Anybody works with job agency to find job before?

Hi everyone. I am a recent layoff due to downsizing (yes, it's still happening). I was wondering if anyone here used job agency before. I want to try one, since people recommend me to use one to find job faster, but I have not found any. Can anyone recommend any to me? I am in Los Angeles area and a software engineer in embedded and applications.

Thanks!

Reply to
stan
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Don't worry Stan, our president George Bush has announced a "Four-year plan" to increase the number of jobs, so if you and all of the other engineers here who have had their jobs Bangalored are getting worried about making the house, college loan, car, electricity, food, or other payments hold on! Help is on the way. Look for changes sometime in the next 4 years!

I'm sorry for your job loss. I have in the past worked with Aerotek in Houston, TX. They were decent, although their recruiters don't know jack about technical positions, they just try to line up resumes with posted positions. Anyhow, at least they always paid me on time.

Reply to
£¢$¥

Sorry to hear about your job. I know several people in the Midwest still getting laid off, usually not from engineering jobs (since such people have been laid off a while back). It's too bad that they don't want to offer extensions beyond the standard 6-months unemployment pay nowadays. The people still need it, but i guess granting extensions would paint a dim jobs outlook during election year. Oh well.

Many openings on Dice (and Hotjobs, etc.) have recruiters working for job agencies. So if you apply, you most likely will not get that specific job, but you will get that recruiter's attention who usually has other jobs in mind that you'll probably fit in. As an incentive, the recruiter gets a one-time bonus if you stay aboard for more than x months (x may be 3 months, 6 months, who knows). During the bubble, such jobs came a dime a dozen and were easy to get (especially in the Valley), but not anymore.

There are also engineering consulting firms who hire EEs and Software Es. They search for contracts and then hire individual(s) for that contract. They charge X amount of dollars per hour, and you will get roughly a 50% cut. Aside from the startup I am a partner in that i report to in the evening and on weekends, my 9-to-5 MTWRF job is with at a client site through the engineering consulting firm. In my opinion, they work closer with you to get a job than the Hotjobs recruiters working to make a quick buck.

-Mike

p.s. What is the job climate now there in the West Coast? Is southern California's tech/telecom sector recovering? How is the Bay area doing up north? I still see more bleeding when I read f*company.com. I moved back to the Midwest almost 2 years ago after a few brief stints with valley startups that serially went bankrupt. Here in the Midwest, i do more embedded industrial control jobs since there is a dormant telecom job sector here. Nevertheless, people are still getting laid off here too.

Reply to
Mike V.

Hi Gentlemen, Thanks for the kind responses. I took notes of you advices. In so-cal, right now actually looks pretty good, since I saw many job openings in monster. But, really, for one job opening, they probably receive 100+ resumes. So, the chances are very tight. I had a couple phone interviews and never passed them. I couldn't believe they asked so many ridiculous questions like "what is ANSI C" , "what's a class" etc etc etc

Defense sector looks pretty good here, but of course you need security clearance and such.

Reply to
stan

Not a living, but I do make some supplemental income from guru.com. I actually haven't got a single job "through" guru.com, but people have found my details there (apparently) and contacted me directly through my web site.

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

Thanks for the link. As of yet (8 years contracting, 19 years captive employment before that) I have not had any gaps being engaged in long term projects, but will bookmark that site to visit when I have "downtime".

Similarly, I have been contacted directly as a result of contributing to various web-based vendor discussion forums and have picked up clients through that means. "Vendors" would be those targeting the embedded systems market with hardware (e.g., MCUs, tools, etc.) and software (e.g., compilers, (RT)OSs, protocol stacks, etc.).

So, for contractors or those thinking about the contracting path, we now have as resources for leads (discussed here):

2RentACoder guru.com Vendor discussion forums [add to the list here]

When adding to the list, consider sharing descriptions of success or failure (or in-between, for that matter).

-- Dan Henry

Reply to
Dan Henry

I would estimate that I could probably earn $10k/yr from Guru leads, but I don't bother. Frankly I ignore the "leads" guru.com sends me automatically - they're occasionally applicable to my skillset, but the prices are not worth getting out of bed for. I only respond when someone sends me a personal message.

My financial life is structured around my day job. I don't like living off consulting work. I use it strictly to finance my fun personal electronic projects. For example, I'm about to acquire a metalworking lathe, a compressor and a spectrum analyzer (yes, all for the same project :) that I paid for with a short contract job. And when I next want a vacation, or to upgrade my car, I'll do some short contract work to pay for it.

Oh, and I also do technical proofreading. The pay scale for proofreading, if you read quickly and accurately, is something roughly approximating the low end ($60/hr) of consulting work. It's certainly nice to get the occasional check this way, but I do it mainly because it means I get sneak previews of upcoming books. My publisher pretty much only passes me embedded programming manuscripts; I've found them interesting to read (though the quality of the prose, I'm sorry to say, rarely matches the quality of the technical info).

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

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