Author: Aaron Weber

Greed is Good

My estwhile Gallic colleague did me the favor of sending a recruiter my way a few weeks ago, and last week, the recruiter sent me an email saying she had a few product marketing opportunities available and could I send her the latest version of my resume, plus salary history/requirements. I did, and then I didn’t hear from her again.

Yesterday, I wrote to her and said “I take it I answered incorrectly on the compensation portion of the exam.” She said that I had: I had asked for $N, and the position she had in mind paid double that. If my last gig had so much responsibility, she wanted to know, how come I didn’t make more?

I explained to her that I was a product marketing manager for Novell, not the product marketing manager for Novell.

I don’t imagine that she’ll write back. I doubt she wants to touch anyone whose job prospects mean her ten percent will be less than ten grand. Besides, placing me would be more trouble than it would be worth: too specialized and too expensive as a writer, but suspiciously cheap for a marketing manager.

So it looks like I’m going to have to read Bait and Switch right after I finish that Gladwell book. Before anything else, though, I have to write an article proposal.

Silverman

I went and saw Sarah Silverman’s movie Saturday night. It was, of course, filthy and hilarious. Sadly, a lot of the best jokes were given away by the reviews and commentary I read beforehand. They were still funny, but they were not surprising.

I also got to try the Vya Vermouth that my friend Peter T. recommends so highly. I thought it was just OK, and that was a real relief, because it’s expensive and hard to find, and I’d just as soon not develop a taste for some fabulously expensive new beverage right now. It’s bad enough that Bookdwarf is getting me hooked on Law and Order.

Later, my opinions of Blink.

Some Other Aaron Weber

OK, there is some other guy out there with my name posting reviews of DVDs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I am now officially worried that someone will think his reviews are mine, and refuse to hire me based on his writing style.

It’s not even bad, per se. It’s just that it’s not me. Damn namespace collisions.

Unemployment Diary, Day 28

Today I had the second half of my career seminar. Fully half the people there said that health insurance was their major concern in finding a new job.

I’d expected I’d have more free time when I was unemployed, but this week has been nonstop so far. Tomorrow I have my first job interview since the summer of 1999, and I haven’t even had time to think of five examples of times I overcame obstacles in the past, and how they relate to ways I can solve problems in my new employer. Nor have I printed up business cards for my new, independent self. Nor have I read Blink or The Tipping Point, both of which seem to be required reading for job-seekers this year. The rest of my to-do list is now in Mozilla Sunbird, which seems great so far.

New Resume Version

Today I went to a job-search-process seminar, in which I learned many things. For example, the average unemployed person spends five hours a week looking for a new job. The people who are most successful finding a new job they like, however, spend thirty-five hours a week looking for work, and have at least thirty networking-oriented conversations a week. They have a plan to market themselves as a hot product, and they have a ranked chart of where they want to work and who they know at those companies.

The seminar also forced me to look at my resume with new eyes. By the time it ended, I wanted to rush home and fix it immediately. I forced myself to go to the gym and run a couple miles first, but when I got home, the first thing I did was fire up OpenOffice.org and fix the problems I’d only noticed when I printed it out.

The new version has more concrete detail about my accomplishments and publications, but it may be too long. I’m sure I’ll learn later on this week when I get to the one-on-one resume counseling.

An attempt at travel writing: Charlottesville, VA Night Life

Charlottesville, VA is a small city with a small town feel. That small town friendliness shows up most on the Downtown Mall, the ten or twelve blocks of Main St. that are blocked off for pedestrians only, and where you can go into almost any restaurant and see locals running into people they know. It also shows up in the nightlife, particularly at Club 216, which is both the town’s only after-hours club and the only gay/lesbian bar within seventy miles. Whether you’re gay or straight, whether your musical taste runs to disco, hip-hop, or disco remixes of hip-hop songs, you’ll fit right in as long as you’re thin, up late, and willing to pay the $13 cover charge. (Club216.com, 218 Water St, Charlottesville. Fri/Sat 10PM-5AM.)

Family holiday rituals

In my family, no celebratory dinner is complete without at least a token argument about Palestine. Tonight’s was mercifully short: as soon as it surfaced, I began to take the dessert dishes away. That diverted the conversation to how delicious the coffee had been, and from there to my brother’s efforts on the USAID collaboration with the Bolivian Specialty Coffee Growers Association (ACEB). The word is, great Bolivian coffee is getting increasing recognition these days– high-end techniques applied to heirloom bean varieties and high altitude have led to smaller, more intensely flavored beans and quite a good crop in the past few years.

But really, my grandmother says that if you really want to understand The Situation Over In Palestine, you should read One Palestine, Complete, a history of Palestine under the British Mandate.

Eat What You Kill

I have been offered one job so far in my search: a three-week gig updating and rewriting a technical manual at IBM, for which I would not be paid, but would be reimbursed for expenses. The job would have required me to buy a laptop and register myself as a business, which together would have amounted to paying several thousand dollars to cut my Thanksgiving short. I declined, partly because it was a bad deal financially, and partly because I just couldn’t muster enthusiasm for the subject that week.

I am now in the process of applying for a position of grant-writer. This company has a slightly more generous compensation plan: a percentage of every grant you bring in, also known as “eat what you kill.” The subject is genuinely fascinating, though, so I’ll probably give it a try if they’ll let me.