I'm currently in Thailand for 2 weeks for work. I'm tired, exhausted and spending long days working. I've had enough of travelling all over Asia/Pacific and working nothing less than 60 hours a week. I've at this stage got a 3 week stint to do in Japan before XMAS and between 4 and 8 weeks in West Virginia USA after XMAS.

I've had enough. I'm on the hunt for a new job. Anyone you know looking for someone, anyone in any role in software development or technical consultancy, let me know.

I'm 48 and been in the field of S/W development since 1979. I have no problem working with younger people or working for younger people. I specialise in all facets of the software development life cycle, project management and pre- and post-sales consultancy.

A brief work history and skillset overview:

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY SUMMARY

Apr 2008/Present - Meridium Incorporated USA - Technical Consultant
Sep 1994/Apr 2008 - OnTime Systems Pty Ltd - Principal
Jun 1993/Aug 1994 - Praxa Limited - Senior Consultant
Nov 1992/Jun 1993 - Suncorp - Senior Consultant
Jan 1992/Nov 1992 - Independent Contractor - Consultant
May 1991/Jan 1992 - Kedwell Software Pty Ltd - Production Manager
Apr 1988/May 1991 - Cable and Wireless PLC UK - IT Manager Asia/Pacific
Jun 1986/Mar 1988 - Clockwork Solutions Pty Ltd - Technical Director
Dec 1979/Dec 1985 - Teucer Pty Ltd - Senior Systems Analyst

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS

• Best Practice
• Large Site Management
• Project Management
• Team Leadership
• Business Planning and Analysis
• Financial Management and Budgeting
• Proposal Preparation
• Product Development
• Quality Standards and Methods
• Software Development Life Cycle
• Systems Analysis & Design
• Client/Server Development
• Web Development
• Report Development
• SQL/Database Development
• Data Mining, Warehousing and Admin
• SCADA and Telemetry Development
• Device Interface Development

APPLICATION SKILSS

• Financial Management
• Insurance
• Retail Banking
• Accounting
• E-Commerce
• Point of Sale
• Payroll
• Stock and Inventory
• Manufacturing
• Job Costing
• Time and Attendance
• Market Analysis
• Records Management
• Conferencing
• Tourism
• Mining
• Transport Logistics
• Fleet Management
• Mobile Data Despatch
• Maritime Shipping
• Location Based Services (GPS Tracking)
• GIS (Mapping)
• SCADA and Telemetry
• Asset Performance Management
• Reliability Engineering

TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Microsoft ASP.NET/Visual Basic .NET
• Microsoft Winforms/Visual Basic .NET
• Microsoft Access/Excel VBA
• JavaScript
• HTML
• CSS
• Transact SQL (MS SQL, Sybase)
• Dataflex
• Actor
• Screenwrite
• C/C++
• Pascal
• Basic
• COBOL
• Assembler (6502, 68000, GCOS6)

METHODOLOGIES

• Yourdon System Method (YSM)
• Object Oriented Development Method (OODM)
• Rapid Application Development (RAD)
• Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
• LBMS Systems Development Method (LSDM)
• Structured Application Development Method (SADM).

I have an in-depth understanding of the ITIL Framework and have an understanding of the Agile Methodology.

Hopefully someone knows someone who might have an interest. I'll be getting onto Seek when I come back, but if you can help or give advice it would be much appreciated.

Cheers

im always a bit scared of old people in IT;

they always seem to end up angry .. .. .

^ You scared of yourself spook? that's no good!

Seek is lame these days - it's all recruiters. You want to go back to Brissy or somewhere else in Aus? The Age has a good job ads section for someone with experience like that.

Seek is lame these days - it's all recruiters.

Yeah I check it every now and then to see how much my boss should be paying me.
90% of the job ads are just agencies and the vast majority dont offer up a pay range anymore.

Has anyone on here ever been employed as a result of contact in LinkedIn?

I had a phone call the other day from a recruiter who saw my profile in LinkedIn which was pretty strange.

I have considered advertising positions in LinkedIn but I always seem to fill the position before I post the ad, so I haven't tried it yet.

SFB - wanting to be based in Brisbane?

I could have a look on our jobs register, but anything that would suit you would be in Sydney.

what happened to below-0? you end up selling that business?

