Tag: Job-Hurdles

Τζαμπανταν Site

Db0

Ωχ τι μου θύμησες τώρα.

Pentagon E.Π.Ε.

Η πρώτη εταιρία που μπόρεσα να βρω δουλειά (412 Έουρο το μήνα μπαρακαλώ μπολύ) μετά απο 10 μήνες μου ανέθεσε τον ρόλο του εταιρικού web designer μιας και δεν είχε πολύ δουλειά εκείνο τον καιρό (Αφότου ο μπάρμπα-Παντούλης είχε διώξει όλους τους πελάτες) και έπρεπε να “γεμίσω το οκτάωρο” . Πήρε χαμπάρι λοιπόν το αφεντικό ότι μπορώ να γράψω μια-δυο γραμμές html χωρίς να χρειάζομαι WYSIWYG editor και με έχωσε να του φτιάξω σελίδα με html & flash.

Εταιρική σελίδα για την ΟΕΒΕ ήταν, και το αποφάσισε αφότου τον έκραξαν με την πατάτα που τους είχε παραδώσει πιο πριν. Ε έκανα ότι μπορούσα ο κακομοίρης με τις ελάχιστες γνώσεις που είχα και κάνοντας juggle Web Design & Desktop Support. Καλούτσικο βγήκε αλλά δεν πρόλαβα να το τελειώσω μιας και απολύθηκα αφότου ζήτησα να πάρω αύξηση στα 550 έουρο. Αργότερα έμαθα οτι το πούλησε για 200 και μάλιστα άρχισε και μπιζνες στο εταιρικό web design (μπρρρ…)

Τώρα τι να πεις όταν μια επιχείρηση πιστεύει οτι με 200 ευρώ θα πάρει σοβαρή σελίδα. Θα πάει σε μια εταιρία σαν την Pentagon. θα μιλήσει σε κάποιον σαν τον Παντούλη (ο οποίος δέχεται να αναλάβει τα πάντα) και μετα, όταν η σελίδα του δεν θα κάνει τίποτα, θα νομίζει οτι είναι αχρείαστη και όχι οτι φταίει η τσιγκουνιά του.

JobSearch Statistics

Db0

Time I’ve been in London: Approximately 5 Months

Number of Job search sites registered at: 12

CV versions: 4

Number of applications sent: A few hundred.

Number of times my CV has been looked at by agents: about 700

Number of agents called me to talk to me about a job opportunity: At least 30

Number of Interviews: 6 (9 including the second and thirds for the same company)
Number of job offers: 1

Location of New Job: Frankfurt, Germany (!)

Number of agents contacting me after looking at my CV: Less than 1 in 20

Job Description: 1st Line Support

Conclusion 1: Agents lie. A lot. When they tell call you for a job, being all excited and shit, 50% of the time, they won’t ever call you or email you back as they said they would.

Conclusion 2: Most of the time, when you send your CV to job vacancies advertised, it doesn’t even get looked at by anyone. Most of the times I called the Agency to confirm that they got and saw my CV, they never had.

Conclusion 3: Cover Letters don’t do jack shit. I used to send Custom Cover letter all the time when I started looking. Later I tended to copy-paste a bit more. In the end I didn’t even bother changing the default one. I had the most success when I used the Jobserve site, which incidentally does not have even have an option for a Cover Letter.

Conclusion 4: Don’t even bother to send CV to Google.

Final Outcome: I’m tired of searching…

I have been pissed by a black cat

Db0

“Konstantine I have some really bad news”

This is how my Agent for ECB opened the conversation last Thursday when he called me to tell me what progress we had.

“Oh no” – Is what is thought, with “no” echoing in my head.

To make a long story short, what my agent told me, is that they changed their mind and decided not to hire me after all at ECB. I was dumbstruck…at least until desperation set in.

I felt like the earth opened up and swallowed my hopes.

“How? Why?” – I asked, choking back some tears.

“I don’t know, but Melva (The intermediate between agency and ECB) is very angry and is going to a meeting to find out what happened.”

At this point, I couldn’t really say anything. I was just incredibly sad.

