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Did you know that I’m just a big moron?

Throughout a large percentage of my career, I learned the fine skills necessary to ignore all of those red flags and bells going off in my head during the interview.

“Just do well in the interview and get the cash,” I told myself. “After all, this company can’t be much worse than the last one…” I was not always correct about that.

It turns out that a lot of candidates do the same thing. They just want a job and will ignore all of the nonsense that happens before that.

Ignoring what happens in the interview is a bad idea.

Allow me to explain…

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Are you in a bad job? As a recruiter, I talk to a lot of people who think so. And, frankly, they’re all rather grumpy about it.

But, as the Nerd Guru recently pointed out, a bad job can lead to great things.

In the case that the Guru pointed out, in a particularly bad year of Saturday Night Live, Larry David was an unhappy, unsuccessful writer and Julia Louis-Dreyfus was an unsuccessful cast member.

Both were spectacularly unsatisfied, unremarkable, and unsuccessful at SNL. However, that relationship worked out really well for both of them in later life (a la the Seinfeld show). If not for that terrible job, neither one would have probably been successful later.

How are you profiting from your bad job? How can you? And what’s with that dandelion picture? Read on.

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I’ve found an interesting list of high-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree. (hat tip: Jim Stroud)

And while it’s great that you don’t need a college degree for most of these positions, there’s something even better.

Most of these jobs are ideal for people looking to change careers.

That doesn’t mean that all you have to do is show up and say, “I’m ready to be an Air Traffic Controller! Which of those radar things is mine?”

Many of them require some specialized training. But what most of them don’t require is a lifetime in that particular career field.

For instance, you can go to a school for Air Traffic Controllers and be ready to go in 18 months. It seems like a long time, but this is a field that is desperate for workers and pays its “entry level” people decent salaries.

So, what will the smart people do who are looking to change careers? That’s right - they will work their sucky jobs that they can’t wait to get rid of during the day and train at night.

Just remember: we live in a very mobile society and there is opportunity around the corner for anyone willing to pursue it.


Enjoy the Search!

Dan
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Daniel R. Sweet
Chief Cook-And-Bottle-Washer / Technical Recruiter
FRACAT.com - Free Resume and Career Toolbox
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielrsweet
Call me on Jaxtr: http://www.jaxtr.com/fracat


Photo by: public.resource.org

So, you’re just beginning your job search and some freak with a weird-named blog has told you to do “research” on the companies that you’re interested in. You can look up the company website and all, but what else does this guy expect from you?

One very helpful thing you can do for research is to search newspaper archives for the company to see what’s being reported about them. The problem is that most newspaper archives are locked down and you need an account to get to them.

By now, you may not have heard of Slyvisions’ Online Tips yet, but they had a post recently that solved this problem for me.

One of their tips is all about how to Access Logins For Sites That Require Registration by using BugMeNot.

Basically, what this amounts to is shared access account for a lot of subscription-required sites (the most popular are newspapers: NY Times, NY Post, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune). That sure beat registration every time. And they’ve got a cool Firefox extension for it, too.

And, after scrolling through some of the tips offered on Slyvisions Online Tips, I think you’d better bookmark them, too. It’s a new blog, but it’s worth your time.

And, hey! If you review Slyvisions, he’ll give you a free backlink, too.


Enjoy the Search!

-Dan
—–
Daniel R. Sweet
Chief Cook-And-Bottle-Washer / Technical Recruiter
FRACAT.com - Free Resume and Career Toolbox
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielrsweet
Call Me On Jaxter: http://www.jaxtr.com/fracat


Photo by: Fatal Cleopatra

Yesterday, I talked about preparing for “The Long Search”.

I’m assuming that you’ve all started your prioritized list of what you’re looking for in your current “Dream Job”. Things that you’re striving toward, not running from.

Since you’ve finished that, today we’ll talk in more detail exactly how to execute “The Long Search” in order to find that perfect place for you.

Super San Francisco jobs await you at San FranJobs.com.

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I will admit that I am blessed. I frequently have people calling and e-mailing about jobs for me.

While I do a lot of driving for my work, what I have committed to never do again (if I can help it) is do the 1 - 1.5 hour commute (each way). Most of the jobs that people come to me with are on their site, fighting traffic twice a day, losing 2-3 hours a day that I could be spending with my family.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the jobs that people bring to me and I’ll try to find them someone else. But, they’re not the right jobs for me.

Do you know what the right job is for you? How about if I took away the compensation part of the job - what would the right job look like now?
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