Impressive resume. Though I'd spell check it

SKILSS

:) You must be tired.

Yeah I check it every now and then to see how much my boss should be paying me.
90% of the job ads are just agencies and the vast majority dont offer up a pay range anymore.

Most actual work places place their adds on friday nights, at 5pm, so the recruiters can't cut and paste the same job ad, repost it, and take commision.

But yes, for both, recruiters are slowly ruining seek.

Has anyone on here ever been employed as a result of contact in LinkedIn?

I did some freelance work for someone that contacted me through linkedin. But they actually found my name on another site specific to the software the job was for.

Checkout the QLD smartjobs website, u should be able to get into government with those sorts of creds, just means you have to do selection criteria, but also means that less people apply (I assume) becuase it takes a bit of time to do the selection criteria.

Half the ads on seek are duplicates from multiple agencys, or a recruiter trying to fill government positions that you can find yourself on the smartjobs website.

Remember that when u apply to the recruiter that they may not even pass your details onto the end client becuase they usualy can only send through 2 applicants and if they already have a few people they want to put forward then you just wont even get a look in.

I've never gotten a job through a recruiter and they just seem to waste your time.

Remember that when u apply to the recruiter that they may not even pass your details onto the end client becuase they usualy can only send through 2 applicants and if they already have a few people they want to put forward then you just wont even get a look in.

In all my dealings with recuiters they have never had a problem putting forward more than 2 candidates. All of them? i dont know, but certainly more than 2.

Alot of companies who place ad's directly on seek and then get recruiters sending them people, will take the ones who contact them directly, as most recruiters try to charge 20% of the first year salary as their fee.

Noob question but how do you know if a listening is from a recruiter? and why don't you simply by pass them once you read the ad they've put up (because you should be able to contact the company directly to apply)?

Noob question but how do you know if a listening is from a recruiter? and why don't you simply by pass them once you read the ad they've put up (because you should be able to contact the company directly to apply)?

Becuase the ad is put up by the recruitment agency, they are vague enough in the job description so you dont know who the job is for, they dont want you to go direct.

Government ones are easy to pick though, who knows if its better to go direct with them or not, at least the recruiter would be in the persons face all the time with your resume, maybe that would piss them off though, maybe they dont want to pay the recruiment fees, f***s me.

In all my dealings with recuiters they have never had a problem putting forward more than 2 candidates. All of them? i dont know, but certainly more than 2

Recruiment place I dealt with specificaly told me they are only alowed to pass on 2 resumes, probably different if they are the only ones recruiting for the job. My wife works at cathed, she told me they only take 2 or 3 from each agency, but they allow people to apply direct too.

Thats the problem, you don't contact the company directly - they don't even tell you who the company is they just say "Our client is a leading X in X which requires a dynamic X X X"

Etc.

Yeah, skythra nailed it, the "our client" is the give-away.

I've never gotten a job through a recruiter and they just seem to waste your time.

Yes, they waste your time. List your details and CV with them, but don't be interviewed for more than 10min. A recruiter's customer is the person they are trying to place. Therefore they try to give you 'good service' by making it look like they care by interviewing you for a ridiculous amount of time in an employment area that they don't understand.

I walked out of a recruitment interview once, lol. He was learning more from me than I was learning from him. I just said, "Well, thanks for your time, I have better things to do." and walked out. It was clearly not going anywhere. They refused to name the client and refused to provide anything remotely specific about the job.

I was employed through a recruiter once too. Best job I've had so far, working in the library at The Age. Did it while at uni.

Recruiment place I dealt with specificaly told me they are only alowed to pass on 2 resumes, probably different if they are the only ones recruiting for the job. My wife works at cathed, she told me they only take 2 or 3 from each agency, but they allow people to apply direct too.

Might just be a government only thing then. We deal with multiple recruiters and get numerous submissions for each job.

I have also been f***ed around by recruiters but in Australia all my jobs were through recruiters, guess it was still the good days since it was 3+ years ago, from what you guys are saying its the same as here now where they just send in 2-3 resumes from a 100+ they may receive. My girlfriend was recently job hunting and had no luck with recruiters either, in the end she found one directly through the employer.

