RE: CALL CENTER REP JOB IN CA

["Elaine" <http://www.hotmail.com/~em>]

> --- Robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert> wrote:

> I frequently get e-mails for positions outside of Ca.  According to
> that skillproof.com site, Wash DC & NYC have been generating a lot of IT 
> jobs.  Anyway...
This is because of a short-term (many a couple of years) for upgrades to the 
government's systems, especially due to the Patriot Act.  Their systems are 
not up to snuff for spying on the populace, I guess.  This need has been on 
the news and from the state, as well.

I should have mentioned, as well, that my background was solely on large 
corporate servers, not on PC's or small systems.   The job market for large 
corporate systems is gone, gone, gone.    ProSearch, the state, and others 
have emphasized that any new jobs will come from small or mid-sized 
businesses, not corporations.  They have either moved their data centers 
east, offshored the work, or downsized.  My old Merv colleague Don, an old 
mainframer whose job was transferred to IBM in '97 during the consolidation, 
had been lucky enough to keep supporting the company in Mpls from home, even 
though the office here closed last fall.  However, I ran into Don recently 
(he lives close on Second Street) and he told me that Target is about to 
sell Mervyn's (finally, after many years of threatening) and Don will be out 
of a job.  IBM is not going to keep him - they've got an excess of 
mainframers, and he wasn't there long enough to get retirement.  He's around 
60, with 20 years in CICS.   No one's going to need that -- all those jobs 
are in India or handled by IBM.   So, another one bites (bytes?) the dust.

So, like many baby boomers who worked for years at corporations, hoping for 
retirement, I did not build skills useful in small businesses.  My skills 
are for large corporations, and these are gone.   After all that time I 
wasted on DBM, ProSearch, and Retec, no one really helped me with what I 
need -- how to "market" my non-tech skills.   And truthfully, I don't have 
any specific skills that turn up on Craig's and other sites.   Retec only 
had teaching to suggest, and like you, I really can't see myself teaching 
and don't plan to do that.   So, I'm just scraping by, living on credit 
cards and trying to land another temp job.   I still look at the tech jobs, 
and you can keep sending any you see.  You never know.  Something may turn 
up that is generic enough so that I would qualify.   But I wouldn't hold my 
breath at this point.