This Pretty Much Sums It Up....

NO BULLSHIT FOR THIS ONE...

We Can Code It For You Wholesale

For those of you who may not know, I have been working as a Technical Recruiter for Manpower Professional. I was hired on due to my experiences in working as an IT professional for the last nine years. Manpower has taken a risk hiring me as I don't have any recruiting experience at all, but I have been on the other end of the process as a buying influence for a company using contract employees. I had this role on a number of occasions at EDS.

So what do I do exactly? As my manager says, "You get job orders, and you fill job orders". That's pretty much it. Companies need people, in my case IT people, and I use a number of databases to find them. I conduct company interviews to establish a job/assignment profile, and then I contact candidates to see if they are still looking for work and if there is a match to the position. Initially I thought this would be simple. Companies are looking for people with a certain skill set and all I have to do is find them. I over-simplified this work greatly. There are so many nuances to recruiting. Finding the right person can be a lot of work. Not to mention that there are so many skills sets in IT. Helpdesk, Database developer/administrator, Web developer, Software programmer/developers, and so on. Then you have to determine if the person is interested in short/long term contract work or just wants a direct hire into a company. Then you get them together for an interview. If there is no match, you look for different candidates to fill the position. If there’s a fit then you begin negotiations for bill rates, pay rates, and mark ups. All of this is happening while other contract houses are also submitting candidates. There is a clock running all the time to get the right people in place quickly. It can be stressful, but the people who I work with are experts and know the most amazing tricks to be successful.

Now the payoff for all this research and phone calls (oh, so many phone calls) is that I make money off the placements I make. This is above my base pay. So the incentive to place lots of people is there. The bite is that most recruiters work from a base of contract employees that they use again and again. Establishing this kind of base takes time. I'm fortunate that I was employed by a defunct helpdesk in that I have a a lot of people that I know who are looking for work. My first placement last week was a friend of a former employee of mine at the helpdesk. So I have a good start. The learning curve for me is to create a base with highly technical people who may not have the same IT experience as me. I didn't really work with software developers or network security experts so I have to learn what those skills sets are. The upside to this is that most roles in IT use the same language. So I may not know exactly what they have done, but have a good idea how to ask them about it to see if it's a match with the job opening.

The people at Manpower are the nicest I've ever worked with. They are anxious to teach what they know and help a newbie to place candidates. There is a certain amount of sales involved with this role and the tips and tricks I'm getting from my manager and peers is priceless. It's really a fun place to work. Humor is a large part of the group at Manpower which has helped me to fit in. This helps during the times when I don't know what the hell I'm doing, which being new is a lot of the time. But everyone keeps assuring me that I'm doing well, and I got in the weekly newsletter for my first placement.

One of the nice things about my new job is that there are not a lot of technical people at Manpower. This means I get to help out with some technical questions and make suggestions of a technical nature to help the business. The IT manager at Manpower and I get along well and she can talk with me about the tech stuff which to others sounds like Latin. I am the guinea pig for her to try out new applications of setting because she knows I'll be less likely to hurt myself or others with whatever the upgrade happens to be.

I have to dress professionally every day. The Manpower office where I work is half what they call traditional staffing and half professional staffing. Traditional is just what is means - labor, clerical, and administrative. Professional is executive staffing. My niche at this time it IT, but I also have Accounting/Finance and Human Resources. So, being part of professional means that you have to look the part and set a standard. That means wearing the suits and ties. This is not a problem for me at all. Although I will admit that the speed in which I go upstairs and jump into the smushy clothes is much faster these days.

So there you have it. After six months on the unemployment rolls I've found a job that I really like and that I think I can excel at. As I stated previously this is made possible by the terrific people that I work with. I've been telling friends as of late that I'm happier than I've been in years. I feel like I can really make a difference at Manpower, and make some mad-cash to boot. I wrote to a friend earlier this week that it seems like the universe has smiled upon me, at least for the moment. Hey, I'll take it. Some days now I even smile back.

In the end... we don't decide these things, you know...

Well, for those of you who are wondering if I'm dead or not. Alas not, I've been working. Below is one of my absolute favorite quotes about Halloween. It's from a movie called Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Which (ha!) is worth watching if you get a chance. Mega-creepy in a very campy movie sort-of-way.

Conal Cochran: Mr. Kupfer was right, you know... I do love a good joke and this is the best ever, a joke on the children. But there's a better reason... you don't really know much about Halloween... you thought no further than the strange custom of having your children wear masks and go out begging for candy.

Conal Cochran: It was the start of the year in our old Celtic lands where we'd be waiting... In our houses of wattles and clay... The barriers would be down, you see. Between the real and the unreal. And the dead might be looking in, to sit by our fires of turf... Halloween. The festival of Samhain. The last great one took place 3,000 years ago and the hills ran red... With the blood of animals and children.

(easy..it's just a quote...)

I hope everyone out there is well. I'll write when I can. It's a bit harder to do with that whole working thing I mentioned earlier. I'll have a comprehensive look at my new job soon.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Will's Index #1

There happens to be this magazine, we'll call it Schlarpers that has an index listing all sorts of information, percentages, and numbers about current events and different subjects. So I thought I'd create a similar one, and being totally self-consumed, all the data will be about me.