Others are right, I would just sit on smartjobs.qld if youre staying in Brisbane as the government jobs have good conditions if youre quite worn out from the private sector.

Yeah I'd like to stay in Brisbane as my wife would hate to move.

Smartjobs seems like a good place to look into. I'd like to retire into the public service :)

I have been to a couple of recruiters a few months back, Hudson and Greythorne, but I was either over qualified or little in my sphere at the time.

I'm actually happy to go backwards as I'm not into career paths anymore. Just want to work till retirement, in the meantime build my super.

BigZub,

I sold Below-0 nearly 5 years ago and it was only fulltime in the last 12 to 18 months before I sold it (that's why I don't include it in my CV). It was a sideline business really and an attempt to make millions off the net and retire at the beach. How wrong was that idea, lol. I was always still doing consultancy but more in an offline role than fully online i.e. I used to still sub contract rather than be the primary contractor. I re-entered fully online as a primary contractor at the end of 2004 by taking up a 6 month Business Analyst contract with Corptech (QLD Govt) for their SAP HR/Finance configuration and implementation project.

Cheers

Has anyone on here ever been employed as a result of contact in LinkedIn?

I got my last two contracts through linkedin. I wasn't even searching for a role when they hit me up for the last one.

What annoys me though is when they cold call you at work and pretend that 'someone recommended you', when you know because they are coming through the switch that they are from linkedin - If someone recommended me they'd have given you my mobile (or more correctly, given me your details).

Prior to those two contracts I had a recruiter try to get me to come on to their site for an interview. There's no f***ing way I'm wasting any more of my time than five minutes talking on the phone to a pimp.

Another thing to consider is many of the bigger companies advertise positions on their own websites, so it's worth trawling them and by-passing pimps all together.

last edited by natslovR at 23:22:59 13/Oct/09

i dont know what your after but we might be hiring sometime next year.. its a job in AMS and its basically a job to ensure our suppliers dont bulls*** the team its pretty sweet job and needs someone with broad experiance.. but might not be your cup of tea

Hi there - well I am currently on the lookout for someone who is experienced in VBA/Access Development for a 12mth fixed term contract in Brissy - I had a candidate pull out of his interview today and it was very frustrating to have to notify the client - this is an urgent role too and we need someone ASAP

Anyway, if you're keen on this role, you can email me your resume to jennifer@syncronconsulting.com.au or you can give me a call on 0411 508 204

I also have jobs for Technical Business Analyst/Programmers using Java/J2EE/Oracle in Auckland, NZ for 12mth fixed term contracts and the client is looking to organise interviews next week

I'm also on LinkedIn so feel free to connect with me if you want :)

Cheers everyone

Jen

nice work jen

oops not sure what happened first time round lol

Jen - You posted an advertisement on a forum. Read the rules on that and you'll figure out why your post was locked.

and p.s. everyone, I am a recruiter ;P I know my profession isn't spoken of very highly in this thread but that's ok, I still have a responsibility to get someone over to my client and to make sure they don't pull out of the interview!!!

and to take 10% amirite

thats ok, at least I know I'm trying to be as resourceful as I can so I'm scratching my head going..

Seek & job boards, check
LinkedIn and headhunting, check
referrals, check
now I'm offering referral fees so if you guys can help out feel free to get in touch

Cheers

Jen

We need a QGL Job Board.

Jen, you could try Whirlpool... Not sure how they go with recruiters though.

www.whirlpool.net.au

Try 25% teq and you'd be closer to the mark.

Haha, imagine employing people off Whingepool. That really would be scraping the bottom of the barrel.

thanks Mongie I'm aware of Whirlpool, I really appreciate the thought but my clients and I have an agreement that I use a recruitment strategy that is different from theres (they advertise on whirlpool) so it means we're not getting the same people - there's nothing worse than sending a person to a client only to find the client has already got them (I am upfront about who the client is because I need to make sure they havent already sent their resume) - it saves time and effort doing it this way and avoids duplication... and our clients are happy that we're doing something different to what they're doing - what's the point of having a seek advert up if I'm competing with my clients? The only time I do that is if I get the okay from them to do so...

