Looking for Advice

[Madison Kelly]

Hi Thomas!

   I know, and have known, that it is who you know more than what. Trick 
is, I went to New Bruswick for a while and now most of my contacts have 
dried up. The people who I do know in the industry are themselves 
struggling to stay afloat.

   The one saving grace I have is that I do know I enjoy what I want to 
do. I've been helping customers, teaching, and most of all designing 
systems, servers and networks since 1997 (in an official capacity - I've 
been doing since I was young as a hobby). I guess in a nutshell my best 
skill is my ability to trouble shoot problems. I came to Toronto to 
study (of all things) orthotic and prosthetic technology (various body 
braces and artificial limbs). Because those fields are so small and the 
problems so varied the majority of the time we were in school was spent 
learning various ways to look at problems and how to find solutions with 
  whatever is on hand.

   Kind of hard to quantify, isn't it? :)

Madison

PS - About the TLUG consulting thing; if there was still interest and 
resources I would be quite interested.

Thomas Gibson wrote:
> Madison,
> 	As for job prospects, it is a tough time but I can
> tell you that in 9 time out of 10 you are going to
> secure a job based on your face-to-face skills both to
> secure an interview and subsequently to get hired. 
> Try to make direct contact with prospective companies
> even if they say no calls.  Also, try contacting
> companies networking for information(ie. not looking
> for immediate employment).  If you don't front
> immediately as looking for employment they can't
> reject you immediately and you will probably learn
> something along the way.
> 
> 	Having worked for the last ~8 years in various
> software/systems development settings I can tell you
> its not all its cracked up to be.  I am trying to head
> in the other direction(small business, consulant?) but
> I'm not sure of the details.  A group of TLUGers had
> made some motions in the spring about creating an open
> source consultancy group but that sorta lost steam.  
> 	If you have any insights to give, want an opinion(,
> etc) email me.  What is your background/interests
> other than what you mentioned?
> 
> 
> 
>  --- Madison Kelly <linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote: > Hi
> everyone,
> 
>>  I have a question that I am hoping someone here
>>has worked through.
>>
>>  I decided that, given some stuff going on right
>>now, that I should
>>really try getting a job to get some steady income
>>for a bit. The
>>problem I am facing though, as I am guessing others
>>here have faced is,
>>how do you get a job when you are self taught? The
>>only place I have
>>worked in the past outside of my own company was,
>>strangly enough,
>>teaching evening courses at George Brown :).
>>
>>  So my question is, how have some of you gone about
>>getting a job when
>>you have no paper work but are good at what you do?
>>How do you get a
>>given company to even respond to your resume? I have
>>sent out quite a
>>large number of resumes but so far I only got one
>>interview. For what it
>>is worth; I have been actively building,
>>troubleshooting and supporting
>>PC systems since '97 (under windows and linux).
>>
>>  Anyway, if nothing else take this as an exasperted
>>rant :).
>>
>>Madison
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--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml