Archive for April, 2009

With the high unemployment everywhere, it’s making things interesting (aka dificult) for people doing the hiring as well as people trying to get hired.  Recruiters and companies are getting flooded with applications and resumes in response to job postings, which means they either have to spend more time reviewing applications or cut down the amount of time they spend per applicant, which can lead to missing a number of good candidates and picking some poorer ones for interviews.  A resume is just an electronic file after all (I almost said piece of paper there for a minute).  As a job hunter, I have to accept the fact that my resume is getting passed over for many positions for no particular reason at all, other than the person reviewing the resume being in a hurry and not seeing one particular keyword they were looking for.

Many companies are simply avoiding this process completely and just hiring based upon referral.  It’s not hard for a company to find some decently qualified candidates who the company’s employees know personally.  Hence why networking is the key to job hunting right now.  In my case, the biggest problem I’m having with networking is my network.  It’s a nice big network, but much of it consists of people in the same situation I am.  What good is a big network when all my closest connections are also out of work with little experience?  I suspect this is part of the problem many recent graduates are having.  Experienced professionals who were laid off have business networks already established, and they are able to utilize those networks effectively to find new jobs.  Meanwhile, the large number of graduates who have had limited work (or in a few cases still haven’t found any real work since graduation last year – yikes!)  are all stuck asking each other if they have job connections.

Perhaps this is adding fuel to the fire of hard feelings between generations in the workforce that I’ve been noticing lately.  As for me, I’m just slowly working on changing up my network to make business connections.  It’s a long process, however, and my closest friends who would hire me at the snap of a finger are still in about the same position I am.

I raced Kings Valley Road Race yesterday.  The team had a good day.  We raced tactically and either had a team member in every break attempt or chased down breaks without team members.  Once it became obvious the race was going to come down to an uphill bunch sprint, we rested up a bit.  In the sprint I came to the front about 100 meters too early and had to struggle to hold on, but I took 5th overall.  I’m happy with that.

This next weekend I’ve got two racing options: Eugene Roubaix Saturday or Table Rock Road Race Sunday.  I don’t plan on doing both, and Eugene is closer, but I think Table Rock might suit me better.  It’s all the way down in medford, so if I was to do that I’d go down with Pat on Saturday.

Then the following weekend is Willammette Stage Race, which I’ve always wanted to do, but in the past collegiate racing has conflicted with the dates.  The race is a road race Friday south of Eugene, a road race Saturday near Philomath, and a time trial Sunday on what turns out to be a course that includes the hill I recently did hill repeats on while in Corvallis.  The main problem currently is I haven’t found a teammate in my category that wants to race and has transportation.  Still working on that.

After that, the road race schedule slows down for a while before picking up again towards the end of may into June.  In May I plan to get into the weekly race series that takes place at Portland International Raceway, and I’m going to have to finally try out riding a velodrome considering track classes are cheap ($5 for the class and $5 for bike rental).

Then road season picks up again with some of the most important road races and biggest stage races of the season.  I hope to be a Cat 3 by that point, and depending on my employment situation at that point I may try to do a longer 4-5 day stage race such as Mt. Hood Cycling Classic or Cascade Classic.

Then after the road season comes cyclocross season, which at this point I’m severely tempted to try out.  I realized I could use most of the parts off my winter bike and swap them out onto a cheap cyclocross frame with a good set of wheels and tires and have a cross-ready bike for fairly cheap.  I’ll look into this further as fall approaches.  That’s still a long way off.

Here’s a graphical representation of my typical success in any given week of job hunting lately.  It’s really makes quite a bit of sense logically, but I wonder why I bother searching for jobs on Friday.  I suppose it’s so that the week that one perfect job gets posted, I don’t miss it.  Notice how the scale currently goes from bad to worse.

SUNDAY: Rarely any jobs of note posted.  If you see something that’s posted on Craigslist over the weekend, it’s highly likely it’s a scam.

MONDAY: Comparatively, quite a few new jobs are posted on Mondays.  Everyone is back at work after a refreshing weekend and HR is willing to crank out that job posting and figure out a hiring schedule.

TUESDAY: The bread and butter day of job hunting.  You catch everything that was posted late on Monday, and for some reason the highest volume of quality job postings occurs.

WEDNESDAY: It’s no Tuesday, but if you dig around a bit there are some decent new postings out there.