My agent continued – “I’m truly sorry Konstantine, I will try and find you another job…” but I was too gone to really carry a conversation.

“How can a company as big as ECB do this?” – I kept thinking to myself.
I’ve truly never heard before of an employer “changing his mind” about a job offer after he made it. It just seemed incredibly irresponsible and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

After letting my sister and cousin know, I couldn’t really gather the courage to go job hunting for that day. Having the single break I had these five months so cruelly shattered, dissipated any enthusiasm I would be able to gather for job search. I left it for the other day, although It’s frankly something that I cannot afford to set aside.
Since I didn’t get the job afterall, I now need to pay rent and I don’t have a job.

An unforeseen consequence of all this is that I lost two jobs that could sustain me. The day my agent told me I got the ECB job, two people called me for bar work and I turned them down because I thought that a) I wouldn’t need it. b) I would be leaving soon and there was no reason to leave them hanging.
How was I supposed to know.

That day, I did manage to sent a (pretty dramatic) mail to Melva to ask what happened but I never received a reply. I left things as they were for the time and attempted to call her Monday afternoon. What she told me was unbelievable.

They never did accept me. All they told the agent is that I had things looked very good and that they were waiting for the final result. Why my agent decided to tell me that I got the position is anyone’s guess.
Furthermore, when I contacted him 5 days later to ask what was happening, he would tell me that “my position has not been compromised” and that “I should not worry”.

Now how can that be, when they never even said yes in the first place?
Funny thing is that I had a gut feeling that something was going to go awry (and so did my sister) but…hell…damn the optimist in me.
Anyway, Melva did not know why they decided not to hire me after all and they do not need to disclose the reason, but deep down, for some reason, I have the feeling that it’s because they read my last entry and did it to punish me for jumping to conlcusions.

sigh

So, here I am. Still at London and not going anywhere. My big break came and spat me in the eye for being so damn happy about it.

Great.

Mood-swings

Db0

Αρχίζω να διακρίνω ορισμένες ρωγμές στην αιώνια αισιοδοξία μου. Τις τελευταίες μέρες είμαι θύμα σε διάφορες αλλαγές ψυχολογίας. Την μία είμαι αισιοόδοξος για το μέλλον και πιστέυω οτι απλά πρέπει να κάνω υπομονή μέχρι να μου δοθεί μια ευκαιρία, και την άλλη βλέπω την οικονομική & εργασιακή κατάσταση μου και απελπίζομαι.

Όπως το είπε και ο ξάδελφος μου ο οποίος έχει απλά “ταλέντο” για να σου ανυψώνει το ηθικό…

“Τηλέφωνα, τηλέφωνα αλλα δουλειά δεν βρίσκεις…”

Να’σαι καλά ρε Παύλο που δηλώνεις το προφανές. Για ακόμη μια φορά μου δίνεις δύναμη να συνεχίσω…*sigh*

Είναι και το γεγονός οτι ο υπολογιστής έχει αρχίσει να τα παίζει πάλι…random κολλήματα και μεγάλη καθυστέρηση με την πρόσβαση στον σκληρό με κάνουν να πιστεύω οτι ο 40ρης μου έιναι στα τελευταία του. Το πρόβλημα είναι οτι εοπάνω του κάθεται το μεγαλύτερο μέρος απο το logical volume στο οποίο βρίσκεται το λειτουργικο. Σε περίπτωση δυσλειτουργίας θα πρέπει να εγκαταστήσω εσωτερικά τον 250g και να βάλω πάνω του καινούργιο λειτουργικό…το οποίο, χωρίς internet θα είναι λίγο πίκρα.

