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help locating a thread

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i'm looking for a jobs thread that we had a while ago. where people could post up details of a job they had going in their company that might help other forum members looking for employment. rather than start a new thread i would like to post onto the end of the existing one, does anyone recall that thread? i can't search for "job" as it is too short search string. thanks.
 
If you find it do let me know, I'm currently seeking employment and I'm not a million miles away from you.
 
servergate failure confirmed. yes the "who would you most like to have a pint thread" that was a goodun, and if you could bang/be anyone off the forum. another classic.

i will ASW it up and post a new thread in general in that case.
 
shame the job is a shoe in. not to worry. what kind of work are you looking for?

I honestly don't know.

I haven't got any work specific qualifications. My current job was supposed to be a temporary thing, yet 5 years on I'm still here. I applied for another job back in March 2009, went through the whole process and was accepted, then got told there were no jobs available anymore. I've been jumping through hoops since then trying to get in, but they seem to keep moving the goalposts. I'm fed up of waiting now, and I'm thinking it's time to just drop that idea and move on.

I didn't go to Uni, and spent most of my time at sixth form nursing a hangover, so really the only 'decent' qualifications I have are GCSE's.

I have looked into part time college courses etc to boost my chances, but with my current job it's hard to commit to evening classes due to the long hours I do (for example today I left home at 5 and won't get back until about 8).

I think realistically I'm setting my targets too high with the stuff I'm looking for, and I'm going to have to look for a more junior position somewhere and try to work my way up.
 
fuk working your way up in a corporate environment. what actually happens is you work in the department for a year and learn the ropes. a close colleague in the same team realises no one ever gets promoted in a corporate company unless you are playing the game, you have to change employer to move up the ladder. so he quits, then your boss calls you in and says "hi jack, bob is leaving so what we're going to do is promote you to senior job title." you get d1ck tingles as you think yes i will get a 10 grand payrise too. the boss tells you to update your email signature, you feel well smug, you tell your bird you have been promoted. bob goes and gets a job in Reading and you realise you forgot to ask the boss about money in that 1 on 1 session. now you're doing all bob's work and you didn't get any more money did you? so you talk to the boss, who palms you off about budget money being allocated elsewhere, he'll ask and come back to you, he never does.

tips for job hunting:

LIE about qualifications, not too much, or use broad lies. lets say you got 7 GCSEs, 2 grade b, 4 grade c's and one d. list 7 GCSES grade B-C. if you want to make up a university degree say you did it in america and then find a nice looking template and print that (no employer in the history of the world ever asks to see your certificates). i think the only time an employer cares about your quals is if you're sh1t/they're cutting heads from department and they want to get rid of you, they tried piling loads of work on or giving you none at all and you're still there. so they have a dig around and will ask you to bring them in. but you'd be fcuked anyway. it's not a criminal matter. then what you have a years gap on your CV 'cos you can't use them for a reference? so what, say you went travelling or went to work for your dad's company in dubai. of course you can't lie about medical or very specialist fields as you will be found out. but if you want to be an office drone then bullsh1t away.

and thats the end of that chapter.
 
i have followed this guide thusfar in my career and so-far-so-good. it's a bit long and copy and pasta. the most important thing is getting into a management role and using contractors who know what they're actually doing as soon as possible.

A Career Built Purely on Bullshit

Hard Work for Nothing

A lot of people spend a lot of time getting a good university degree, and then spend their working life working very hard and diligently – and get nowhere.

Of course some of those with degrees will get somewhere, especially if they work hard, but there isn’t room at the top for all of them.

No, the best way to carve out a successful career is to have a first class honours degree in Bullshitting.

Step 1

So what is the first step on the ladder to success through bullshit?

There’s no point in spending three or four years in getting a degree when you can just write on your CV that you’ve got one anyway. I know someone who spent years with a First Class Honours degree in Mathematics with Economics on his CV and never got rumbled.

Of course, it is far more dangerous to ‘try it on’ when you are going for your first job, but it is still possible. The bigger companies or the consultancies are likely to check up, but the smaller to medium size companies are a lot less likely to check up.

As an Employer I must confess that I took on 22 graduates without ever asking for evidence of their degrees. I just took it on trust.

Therefore, you should apply only to smaller companies – preferably without an over-officious Human Resources department. You could eliminate all of those companies with a Human Resources department by calling up the company beforehand and asking for the department.

Get Fast Tracked

A ‘first class honours degree’ in a computer-related degree should get you onto the first step of the ladder in your career in IT.

