Working for the state

Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2013 10:50
From: Doug
To: Me
Subject: Quick question…

If you don’t mind sharing…. When you moved to the DNR, how many times had you applied for other jobs within the state?

I’m getting pretty convinced something is blocking me.

From: Me
To: Doug

It’s appears to be a coincidence that 2008 and 2009 have the same number of applications.

Anything else I can help with? Do you want to go back to consulting?

From: Doug
To: Me

I’m amazed that you track all that. It tells me that there is no automatically enforced limit on the number of times you can apply for other state jobs.

Consulting is probably my last choice. Maybe if I were independent.

From: Doug
To: Me

Yes I know what you mean about the job description disappearing. I’ve been printing them for that same reason.

IT hiring is has become one of the most screwed up things there is.

Thanks for the advice.

From: Me
To: Doug

After I started at MDE I started keeping PDFs of every announcement that I applied to. This let me have the job description and posting info handy if I ever got a callback on one of these jobs because they seemed to drop off the system once they closed, and you couldn’t see the posting information any longer; I probably could have just gotten rid of them, but they turned out to be useful in answering your question, so it wasn’t a total waste. It was relatively easy to cursor through the documents in the explorer and see which ones had the state logo on the top. The counts aren’t perfect, but better than nothing.

I doubt that they’re blocking you, but HR is really literal about passing resumes forward unless you have exactly what they ask for in the job posting; so if you had 10 years of Oracle experience and they were asking for 10 years of MS-SQL Server experience in your state online resume, they would just pass you by and move the the next candidate. My wife frequently sits down in front of the TV and goes through several hundred resumes at Metro State for all kinds of non-tech jobs and you would be amazed at what people they they are qualified to do… so exact matches to ALL the stated qualifications in the listing compared with your resume are REQUIRED. You’ll do better if you call the hiring manager listed at the bottom of the posting and forwarding your resume and a note to them directly via email.

Hope this helps.