a rewarding role. Their attitude toward software development is very professional, plus I would have been doing Java as well as Delphi, which is the direction I want to go in. So mixed feelings about that one.
However, two other roles have sprung up at the same time. The first is another (Senior) Delphi role at the FTSE. This is for the unbelievable amount of £65k. So, obviously, I applied for it and just for good measure, I applied for the team leader role as well.
The other role my sister found me. It's a Senior DotNet Developer role at the NHS hospital where she works (she called it "DotNot", which was unintentionally funny. Or maybe dotnot), right in Basildon. I might not suitable for it: there was lots of web stuff, which I've avoided these past years, but there's enough connectivity stuff which is my speciality, so you never know. Plus it's local. Even if it was in Chelmsford or Southend, it would be a reasonable journey. I filled in the online application form and I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Finally, I got an interview at South Essex College for a Information Service Analyst, a sort of support/programmer job, at Thurrock (cheers, Pete). A good mix of different technologies and answering the phone. It doesn't pay much, but it might be just the thing.
I've been interviewed by JHC, a big firm up near London Bridge who were looking for an experienced Delphi developer. After three interviews over four or five weeks, they withdrew the job vacancy. Although this was a bit disappointing, I get the feeling that the job would have been quite a tough one and I'd have been on a learning curve for the next few years, although it would have been quite a rewarding role. Their attitude toward software development is very professional, plus I would have been doing Java as well as Delphi, which is the direction I want to go in. So mixed feelings about that one.
However, two other roles have sprung up at the same time. The first is another (Senior) Delphi role at the FTSE. This is for the unbelievable amount of £65k. So, obviously, I applied for it and just for good measure, I applied for the team leader role as well.
The other role my sister found me. It's a Senior DotNet Developer role at the NHS hospital where she works (she called it "DotNot", which was unintentionally funny. Or maybe dotnot), right in Basildon. I might not suitable for it: there was lots of web stuff, which I've avoided these past years, but there's enough connectivity stuff which is my speciality, so you never know. Plus it's local. Even if it was in Chelmsford or Southend, it would be a reasonable journey. I filled in the online application form and I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Finally, I got an interview at South Essex College for a Information Service Analyst, a sort of support/programmer job, at Thurrock (cheers, Pete). A good mix of different technologies and answering the phone. It doesn't pay much, but it might be just the thing.
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