Getting some nibbles in the job search again. Had to respond to a few people today on that front. Then the drip tray under my grill gave out because it had rusted through. I had my eye on a nice 500 dollar Weber grill, but then the job went away. I’m going to try to rig a makeshift drip tray so I can keep grilling.
Blogging will resume shortly, if I can find something to blog about. I haven’t even looked yet today.
I’ve been responding to Linked-In hits, but I need to upload more material to my portfolio – a resume isn’t enough.
The hope and change is thick in the air.
Keep the remnants of the old drip tray, and try multiple layers of the heaviest aluminum foil you can find. It will hold up through several usages, and the remains of the rusted-out pan will help hold it in place.
My company (MegaCorp) has been looking for months for qualified Electrical Engineers, and we’ve got at least one position open and pending a Mechanical. But apparently the market for experienced design engineers is pretty tight. HR is telling the managers that they’re forwarding all of the resumes they receive directly to them, but they’re only seeing a dozen or so.
When I was looking for a job in the big recession of ’91 I ended up sending out over 300 customized letter/resume combinations…and that was without a PC, just hammering them out on a typewriter. I finally got a bite, and it took them over 3 months from the first weed-out interview until the hiring.
So hang in there, and don’t get discouraged. If you haven’t got a contact network of friends and acquaintances in other companies, it can turn into a numbers game where you’re simply playing the odds. Play ’em long enough, something will turn up. Everybody told me that, “The only way to get a job is through a personal contact”, but I found mine through a classified ad in the paper. Been here just over 20 years now, although in three completely different positions.
Best of luck.
I just ripped out an old furnace. We can take some of the scrap and make a drip tray. Heck we could probably make a new grill.
Also have an old smoker you could have for parts/refurbish or conversion to a drip tray.
The thing was so bad it crumbled in half. It didn’t have the structural integrity to stay in place, even with foil. I fixed it up with an old window screen frame and some foil.
This is a terrible time to be looking for any sort of job. I’m glad to hear that there is demand for EEs and MEs. I recently interviewed for a position, but they decided that they needed someone with previous PHP experience. What amazes me is that this was a permanent position, and I guess they figured that having written server-side CGI scripts in Perl and ksh, and gobs of server-side Java, it would take me too long to learn PHP. I guess because I’m stupid, or something.
I got out of a job doing ASIC design for a major computer company (at the time) during a time when engineers weren’t in as much demand as IT people. Also because the ASIC project I was working on ended, and it was apparent they’d be doing no more large scale chip projects in the future. I started doing some board design which I wasn’t as thrilled about.
But I’ve been in IT 12 years. I tried for a job that was just scraping at getting back into engineering doing some device driver work, and it was obvious it wasn’t going to be a fit.
We have used a aluminum foil takeout pan and it works well.