Job frustration

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So... A little over a year ago the company I worked for had a lack of new projects and decided to let all consultants go. That included me, despite everyone telling me I was doing a good job. The project manager even invited me to a convorsations where he said that I had done great work. And the software manager told me that I could put him as a reference and he'd give me great feedback.

At that point, I was still employed by the recruitment company so I thought they would get me a new job. But nothing happened, then my contract with the recruitment company was over, and I was still without a job. So I started applying for jobs, without any success.

A while later I had two fainting episodes, was diagnosed with epilepsy and started medication before getting back into applying for jobs. It's now almost half a year. I've applided for a dozen jobs, I take time writing good applications, I have a CV with 1.5 years of proffesional experience, many hobby projects and references that I eknow will give me great feedback. But still no success. The closest I got was an interview last wedensday that I got through my former recuitment company. But no success. They even told me I did a good impression but they didnn't think there would be good chemistry between me and the other developers.

What am I doing wrong? Is it the 1 year gap in my CV that screws me over? I'm starting to get quite depressed over this...

The truth of the matter is, you can do everything right and still not get work. The economy still isn't great. It won't be great for a while. Have faith.

The only thing that surprises me in what you've written here is how few jobs you've applied to. Given the current situation, you should be applying to more jobs.

I don't know if you've looked into working for the government. Generally you can go to your city's page and find a jobs or careers area. You should also look at usajobs.gov.

I've never worked with a recruitment company, so I don't really know what they can and can't do. Reading through your post, I would imagine that the good impression you gave was based on your competency/expertise and the chemistry problem would be that aspie or autistic oddness or awkwardness.

The only thing I can think of that would help you there would be to actually rehearse with someone, preferably several someones.

Why did your contact end with the recruitment company? Who sent the last e-mail or phone call?

Do you volunteer anywhere? Volunteering can be a way to keep your resume current. Employers prefer volunteering to an outright gap because it helps account for your time. They know you weren't just sitting at home playing Wii all day when you didn't have a job.

Did you get along with any of the other consultants? Are any of them employed somewhere that needs someone like you?

Best of luck.

I understand the frustration. I was looking for work for years without many bites, and, when I did get interviews, I never got feedback on them. I was beginning to think I'd never find another job.

I was employed at the time, so it could have been much worse for me, but, I also worried that because I only had one job on my resume, people would minimize my experiece level.

I started a blog in my industry, which raised my profile enough that I got some freelance work. That freelance work is where I got recognition enough to get my current job with a really fantastic company with a workload that looks like it will only continue to grow.
The best part about the freelancing was that it was all done at home through my computer, I didn't have to speak to people very often, so I left a much better impression.
I also did some networking events, even though those stress me out, I'd always heard that the majority of jobs are from people you know. I can't say that years of doing those directly paid off, but, right after I accepted this job, I was approached about two more from someone I'd met through the networking events we attended.
The job I have now is a result of knowing a guy I met over 10 years ago and never directly worked with, I always kept in contact with him through various sites, though, because I knew he'd be a good guy to know... and I was right.

Lots of blabbering sorry... takeaways: online reputation and networking

Best of luck to you through this frustrating time.

I'll admit I'm a bit picky when it comes to work. I know I can't expect to work with C++ which is what I know best by far. So I guess I'll have to look more into jobs with C#. I don't want to work with anything that's not software engineering related, that'll be a step in the wrong direction for me.

There are very few jobs for the government as I live in Norway and no the US.



The weird thing is that the person from the recruitment company said that I made a good impression. So I think the thing that screwed me over was that the developers in that company work very closely together, while I'm more used to working on my own.

I'm fairly comfortable with interviews at this point. Though I do need to preper for the annoying questions like "What skills can you bring to our company?" "Why do you want to work for us?" etc.



My contract was until june 2013, with the intention that I'd go from being a consultant to a regular employee of the company I was working for. So the contract was simply due to end because at that point I was supposed to be employed by the company I was a consultant for. ( Hope I have explained myself well here )



I'm not sure anyone are in need of a vouenteer. But I'm going to find open source projects to contribute to.



No, all of the consultants I worked with was older than me and we didn't share much interest. I know a few of the regular employees that I worked with, but they're still in that job so I doubt they know of anything.



Thank you, I'm hoping my luck wil change soon

Yeah.... Networking is hard. I just don't know where to start. I could go to conventions, but they're all so far away.

I have been thinking about starting a programming blog, maybe. Where I present things from my hobby projects and various quirks and neat programming things I stumble onto.

Any tips as to how to promote the blog?

Ah, yeah, I started attending conferences because my employer believed in education... went to one four years in a row before I was finally able to start talking to people, LOL (the secret is, that's when I started drinking. ~shrugs~ It mellowed me out enough I didn't freak out and leave.).

I encourage people to start a blog, even if they're not looking for a new job. Lining out and explaining your work helps you perfect it and understand it more deeply, imho.

As for promotion, I just made sure I had a presence everywhere.
I have a LinkedIn profile. When I make a blog post, I post it on linkedin, which also pushes it out to my twitter account. And, since it's a google blog, anytime anyone +1 or comments or shares the post, it shows up on Google+ and on the blog itself. I also have a link to my blog in my forum signatures for the professional organizations I belong to.
I sometimes write articles for free for those trade organizations, so, a link to my twitter handle and blog are always a part of my byline (and, most of the time, you're contractually free to post the content to your own blog later, so it's not like you're doing the work for nothing).
Being in a niche works in my favor, too, as there aren't too many people writing about what I do (facilities management, software angle - mep engineering and asset management), so it's easy to stand out.
And, when I (rarely) find blogs with similar content and link to them, then those people see a trackback to your site, might check out and share your resources with their readers. Oh, also, when you're still building up traffic, offer to write a guest blog post for a related site, most bloggers appreciate having free content, and will put a bio line back to your site (I've had over a dozen guest bloggers on my site, and one of them landed a job after writing a fantastic tutorial that still gets me a lot of pageviews).

I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting, I've been at the blogging thing for a long while (9 years this month, I believe) and I am glad I started it (I've also gotten a few tickets to exclusive software launches that aren't too tiring because they're smaller groups).

I followed your example and created a blog. You can find it here

It's quite minimal so far, but I'm just getting started.

Cool! I'll get it out from home. (stoopid IT blocks blogs here)