Μιας και είπα internet, ρώτησα την BT τι χρειάζομαι για να βάλω τηλεφωνική γραμμή και μου ψυθίρισαν οτι θέλει αρχικά μόνο 50 λιριά για ασφάλεια…τελικά ότι και να κάνω μου τρώει περισσότερα χρήματα.
Μετά απο αυτό πρέπει να πάω ή στην TalkTalk για δωρεάν Internet μαζί με το πάγιο του τηλεφώνου (σύνολο 20£ το μήνα για 8mb, 40gb limit) ή στην Orange για δωρεάν Internet μαζί με το πάγιο του κινητού (σύνολο 45£ το μήνα για 8mb, 5gb limit…νομίζω). Πάω στοίχημα οτι θα πρέπει να αγοράσω και broadband modem το οποίο θα είναι τουλάχιστον 50£ ακόμα… ξανά – *sigh*

Ας ελπίσουμε δηλαδή να είναι μόνο ο δεύτερος σκληρός, γιατί εάν τα παίξει το PC…την πουτσίσαμε, για να το πω ευγενικά.

Ευτυχως βγάζω “θεωρητικά” 800 λίρες το μήνα που θα πρέπει να είναι αρκετές για αυτά. Δυστυχώς, δουλέυω σαν το σκυλί.

Οπότε παρέα με τις ψυχολογικές μου αλλαγές, περιμένω ακόμα για μια ευκαιρία. Τηλέφωνα με παίρνουν…να δούμε καμία συνέντευξη πότε θα πάμε.

Ripped off. Pissed off

Db0

Grrr…

A guy came in yesterday at the pub and ordered three Jacks with coke, as I served them he also requested three Becks and three Guinness. I grab the Becks and start pouring the Guinness’. As I’m doing that he tells me he’ll grab a seat and be back for the Guinness in a bit. I finish the Guinness’ and look around to see him. Nothing…

I go outside the bar and check the tables. Nothing…

I go outside the pub. Nothing…

He fucking left and left me with a £23 bar tab.

That seriously pissed me off. I searched the nearby area just in case but he was nowhere to be found. The doorman from next door tried to help me but seeing as I don’t remember faces or, really, nothing much of non-regular customers, I couldn’t locate him.

Obviously, asking for the Guinness’ was a trick to keep me occupied until he left. I should have seen it coming…

Fuck!

And the saga continues

Db0

The Network at my company is still down. We’ve been trying like mad to bring it up but with not success. In the end it was decided to set up the Active Directory from scratch. Problem of course is how to migrate our old schema in order to save time from having to create user entries once again.

Unfortunately the big problem is creating the exchange server again because the old database is basically fried. We can still access it but there is no chance to do a normal backup-export and then import again. We’ll have to do it through manual import of .pst files.

So I started setting up Windows 2000 servers and before I could even install the first update exploits have been exploited and holes have been opened. The first thing I have to do after setting up a new server is open the hosts file and remove the loopback addresses some worm has entered. Only then can I access the network.

Right now I’ve managed to have one server ready to become the new Domain Controller and another one ready to set up the new exchange server to test how it will work.

The IT director seems to think it was a malicious attack. I on the other hand believe it was some kind of virus using an exploit to destroy the AD infrastructure. Just a thing to cause mayhem. Unfortunately it seems to have worked excellently. Now I have to work 12 hours shifts to bring this whole thing under control again 🙁

Long time coming

Db0

For the last few days I have been living most of the day in the office. Just today I closed 13 hours inside. The Active Directory has b0rked and I have been trying to fix it with the help of Microsoft and various other so called experts. Unfortunately nothing has worked and today things took a turn for the worse.
In a try to restore our previous configuration we decided to restore a previous version of the system using the Legato Networker program. In hindsight, it was a big mistake, especially the part where we started it at 6pm. At around 9:15pm and after reinstalling the 2000 Server for the second time we decided to call it a night.
This was the third day I had stayed at work late and it’s getting ridiculous. I’ve been trying to go to the post office for two days now and I can’t find the time.
Tomorrow promises to be even better. We’ll go to the office at 6:30am which means I need to get up at 5:45 and there’s no promise at all that I’m going to leave early enough to manage to GM the Evernight campaign.

At least I know it’s not my fault and even if it were, all traces have been wiped out by now 🙂

Sigh Going to sleep any time now. Military wake-up tomorrow…

Argh! Panic!

