Conversation Between ciburri and atran21
Showing Visitor Messages 1 to 2 of 2
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Alex,
for the past year I have been off work since I walked off my job due to my company's lack of care for my office. Let me explain. Corporate was in Houston, and far from the sight - far from the mind was in full swing. Yet I was their calling card when Katrina hit and they evacuated entire company. I handled for 10 days in a row from 6am to 11:30pm by myself (my assistant could not handle the pressure and quit after few hours!) what 35 people does in Houston! They re-routed all shipments of semiconductors to me! I handled it all! They gave me $1K bonus for it and taxes ate half of it! If I was on hourly instead of salary I would have made a fortune. Not to mention that I moved over $30 million in product grossing a company over $300K in the process. All this in 10 days!
Latter on they allowed me to hire another assistant just to ask me to fire him barely a year latter. I refused, so they did it over the phone! Jerks!
I told them that I can't handle that volume on my own for long duration since expectation grew beyond proportion. I gave them 3 months to re-evaluate and they blew me off. They thought I was bluffing! I wasn't! They regretted it just few weeks ago when Houston was evacuated again! They were dead in the water. Nothing was shipping for the duration and they lost lot of money and very good customers for good. Payback is a bitch!
During this one year I registered with about a dozen temp agencies. Some of them extremely reputable, yet West Valley Staffing Group came up big from me. You need to figure out what experience you have, what would you like to do and find right division of the agency to apply with. They have 4 of them. I went with Engineering since they were best suitable for my experience with semiconductors even though I have no college degree.
Once you figure what is the best for you check their web page under that division and check their job board. Many positions are not even advertised on Monster and other job search engines. Many big clients do not won't their positions advertised, even undisclosed. They use temp agencies as filtration points, so they do not have to deal with turnovers. They give you a contract for 6-12 months and if you prove to be good, company hires you directly after your contract expires. They do not bother to buy your contract any more. Money is tight and budgets shrunk due to economy.
Monster, Career Builder, Yahoo Hot Jobs, ..... are a good start, but rarely gets you an interview. Many times you are just their legal technicality that they pretend to care to hire just to hire somebody internally or on somebody's recommendation from inside. Many small temp agencies advertise bogus jobs to get as many resumes and applicants and they approach large companies with them. Problem is somebody much larger is already working with them. Waist of time. Go with big and known agencies! They have really big clients that are capable of paying much more than small guys. Hit temp agencies one by one, do their testing for computer skills, check their internal job boards on their web sites and you chase them afterward because they will not be calling you. There is too many people looking for jobs than they have time to remember you and call you.
I interviewed with West Valley in April and at the time local office in Pleasanton had nothing suitable. They offered me a job as their own Account Manager. Some brat bitch I spoke to from their corporate though I was not qualified. Turns out I was too qualified and over her head. She was afraid I was her threat so she turned me down! LOL! I had many of those turn downs for the past 12 months. Many managers of companies that interviewed me got scared I would take their job and turned me down. Temp agencies that set me up for those interviews were puzzled, since they knew I was more than qualified for the job. It became obvious that managers were scared of my being better than they are. Crazy!
I saw Buyer position posting on West Valley's job board and contacted my Pleasanton recruiter since I know she would put a good word for me with her colleague in corporate in Sunnyvale that handled the recruiting for it. It was better than just contacting him directly. I would have been just another resume for him. It worked like a charm! He never saw me, yet he set me up for an interview within a day. I nailed an interview at SanDisk and a day latter I got contacted by the rep screaming from joy with a good news. Three days latter I was working! With temp agencies you start working within days! West Valley has over 100 contractors in SanDisk! They have 2 account reps sitting in SanDisk at all times! And that is just at SanDisk! They work with many high caliber companies. Sky is the limit!
Man, dress to kill. Get a hair cut, shave, groom, ...... Always in a nice, pressed suit and shirt. Even with recruiters. Remember, they are an outsourced Human Resource department for big companies! First impression never fails!
Don't bother registering and going trough job search engines like Monster and others. The will just spam you e-mail. I did not get a single interview through them, just a whole bunch of financial scam crap and door to door selling! Hit the temp agencies and try Wes Valley Staffing Group first.
I hope my experiences help you out and you do not end up waisting a lot of time learning it on your own. Good luck!
Ivan -