and yes we do have to charge a fee for our service; we are consultants too and even if some people don't value what we do, I know the clients we work with are prepared to pay because they see a value in what we do, especially when we give them someone who they absolutely need and also we are here as secondary measure (normally as a support to their HR/Recruitment teams) to find them the best most suitable person because if any of you have worked in HR/recruitment, especially in niche market, it can be a tight squeeze trying to find that person... I have clients who've been looking for a person for months... granted the role is a high level program manager APAC role and the more senior the role, the smaller the pool of potential people, but anyway, you can see why we still need to get paid... and anyway as a recruiter you take the risk doing all the work and if you don't find the person, you don't get paid - so in fact, the client doesn't lose at all, they get our services for free UNTIL they hire someone from us (for permanent roles anyway)... hope this sheds some light to how recruiters work ;P

Jen do you do any recruiting for Australians moving to the UK?

the client doesn't lose at all, they get our services for free UNTIL they hire someone from us

But does your cut come out of the employees pay?

Edit: Genuine question, i wasn't meant to sound antagonising .

last edited by MatchFixa at 18:45:41 19/Jan/10

Unfortunately I don't work with clients outside Australia and New Zealand (unless my existing global clients need a hand to staff projects in other countries which is a rarity)

And no, my fee does not come out of an employees pay. I don't know who started that thought but that's not how recruiters work. Most of the time, recruitment/HR or whatever function (usually the IT dept) we are recruiting for has a cost centre and basically the fee comes out of that area as a 'cost' or so I've been explained by various acquaintances of mine in HR...

However, if we have a contractor with a client, well yes, like any other consultancy we still have to make some sort of profit as well as cover our insurance, taxes etc and so we will have to charge out the 'contractor' for a little higher than what they would be paid. I'm sure most of you know that that is how some of the biggest IT auditing, risk management consultancies in the world work too...

I have a lot of friends who work as IT auditors for some of the top 4 firms in the world.. they might make $80,000 per year but the company will make 3 or 4 times that money charging that auditor out to Fortune 500 companies... so if you compare that to what a recruiter makes.. there is not even a comparison ;P

p.s. if you want me to give you details to UK recruiters, I correspond with some at the moment on LinkedIn and I can refer you to one but it depends on the work you do.. ie. engineering? IT? accounting?

I'm more or less in recruiting and I can't stand the myth that companies are paying recruiters money that they could otherwise pay the employee. It doesn't work like that, and shows a basic lack of understanding of business processes. Especially when you take into account things like headcount in large companies, which contractors don't fall under - so contractors are often the only solution to getting work done due to certain budget constraints.

And no one has posted "Look Jen, a fly!"?

Which I think is really stupid, they have the 'Budget' to give a recruiter $X but they dont have the budget to give a new employee a $X/2 signing bonus?

Bulls***.

We have about ~25% of out current workload out to contractors at the moment (And over 50% of construction work) because we dont have the 'Budget' to put on an extra 2-3 surveyors.
We can afford spend twice the amount of money on contractors though...

It's all the same money people.

Interesting Scooter, very interesting, something for your HR Managers and Managers to think about.. that doesn't make good business sense from what it seems... but then again using contractors means you can get rid of them quickly if theres no work, their not entitled to annual leave or sick leave or anything like that and if you do get rid of them, you don't even have to pay them a retrenchment package or any such sum... something to think about anyway...

Not that I'm wanting to defend recruiters, but how would the recruiter's fee come out of an employee's pay anyway?

The employee agrees to a certain figure in exchange for work done, if they don't like that figure they can tell the prospective employer to go jump or negotiate something higher.

The cost of recruiting someone is incurred by the employer, it's completely unrelated to the remuneration of an employee and only expressed in a percentage of the employee's salary to reflect the greater difficulty in recruiting candidates at the higher pay scales.

Recruiting can be done internally by a company, but it still costs time & money to find candidates regardless. If it wasn't a valuable proposition to some businesses to outsource recruitment to specialised agencies then those agencies wouldn't exist.

When we hire someone at work and we agree that they are to be paid 10,000/yr the recruiter we use has a % cut of whatever they are paid annually for a certain amount of time say 1-3 years.