Number of roundish objects that Will can juggle: 3

Number of roundish objects that Will's cannot juggle and will eventually hurt himself with: 4

Number of days that Will has gone without bathing as an adult: 5

Number of days that Will was camping and refused to enter the showers: 5

Ratio of the amount of packs of cigarettes that Will's consumes to the days he is conscious: 1:1

Ratio of these days to the amount of ribbing Will gets from his wife on the subject: 1:1

Speed in which Will could throw a baseball while participating in little league in 1984: 90 MPH

Speed in which Will can throw a baseball in 2006: 85 MPH

Days of recovery from thowing this baseball in 2006: 4

Number of movies Will watches in one week: 10+

Average number of good movies Will watches in the same time period: 15%

Average that Will's wife will fall asleep during a movie that Will rents: 90%

Average that Will's wife will fall asleep during a movie that she herself rents: 5%

Ranking of Will as a father as estimated by his children: 1

Ranking of Will as a father as estimated by their mother: tied for 25th

Ranking of Will as a father as estimated by Biff the Wonder Dog: 1+

Volume of baseball hats owned by Will: 23

Volume of baseball hats owned by Will that he actually wears: 5

Volume of basball hats owned by Will that he's not allowed to wear out of the house: 3

Number of women that Will dated prior to dating his wife: 5

Number of women that Will wish he hadn't dated prior to dating his wife: 5

Ranking of Will's wife among mortal women: 1

Ranking of Will's wife among immortal women: 1

Ranking of Will's wife among women from yet-discovered alien worlds: 1

Number of movies that Will indentifies as his favorite: 12

Number of tattoos that Will currently has: 3

Number of tattoos that Will currently wants: 5+

Chance that Will can accurately recite you the Prime Directive from Star Trek: 85%

Chance that Will can accurately recite you the Gettysburg Address: 10%

Number of T-Shirts that Will owns: 40

Percentage of these shirts that have been designated "Not for wearing outside the house." :10%

Well I hope you liked yet another in a line of writing experiments. I've numbered these entries as well, so who knows maybe I'll return to it someday.

Geek Gallery #3

My picture as been altered to protect the identity of this fish and because I wanted to see if I could do it. Taking a wholesome fishing picture and making it look like old porn. That's how I roll....

I was going to write a long and very unfunny article about fishing. Fact is, I don't know shit about fishing and everything I know my brother has taught me. Probably more than once as he takes it much more seriously that I do. He's a good fisherman and knows a lot about doing it the right way so as not to waste time. That being said, we have spent a lot of time on docks and shores NOT catching fish. Hey everyone gets skunked (an outing without catching a fish), but you follow the rules and tips and hopefully you'll catch something wet that you won't need penicillin for.

What I do is simple. I put a line in the water and hope for the best. If it catches a fish I consider myself a lucky and experienced angler. If it doesn’t, I swear at the surface of the water until I feel better about the time I've just wasted. There is a lot of the latter and way too little of the former. I almost always go fishing with my brother. Mostly we just talk and laugh a whole lot. Seeing as we NEVER eat the fish we catch, it's spending quality time trying to pierce as many fish lips as we can. We're like Claires for fish...

The fish you see me with here is slightly smaller that the one my brother caught about an hour previous. But we did not have a camera for that one and he'd like me to assure you that his did in-fact catch a fish. I caught this fish about six feet from where I was standing right next to a pontoon. It was very exciting. Catching Large Mouth Bass is great fun; they strike hard and breech the water to throw the hook. So all the waiting and bullshitting is worth it when a bass hits your line. It's quick and surprises me almost every single time. So we stand on the dock a lot and hope on of the little slimy bastards is hungry enough to be enticed by our smoking, swearing, and stories about work and wives. Mostly it's time to hang with my brother. With work and kids we don't spend a lot of time together and fishing in the summer is a great way to entertain us both. It’s not wasted time at all.

Invaders From Thanagar

Once you've completed reading this article, and you understand the title reference to Thanagar - I tip my hat to you. You are truly a geek of Herculean proportions. For those of you who don't get it, remember - Wikipedia is your friend.

This summer we have had a family of hawks living in the neighborhood. We are unsure of what species of hawk they are. We thought Cooper hawks, but seeing a stuffed one on a recent visit to the MSU Museum we realized that our hawks were way too big. Mom and Dad hawk have been flying around feeding and looking after 3 chicks. From afar they are truly amazing to watch. But as you'll see, close encounters can be quite scary. Lately I've been feeling a little like a mole, vole, or otherwise smallish rodent as the hawks silently swoop around our house.

Now most of my encounters have been while outside smoking. The hawks are so well camouflaged that unless you're looking right at them you can miss them. This can be startling when one of them is sitting behind you less than 3 feet away. Like today, I was sitting in the back yard enjoying Phillip Morris's finest when I noticed one of the chicks sitting on the fence behind me (see pic). I was quite willing to sit and enjoy the experience when I noticed Mom hawk looking suspiciously down at me from the neighbors garage. She did not look happy about her offspring sharing a cigarette with an odd-looking human (I was in my PJ's). So she jumped up on the garage ledge to reveal her talons. As if to let me know that my company was not welcome. So I did what any coward would do. I moved to the other side of my yard. That's all I need, my face clawed up for my next interview. How the hell would I explain that?? I was able to take the picture before Mom and chick flew off together towards something easier to catch that a 36 year-old unemployed helpdesk supervisor.

Other encounters with the hawks have included one sitting on the railing of my neighbor's porch, another one swooping at a squirrel directly above me, and another shitting on the mini-van. Mostly we just hear them. They have a very distinct screech and talk with each other all day long. It's fun having them in the area. The local um...smaller wildlife most likely do not share this opinion. They just look really scared and I catch them looking up a lot. Hell, I would too with raptors living so close. We have a nest of squirrels living in a tree in our backyard. They must be thinking, "That great!" "Man, I just furnished this place and now I'm probably going to get eaten." Anyway, I wish them well. At 230-ish pounds, I was running from these birds absolutely sure they were going to perch on my head and peck my eyes out. Having the hawks around has certainly caused more Tippy Hedren moments than I'm used to...