Job Hunt Blog

Company Alumni Reunions

We just had a giant reunion of former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (R.I.P.).  In the early 1990's, there were over 100,000 of us in many countries.  The company HQ was in beautiful, downtown Maynard, MA, and probably around 35% to 45% of the total staff were located in the Massachusetts-New Hampshire area.

[For a list of company alumni groups, visit Job-Hunt.org's Company/Military Alumni page.]

Most of us, including me, enjoyed our time at "DEC," as it was known, and I really looked forward to attending the reunion, hopefully seeing some old friends and getting reconnected or caught up with what has being going on in their lives over the past 10 years or so.  Didn't happen...  Why?

I ran into 4 people I knew from the old days (and it was WONDERFUL to see them!), but that was 4 people out of hundreds that I had worked with and out of probably over 1,000 people there.

1)  Overwhelming response - don't know exactly how many people showed up, but it was clearly many more than were expected.

2)  Not organized well - when it's hard to walk through a room because it's so crowded, it's too crowded for good networking.  You have no idea who's there, and where they are.  You can't see everyone.  Hanging out by the food (or bar) is usually good networking, but there were about 4 "stations" for food and/or drink scattered across 2 large rooms and a big outdoor patio area.

For "next time" in September, I hope that they put up big signs for where the people from Central Engineering, Government Systems Group, US Area Sales, etc. can meet other people who worked in those organizations during their DEC career. 

I signed up to volunteer for the September reunion.  We'll see what happens.

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Job Hunting Is Hard!

For some reason, everyone expects their job search to be short, simple, and easy.  And, they also expect that the Internet has helped make things simpler.

I'm not sure why we all think that, but I expect it's probably lack of experience and knowledge.  Or, maybe there's some built-in denial factor that tries to protect us from reality.

The problem is that we don't job search often enough to be good at it.

And, with the Internet becoming a significant factor, the ground rules for what worked in the past often don't apply 2 or 3 years later because of changes in technology and, unfortunately, the fact that the world's scammers have recognized and zeroed in on a jucy target - desperate job seekers.

So what?

So - don't assume that last year's or the last decade's effective job search strategies are still effective or even relevant.  Check out Job-Hunt.org, JobHuntersBible, the RileyGuide, and other good Websites and new books to understand what works and what doesn't.

So - stop being so trusting.  Keep your shields up!  A job seeker asked me how to get her Internet "employer" to pay her for the work she'd done when she should have been turing them in to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (a.k.a. IC3) - http://www.ic3.gov/  The "employer" was a scammer who just "hired" her to get her to tell him her SSN.

Bottom Line

Expect that your job search will be as difficult as it was the last time you looked for a job, perhaps a bit worse because of greater competition.  The good news is that the labor market is supposed to be turning around to favor job seekers, with a shortage of qualified applicants for most jobs.  Just don't underestimate the attraction and ease of out-sourcing, off-shoring, and offering massive numbers of visas to immigrants with "scarce" skills.

One assumption from the past DOES applies today - if it looks too good to be true, it probably is!  Verify BEFORE you trust in e-mail and online transactions with people you don't know locally!

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