The last guy we put on i think we placed for 80,000 and the recruiter took 3k on top of that per year that the dude stayed. O_o

Interesting Scooter, very interesting, something for your HR Managers and Managers to think about.. that doesn't make good business sense from what it seems... but then again using contractors means you can get rid of them quickly if theres no work, their not entitled to annual leave or sick leave or anything like that and if you do get rid of them, you don't even have to pay them a retrenchment package or any such sum... something to think about anyway...

There's accounting reasons too - with contractors there's not much paperwork. It's a service, the contract house invoices the client a set fee which includes things like the contractors wage, super, payroll tax, WorkSafe, public liability and professional indemnity insurance, yada yada yada. Contracting is different than recruitment, even though they go hand in hand.

Sometimes it's much more preferable to contract people to get a job done. I think being able to hire-and-fire is only a small amount of the attraction of contracting - it's much more stable than that generally.

Have you thought about getting out of software development?

I want to get out of software dev/analysing/consulting as well and i've only been doing it 3 years, I spend a lot of my time reverse engineering software (which is not my job description) because the people who write it are out sourced and the only communication between me and them is zombies.

Then to add insult to injury i end up talking to network engineers for very large australian companies that cant tell their head from their arse and i end up doing their job too.

SFB, you could try consulting in professional services firms?

I believe our department is going crazy at the moment.

Not sure if thats something you'd be interested in though...

'Best practice' is just a way for arrogant pricks to candy up saying 'my way is best'. Stop using it as a phrase, before you come across someone who has the ability to think for themself.

raven that reminds me of your engine braking post

The last guy we put on i think we placed for 80,000 and the recruiter took 3k on top of that per year that the dude stayed. O_o

Why the "O_o"??

There is an alternative model - your company does all the boring s*** that the recruiter does - advertising in multiple places, interviews and competency testing, etc. By the time you have a staff member in your company doing that, $3k/year starts to look pretty fukn cheap.

Edit: Just want to add that my way is best and I am always right

Mums place hired a new chick the other day and said anytime they put a new person on it ends up costing roughly $10-15k to go through the recruiters.

15-25% on the salary package (includes car, super, etc) is standard.

There are usually exclusive and non-exclusive fees as well - that is, for highly specific fields (e.g., oil and gas) where qualified people are tough to come by you can make a contract to a company that all dudes you find in that field you will give exclusively to them. This attracts a higher % fee.

'Best practice' is just a way for arrogant pricks to candy up saying 'my way is best'.

This is a twisted view on things. I see it in the OP even though I'd never put the phrase 'Best Practice' in my own resume because it looks and sounds bizarre outside of some form of context.

Though to call anyone that recognises and tries to follow their industries best practices arrogant is bordering on arrogant itself.


last edited by Dazhel at 16:28:35 20/Jan/10

s***, we need someone with a brain and some project man skills in the software development space

^ Mooby, tell me more.

The term best practise as you know is used to denote that you have worked in accordance with Best Practise as defined by industry standards. As there are several facets of said Best Practise for instance in the fields of Strategy, Design, Transition, Operation and Continuous Improvement e.g. ITIL is one such "framework" for defining and implementing Best Practises in respect to Information Systems aligned with Business Functions. These Best Practises can be aligned and thus defined and implmented significantly different depending on Business/Industry types. Again an example is Resources Industry as opposed to the Financial Sector even in the regards to Software Service Delivery.

Considering I have worked in a variety of Industry Types with the role and responsibility of delivering Information Systems I have so utilising what's termed as Best Practices for Software Delivery in those Industries. That's all I have outlined in the bullet points section of my CV. In the detailed section of my CV/Resume I go into what these Best Practices are further, which I did not post in the thread. All I posted was the covering 1st page Skills Matrix. My CV contains a lot more than that and is very squeezed in to a limit of 4 pages.

Poor you man :(

I used to spend upwards of 60 hours a week behind the wheel of a truck and only ever see the outskirts of Brisbane, and here you are being forced to jetset all over to world for probably 5 times what I was being paid and see other countries to boot! That's f***ed man, my condolences.