THURSDAY: Everyone is ready for the weekend, and it shows.  Thursday is the day I usually do my rundown of the long list of corporate sites I check for new postings.

FRIDAY: Might as well be the weekend.  I don’t think I’ve found a job to apply for on a Friday in weeks.

SATURDAY: Like Sunday, only worse.  No one is thinking about going back to work on Monday on Saturday.

Now to put that in some more perspective of job hunting in the last several months, here’s where things currently stand:

It’s not pretty out there right now.  There weren’t a ton of openings out there in January, but there sure were many more than there are now.  To put numbers to the graph, I’d put “okay” at 4-5 good jobs to apply for on the peak day of the week, “bad” currently consists of 2 or maybe 3 jobs to apply for on the best day of the week, with “worse” coming in around the 1 to 0 mark.

For some reason, 2nd-grade level graphs made in paint (this one is dumbed down in Photoshop because I don’t have paint) really have an endearing value to them.

I figured I’d share what I’ve been watching lately and discuss how new media actually fits in with bringing about some great TV shows.  In a time where broadcast networks are suffering, viewership is declining, and ad revenues are disappearing quickly, the major networks are scrambling to figure out what to do with themselves in primetime.  NBC has thrown in the towel on competing for ratings, and will instead be airing Jay Leno’s 5 night a week variety show.  They don’t expect to beat out other shows ratings, but they expect the tiny production budget compared to a drama will be a better way to go in the face of declining ad revenues.  I can’t say I blame them.

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Here are some various photos I’ve come across from the stage race this weekend.

Here’s one from teammate Justin:

Cornering in the criterium

And a few from Ironclad:

At the front in the criterium

The view from the top of the big climb. We came from all the way down at the bottom.

A couple from Crystal David-Ross:

Up near the front in the criterium

Heading into a corner

And a bunch from Jon Prettyman:

Top 10 GC called to the line before the criterium

And everyone else filling in behind. Big field.

Leading into a corner. Guys on the outside need to do some work on finding lines through the corner.

I think that's me flying by.

Up near the front, chasing down something or another

Taking a corner tight to the curb

Holding on to come in 4th in the final stage

The GC podium

First off, this is a ridiculously long post filled with recaps from a long weekend including four bike races.  If you’re into bike racing, you’ll probably enjoy it.  If you don’t know a ton about the sport, you may wonder what on earth I’m talking about.

So, let’s get the basics out of the way:  I took third place in the general classification (overall standings) for my category out of 80 riders!  Now the details.

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Tomorrow I’ll head out to Hood River, where I’ll be staying with teammates for the Cherry Blossom Cycling Classic, a 3 day, 4 stage race.  I’m excited about the race.  I’ve done lots of omniums and 1 day races, but this will be my first stage race ever, surprisingly enough.

The blog will probably be light on updates over the weekend, but I’ll get a good recap up of how things go.  That or I may try out my new WordPress iPhone application.

Here’s a rundown:

Getting there on Thursday afternoon will give us a chance to get settled in, pick up race packets, and explore the area a bit.

Stage 1 on Friday is a relatively short (just under 40 miles) road race with one decently large climb per lap (2 laps).  The thing that could make this course interesting is the wind.  Pat sent this out earlier today:

This means the race could potentially be slow, or fast, or dangerous (in the case of gusting 54MPH sidewinds).  The course is to the east of the Dalles, so hopefully it’ll be more sheltered than the city itself and the area in the Gorge.

Stage 2 on Saturday is an 8 mile individual time trial.  It’ll be me and my aero gear versus the clock.  This will be my first time trial of the year.  Always painful, but one of my favorite type of events.

Stage 3, also on Saturday, is a criterium in The Dalles right downtown.  It sounds like it’s a nice flat wide-open 4 corner course, so it should be fast.  This will be my first criterium of the year, which I’m guessing will be the case for much of the rest of the field as well.

Stage 4 on Sunday will be the final stage, and without a doubt the most epic.  It’s a 55 mile road race that includes two laps up 7 mile hill (a 5+ mile climb gaining some 1700 feet in elevation) and part of historic highway 30 in the Gorge.  Wind could once again be a factor, and by my guess anything could happen in this stage.  The group could stay together the entire time as many cat 4 fields do, or there’s a good chance it could get completely blown apart by the climbs and weather.  Either way, I’m stoked.