Looking for a new job

[routerunner]

Dear SageTV users,

yesterday the 26th February 2014 my employer made me and my team redundant and as you can imagine quite a big shock after 10 years of solid service.

I know that a portion of SageTV users in this community are software developers like me and I was wondering whether you know about internal vacancies within your organization that you reckon might be of interest to me.

I'm a Senior Software Engineer specialised in embedded systems, I'm living in the UK (South West) and looking for a new job preferably in the M4 corridor.

Thanks for your time
Eddy

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by routerunner

Dear SageTV users,

yesterday the 26th February 2014 my employer made me and my team redundant and as you can imagine quite a big shock after 10 years of solid service.

I know that a portion of SageTV users in this community are software developers like me and I was wondering whether you know about internal vacancies within your organization that you reckon might be of interest to me.

I'm a Senior Software Engineer specialised in embedded systems, I'm living in the UK (South West) and looking for a new job preferably in the M4 corridor.

Thanks for your time
Eddy

Sorry to hear about this While I don't have any leads on possible job opportunities, I will offer some advice.

1. If you haven't done so, then create a LinkedIn profile, and update it with your relevant skillsets, and join groups on LinkedIn that relate to your skill set. Many recruiters use LinkedIn to find people. I get contacted very often via linked in for job opportunities.

2.If you haven't updated your resume in years (many of us haven't), and you feel a little overwhelmed by doing so, then I'd recommend paying a resume writing professional to do it. I did this the a couple years ago myself (and I need to re-do again). Having a well written resume is half the battle.

Good luck.

[NetworkGuy]

One piece of advice that worked for me.

Send an email to ALL of your contacts, titled "New Contact Information". Let them know your new contact information, why your old information is not valid, and to please let you know if they hear of any openings that you might be interested in.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by stuckless

2.If you haven't updated your resume in years (many of us haven't), and you feel a little overwhelmed by doing so, then I'd recommend paying a resume writing professional to do it. I did this the a couple years ago myself (and I need to re-do again). Having a well written resume is half the battle.

Thank you very much for this advice Sean, having the CV done professionally is a brilliant idea, you're right last time I updated my CV was 10 years ago

I recall during the meeting with HR that they were talking about this and willing to pay for the service as well as part of the redundancy package.

Eddy

[PiX64]

Please send me a pm and Ill give you my personal email address. Id be happy to take a look at your resume, and talk to you about who I work for as well as what I do. More importantly, how you might fit in to the organization is the key.

Happy to help if I can.

[Tomahawk51]

Bummer Routerunner. Sorry. I'm in Corporate America, and it seems careers really are a more transactional thing now-a-days. Every shift and change bolsters skills to do it again (whether on your terms or on another's). Hard to see that benefit when in the middle of the change though!

I'd recommend looking at, and listening to some of the podcasts from Manager's Tools or the sister Career Tools. They have podcasts about what to do in your situation, one called "your resume stinks," and a bunch of other useful discussions. Pretty frank advice, always based on what the litmus test of what is effective. I think the resume and interview advice I got really helped in a number of career changes I have made...

Nope, I have no interest in this (i.e. I don't get paid to say this!).

http://www.manager-tools.com/

[routerunner]

I just wanted to say thank you very much for your support and ideas, it just reminds me how good this community is.

My former employer is going to pay for a professional Resume/CV writer service very soon, hopefully that will help me fighting half the battle (as Sean kindly pointed out).

Also, I decided to follow my dream and take the redundancy package as an opportunity to jump the fence and start my own company very soon. I bought the domain name (www.rossisoft.co.uk) and started to develop and host my very own website, something I've never done before, but I love challenges. The website is currently under construction and if you go there you'll just see my face and my company logo (not much really), but I have to start somewhere, isn't it?

I decided to settle with "BlueGriffon" web designer which is based on the "Kompozer" project now abandoned and it looks very promising, now I need a good template to start with. Does any one got a pointer to a good one? I don't mind to pay for it (within reason, I did see $3000 for a template few days ago ).