^

1) 60 hours is a short week for me. I usually don't finish till 2:00am to 3:00am every morning, including most weekends. I start at 9:00am.
2) When I travel I fly in and out on my time, weekends.
3) When I'm at a destination all I see is the hotel, a taxi and the office I'm working at. I get no time to tour. I work weekends whilst I''m there and till late at night.
4) I travel alone.
5) I can be away for up to 4 weeks at time. Huge strain on the family as I have 3 kids. It's not fair on the missus.
6) I have no social life. I hardly see the family. Why else do you think I post on QGL. I've got very little time to do anything else and I do this usually as a short five minute break during working.
7) All the money in the world is useless if you don't get to enjoy your life in the meantime. I work to live not live to work.
8) I deal with people whom speak little or no English and that's hard. I'm not multi-lingual.
9) I don't go out for drinks after work whilst overseas as a) I know no one and am not totally sure of the customs and cultures b) usually the people I work with are the last ones I want to share some social time with as I've just been with them for up to 12 hours straight c) I'm usually working in the hotel room d) I'm not that much of a drinker by a long shot.
10) Our company is slack on training on our products so a lot of the time I'm thrown into the deep end when I arrive at the destination and that's stressful trying to work out what the customer wants of you and what it is you need to do to satisfy them.

You can have my job anytime but I'm sure you'd keel over within a week from the stress due to not only the long hours but the level of complexity.

SFB, it sounds like a get in, get out job. Get in, make your cashola, get out and manage said cashola (shares, property, etc.)

If you aren't making enough cashola to do that, you're being ripped off.

I can identify with the no English thing. It grates after more than a week.

Money isn't everything especially if I have no life and yes I make very very good money. I'm nearly 50 and I wouldn't mind slowing down and enjoying my family and life a bit more before I croak.

Yeah the jobs usually are get in and get out jobs, usually multiple times then off to the next one. So far in the last 18 months I've done global project for:

Exxon/Mobil - USA
Sinopec (China State Oil and Chemical) - China
SECCO (China State Coal) - China
Fujitsu - Shinagawa, Japan
Tokyo Electric Power Company - Tokyo, Japan
Indian Air Force - Secunda, India - currently a Proof of Concept
Rio Tinto - Brisbane/Perth Australia
BHP Billiton - Perth, Australia
SGS - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
PIA - Kuala Belait, Brunei

Conferences in USA and Thailand. More O/S travel soon.


last edited by Some Fat Bastard at 23:53:29 20/Jan/10

Yeah travelling for work seems like fun at first, but in reality it sucks. Unless you somehow manage to get some time after you finish to do a bit of sight seeing (which you probably arent in the mood to do as you just want to get home to your family and the place your at is probably a s***hole anyway)

Maybe its becase the places I have are s***, but I might be off to singapore sometime this year that might be ok, and off to melbourne in 2 weeks and I organised it so I stay the friday night after I finsh to watch a Twenty/20 cricket at the MCG, so it works out good this time. (I'll be in town alone who wants to go to the cricket?)

SFB, by 50 surely you've made enough cash from that job to get out now? Tell your wife and kids to stop requesting Mercs and a 50-room house and chill the f*** out.

The alternative is a stroke.

                                      |

                                      |

              \   /     \   /        ____        \   /     \   /

    --==========O=========O========/ 0000 \========O=========O==========--

              / - \     / - \     | o0  0o |     / - \     / - \

                                  /\_ -- _/\

                                  0   00   0

Nah, not enough yet as a couple of years ago I lost $210,000 on a bad business decision and I;m currently still fighting the effects of that in the Supreme Court which is costing me heaps. Bugger that hurt and still is hurting. Plus I've still got a decent mortgage, nothing like 1st home buyers nowadays but still enough to be a pain.

For example I had a 4 hour meeting with my Barrister on Monday and that cost $6,500 just for that, then there was my solcitor there too and he cost me about $2,000. $8,000 for an afternoon, not bad if you're the legal eagles.

last edited by Some Fat Bastard at 00:04:33 21/Jan/10

Ah yes, the old "f***ed by business partner" deal. I've seen that happen twice very badly so far.

Well, kick your kids out of home ASAP - that always helps, hahaha.

pfft who needs to be kicked out it's every kids dream to get the fk out of the house asap, realise that having to cook / laundry and all that sucks, so you make some dinner nights back at home to fill the gap of 2min noodles :D