Don’t just leave it at that though. A small company with a small IT department will be ‘lucky’ to get someone like you with a first class honours degree in a computer related subject. Ask at the interview if there is a ‘Fast Track’ process for graduates.

They’re pretty sure to suddenly have one if they want to get someone ‘as good as you’ to join their humble company.

So now you’ve joined the company and are earmarked for a swift rise through the ranks. You will need, of course, a lot of training to get you there, e.g. courses in project estimating and tracking as well as in the other skills of project management.

The Right Job

It’s important to get to do something that isn’t too taxing early on, but which will give you the skills to move on up the company.

Therefore, you don’t want to do too much programming. That can be difficult, and everyone else does it – so they can compare how good you are against them. You need to do some, just to find out what the job is about, as it will be useful for when your leading projects, but don’t do too much of it or you’ll be found out.

No the perfect way to keep out of that and progress your career is to ‘shadow’ the project manager, to be taken under his wing.

Do Tracking

You can help with the tracking on your first project (it’s too early to do estimating).

This is a piece of ****!

It just involves you collating the weekly timesheets, putting the latest situation onto PMW or MS Project and updating the Project Manager on progress. You might also get involved in going round once a week to speak to the project team about where the slippage is and what actions will be taken to fix it.

This ‘grunt work’ will be very useful to the Project Manager who can then get on with other things. It also gives a signal to the other people in the place that you are management. After all, they’ve got to make their excuses to you weekly, and they see you sitting down with the Project Manager (or better still going into a private room) to discuss the current state of the project.

Access to Senior Management

If you thing that you can get away with it, put your weekly report down on paper, and CC it to the IT Manager and Senior Project User, as well as your own Project Manager.

Senior Managers cry out for information about projects, and look well on those that give it to them.

Never, never, never make the mistake of telling the senior people that the project is going well - even if it appears to be so on paper. Projects normally screw up. You don’t want to be implicated in the fall out.

Just tell them that they should ask the Project Manager about progress. Say it in such a way that you seem to be loyal to him or her, and that you don’t want to bypass him.

Don’t let them know that you really don’t have a clue about whether projects are good or bad, will come in on time or late, or will come in to budget or over it.

Using the Result

If the project goes well, that’s fine. It will reflect well on all those ‘leading the project’ like yourself. You will be ready for the next step up the ladder.

If it goes badly, you must take care not to be implicated. You should downplay your involvement in it.

An even better step is to ‘know what went wrong’.

There are plenty of people who have made a career out of knowing what went wrong on somebody else’s project. Just because someone knows what went wrong, doesn’t mean to say that they can put it right (they usually can’t), but those at a senior level usually don’t realise it.

As you are fairly new, you won’t know most of what went wrong yourself. But there are other people who do – and they don’t have access to senior management like you do.

Find out, informally, from the others in the project what they think went wrong. Find out what they think it will take to make it better next time – the lessons learnt.

Collate all this information, and give it to senior management. There’s no need to tell them that you got all this information from other people.

The Man Who Can Help

The management will be in a terrible state on a failed project. Everyone will be ‘getting it’ all the way up the line.

……..and here’s a clever First Class Honours degree graduate, from one of the best universities, who knows exactly how the project went wrong, and even better still, knows how to put it right.

Now you’re really flying. You are sure to get a shot sometime soon at running your own project, instead of ‘the clown’ who has just screwed up their current project and got them all into trouble.

‘Stick in’ especially with the senior users. They couldn’t tell a good or a bad IT person. IT people seldom communicate much with them, so they are very happy when someone does communicate with them, and gives them sound info on what went wrong with a project and how to get it put right.

IT managers seldom rank very highly at companies, and the user managers usually outrank them, even if nominally they are at the same level of the company.

Most people will be worried that they would not be able to cope with such a rapid promotion to Project Manager, and would screw up.

Not you though. You are the King of Bullshit.



Get Others to Do the Work

It doesn’t really matter if you are no good. The secret is to have people immediately under you who are good.

You’ve been around a little while now. You’ll have seen who has been successful and who hasn’t. Make sure that those who are no good are not on your team. Put your foot down here.

As you now have some credibility at the company (you know what went wrong and how to put it right), you can now make some recommendations that will be accepted.

Feedback

Once you’ve got your promotion to Project Manager, get all your team together regularly to get good feedback on what needs to be done to rectify any problems.

The Kings (and Queens) of Bullshit must be ace delegators. You should do as little work as possible. You should make sure that those who can do it better than you should do it, whilst you take all the credit.

Thank them all for the help that you have given you, but when you meet senior management, make sure that they ‘realise’ that the ideas are yours and yours alone. The people on the team don’t get to meet management much and will be none the wiser.