Thanks
Eddy

[stuckless]

@routerunner without knowing what you website/company is, but maybe, something like Joomla would we something to look at. Joomla is multi-purpose CMS system that has plugins, for just about everything you can think of (including shopping carts, user registration, etc). Joomla is PHP and MySql based and runs on many hosting providers.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by stuckless

@routerunner without knowing what you website/company is, but maybe, something like Joomla would we something to look at. Joomla is multi-purpose CMS system that has plugins, for just about everything you can think of (including shopping carts, user registration, etc). Joomla is PHP and MySql based and runs on many hosting providers.

That's interesting indeed, so basically as I host my website from one of my servers at home (Debian), I just need to install PHP and MySQL on my Linux server and unzip the Joomla! package on my server as the back end and create my website from any web browser? I suppose I can simulate my website before uploading the content to the server? I need to investigate that option.

Thanks for the pointer

Eddy

[ThePaladinTech]

I can confirm that it is well worth the money to get a pro to write your resume-

This is the person I used, and I got the job...

http://www.itresumeservice.com/

[bcjenkins]

FWIW - You could look at a site like http://themeforest.net for website designs that are somewhat turnkey and reasonably priced. You should also look at 99designs.com or designcrowd.com for logo design.

If you're starting your own business, building a LinkedIn and Xing profile is definitely recommended. Xing was described to me as LinkedIn for EU by a friend of mine in Germany.

Good luck!

[paulie]

Sorry to hear your news. LinkedIn has been very useful for me. Good luck.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

You should also look at 99designs.com or designcrowd.com for logo design.

I'm also starting my own business and was turned onto those logo contest sites by someone. As I was comparing the numerous different ones, I kept noticing a few things: copyright claims and a lack of originality. Ironically, it was that second point which brought me to this article. I'll come back to that in a second, but what I noticed about the originality piece was that if anyone asked for something besides an "abstract" logo, consisting of just a fancy way of displaying your company's main letter(s), the submissions were few and far between. Personally, I was looking for some artwork and that seemed to be severely lacking across all the sites and I couldn't figure out why.

That searching led me to the aforementioned article, which was a total eye-opener. Obviously, the author has his own logo design company and has an agenda, but what he writes is quite compelling. There are additional articles all over the place.

In the end, I decided to go with a professional design company recommended by a family member. I'm going to pay more (2-3x, in fact), but I feel it's money well spent.

Obviously, the choice is up to you, but I did want to share my experience since this was all very fresh in my mind.

[bcjenkins]

You'll note the theme of the post was get it done inexpensively. That of course has its trade offs.

[routerunner]

In the end I decided that building my company website from scratch was an opportunity to learn something new, so I borrowed a book about XHTML and CSS from my local library and I've gave it a try and I have developed a truly respectful opinion of web designers, because is not that easy as it seems.

The website is ready and will be online early next week, nothing fancy, quite the opposite, but this is the first version and pretty sure it will evolve in time hopefully for the best

The main page has a section with some testimonials from people I worked with in the past and from sagetv enthusiasts enjoying my work as well, but feel free to contribute if you wish by sending a PM and I'll publish your comment on the website.

Thanks
Eddy

[routerunner]

As today, the 7th April 2014, RossiSoft Ltd (www.rossisoft.co.uk) is officially registered as a private company in England and Wales and the rudimentary website has been launched as well.

I'm over the moon, but please wish me luck

Eddy

[samgreco]

Buona Fortuna Eddy! I hope you get more business than you know what to do with

[graywolf]

Best of Fortune.

[MacDaddy]

Karma is in your korner. You're going to do great things. Best of luck.

[doc]

Good luck Eddy, I hope everything works out great.

.... and after months of not wanting to touch my Sage box I finally plan on trying your DVB-S Importer this weekend