Career advice...

"charlie" <charliebruno@home.com> wrote:
>
>I would like advice from anyone concerning securing contract work as a Visual
>Basic and/or SQL Server
>developer. I have over 25 years of experience in systems development(Cobol),
>and have worked with
>several data base management systems, etc...etc.
>
>I am a contractor/consultant. I took off for six months at the beginning
>of this year to attend classes for
>the Microsoft MCSD track(VB, SQL Server, etc). To show that I was serious
>about learning these
>technologies I decided to also take the corresponding exams. I've passed
>all the exams and have
>the MCSD certification.
>
>I would appreciate any advice that anyone could offer about how I should
>market myself!
>
>Thanks

Write a couple of apps in VB for a former client, friend in business, nonprofit,
church, shareware, freeware or the like . I would recommend you use ADO
and MTS/COM+ with SQL server. in a sample app, also a web access piece w/
iis. Maybe a sample scheduler app for your company net, with a web page
access. It doesn't need to be fancy. The key is real work experience with
the technology that you don't have to lie about.

It wouldn't be a terrible idea for you to download the Oracle personal edition
and set it up, and write an app using Oracle. Most businesses use Oracle
rather than SQL server. Oracle is much more of a pain to use than SQL server,
so this might be a bit more than you want to bite off right now. If you
have access to someone's set up oracle stuff I would definitely advise you
to write a (simple) VB app using Oracle, just to be able to say you have
used Oracle and SQL server. That can really help land contracts, at least
in my area.

At this point put the new stuff on the resume as real business experience,
not just classes and certs. While you might not get paid to write an app
for a friends business or something for your church, it is still professional
programming experience. This is crucial. Hiring managers don't usually
care about academic qualifications much at all.

I'd pare down all the cobol experience--show about the last 6 years of experience.
Don't give any clue that you are over 40 y/o from the resume. I'd even
recommend you remove the COBOL entirely if possible--focus on any non-mainframe
experience over the last 6 years. Not fair, I know, and your skills and
experience will be very valuable, but many employers these days are very
biased against middle-aged ex-mainframe people and think they can't cut it.
Also, make sure you remove date graduated or any other info that can be
used to determine your age from just scanning the resume.

Once you get to talk to people on the phone and/or get into the office, I
think you can sell past the age discrimination thing by showing your ability,
talking about the kinds of work you have done and business experience you
have, and generally conveying the impression of a skilled professional.
Your contracting background is good as well-sometimes managers don't care
as much about age when hiring a contract programmer as a FTE.

At the point you have your resume done and ready to go, and your projects
done for current employer, I'd recommend you post it to DICE, Monster, and
headhunter.net. If you are in a decent market you should get good response.
Also you can browse these for opportunities and email your resume to the
recruiters/headhunters.

If you want to shoot me a resume, I'll be glad to critique and add any additional
suggestions.

Best of Luck.

Matthew Cromer
matthew@sdaconsulting.com