Use Contractors

It might also be an idea to get in some contractors. The majority of people working on projects have two years experience or less. Although you would have to pay contractors more, it would be worth it, as some of them have 5 to 10 years experience in the particular skills. This cuts down your risks.

There’s also the point that you won’t need to help them, like you might be expected to do with trainee and junior developers.

Ask the contractors how things are done in other places that they’ve worked, and whether they have been successful.

If they tell you something that is quite useful, tell senior management that you have a new policy that you are implementing and explain it to them.

Get Yourself a Shadow

You might want to get in an ‘under project manager’ as well, who will allow you to concentrate more on ‘strategic matters’. Get him or her to do the estimating and tracking.

Don’t allow him to report any of this information to senior management.

The most important X factor that you have, that differentiates you from everyone else, is the fact that you are giving senior management their precious project information, which they can them pass on to their bosses.

Weekly Report

Keep the weekly report short, preferably on one page.

Don’t give them a list of all the programs and their status. The real skill you need to have is to be able to summarise effectively all the information that you’re given onto one page - information that will be clear to senior management.

If you are not able to do it, then let your under-project-manager do it – but you run the risk of being bypassed by your management when they find out that someone else collates the figures.

Which Project Manager

Where will you get this Project Manager?

You could get one from a consultancy, but you’re taking a bit of a risk. You can get just as good Project Managers on the market for a cheaper price.

Also, the consultancies are very political and will try to bypass you. They will want to get the attention of senior management so that they can get more business at your company.

Get a Contractor

As they have access to senior management they might even venture an opinion on your abilities to them.

You definitely don’t want that!

No, hire an experienced contract Project Manager.

These people are not generally very good politically, even when they want to be. That's why they went contracting probably.

And they are dependent on you for a renewal.

What you really want is someone with the skills and ability to run the project – but with no, or little, access to senior management.

As Little as Possible

The key skill of the Bullshitter is to do as little as possible, to get other people to do as much as possible, and to take as much credit as possible for what other people do.

If things go badly with the project, then you can simply blame the contract Project Manager and sack him.

However, it is best not to wait until that stage.

Projects always look good in their early stages. People always hide the fact that they are behind schedule.

A Turkey

It is not till the later stages of a project, e.g. Systems and User Acceptance Testing time that it becomes obvious that the project is a turkey.

Unless you have managed to get some really good people around you, and you are convinced that the project is going to be a success, then don’t stick around.

If it is a success, and some are, then your name will really mean something at the company.

Identify the Stars

Make sure that you identify the people who were responsible for it being a success, and make sure that you hang on tightly to them.

One of these is likely to be the contract under-project-manager, so you must make sure that he or she stays around – or you can get hold of them again.

As you are probably not much good yourself, it’s important that you have very good people around you, as you can take the credit for their successes.

What to Do With a Turkey

If it becomes clear to you that the project is going to be a turkey, then you’ve got to get yourself out of there before management find out.

Either get yourself ‘Fast Tracked’ up the ladder, or get yourself a new project before the **** hits the fan.

You’ve already made a bit of a reputation in the early stages of the project.

Use that to get yourself a promotion, or to get onto a bigger, or even more exciting, project.

Leave the others to deal with the fallout when it becomes obvious that the project is bombing.

Worried

Once you are out of there, by the time it becomes clear to senior management that your old project is in trouble, already have had a word with them that you’ve been worried about some of the things that have been happening on the project, and some of the decisions that have been taken, since you left the project.

Since the project was going well when you were on it, and you’ve expressed concerns about the project before the management realised that the project has gone out of control, you will have covered your tracks completely, and enhanced your reputation as the only person in the company who can run an IT project successfully.

Time for Him to Go

Advise your management that they need to get rid of the contractor, who was fine while he was reporting to you, but hasn’t been able to handle the ‘step up’ to running the project himself.

You don’t want him around telling the senior management that a lot of the blame lies at your feet.

You will already have told the contract Project Manager that senior management like very detailed reports each week, so they’ll already be able to see for themselves one area where you were much better than he is, and this will give more credibility to what you tell them.

An Alternative

Another alternative, if things are going really badly is to get out of the company altogether.

Most promotions are got that way anyway.

Anyone hiring will be impressed how quickly you rose through the ranks at your previous company - and you’ll be ready to fly again.

The King of Bullshit is always one step ahead of everybody else!
 
Bloody Hell Ross, you must have nearly maxed out the character limit on that bad boy :eek: !
 
posting in the forum support section i thought it worth a go to see if the thread could be overloaded.
 
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