Db0

I’m metaphorically running around like a headless chicken.
I’m saying metaphorically because I’m not actually running around but I’ve been switching through support tasks so quickly that it sure feels that way.

Today I’ve fixed the damn DFS replication of the primary file server and what I gained for my trouble is a loss or user rights in the dfs and me frantically scrabbling around to see what happened. I reset the system, took the opportunity to update the AV engine as well and between two reboots I’ve had about a million fuckin calls, and that was after I sent a notification that users should get out of the shared folders.

‘Kosta, some people got a message to close their files on shared folders but I didn’t’
‘Did you have open files on shared folders?’
‘No’
‘Then it’s logical not to get messaged isn’t it?’

‘Kosta, my shared folders are not opening’
‘I’m still working on it. I didn’t give the OK to get in yet. Why are you trying?’
‘Uh OK, when will they be up again?’
‘I dunno, probably as soon as I can get off the phone and keep working on it.’

(Well, OK. I didn’t say that last part, but I really wanted to)

‘KOSTA OMG I NEED THE SHARED FOLDERS OPEN FOR ME BECAUSE I NEED TO DO SOMETHING FOR THE IRS. IS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!1!’
(Trying to keep calm) ‘Uh, I can’t do that. I’m still in the middle of it’
‘OPEN THEM JUST FOR ME, STOP WORKING I DON’T CARE. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? WHY DIDN’T YOU CONTACT ME!’
‘Look, I cannot just “open” them for you. I’m trying to fix the system and I’m in the middle of it and I…’
‘CLICK’

and on top of that the ERP server started failing and even more calls started pouring in.
So I was trying to fix a server while answering stupid questions about two servers.
Finally we got things in line and I found out the real cause of the problem and I hope it stays fixed.

Then I tried to update the antivirus of the primary domain controller. Only he didn’t have IE6, but for some reason it thought it needed a reboot. So I do that, and the backup domain controller does not take control, so everybody is unauthenticated, which means out of the exchange server, until the primary is back up.
It comes up, I install the explorer, reboot and the same again, only now I’m also in fear because the IE6 setup has a tendency to crash the system in some cases and if that happened now…well, I’m just happy it didn’t.
Anyway it comes back up, and I install the new AV, and now I’m waiting for the inevitable reboot request, which won’t happen.

Then a remote router failed because the technicians trying to fix the network between two small stores were careless and took out one small cable, bringing down approximately 100 users. Then the systems are too slow, then the programs are not working, then…ARGH. As soon as one problem appears everyone thinks that everything is broken.

Oh and my “good mood” is not alleviated at all by my near sickness, which means a runny nose and a constant cough.

Browser Games

Db0

Well, I’ve started playing two games on the net. The Kingdom of Loathing is an excellent humorous MORPG that anyone should play at least once. Loads of fun and a complete waste of time to boot.
As I was looking to find one on the same style only a bit more serious and maybe with better gameplay I stumbled onto Strive for power which is very nice. However the fact that you can’t really play if you are not a subscriber (20 ap per hour is not enough to even move around) and that I can’t shell out the kind of money a subscription costs (it is only slightly less than a MMORPG) makes me search around for something else.

Now, I’m at work again and boredom is creeping slowly but steadily in. I have to check our network for virii and the tools never seem to work right. It seems one of them snuck into an unprotected win98 machine and started flooding the network with packets. The routers held but the accelerator puked and started doing whatever it wanted. A technician from it’s mother company had to connect to locate problem and trace it back to the original machine. Needless to say this was blamed (mildly) on me and I had to recheck all the machines for correct definitions and scan engines. bleh.
Now I have to send 4 laserjets to stores around Greece and I hate carrying.

My Linux enthusiasm has waned as well, I just can’t get off my lazy butt and find out why gkrellm2 segfaults all the time. At least Amarok seems to have stabilized since I started using the xine engine. It seems it was something to do with the alsa driver but the steps I took didn’t trace the problem.

Relationship is a mixed deal as well. I’m still hanging out with my new friend but it isn’t going to happen. There were some close encounters but unfortunately nothing special. At least an older acquaintance showed up and may be available for coffee soon.