I've posted my resume on a couple of sites (Monster, CareerBuilder, etc.) I'm really amazed at how a whole ecosystem has developed around these operations. It's a very different setup than when I was involved 4 years ago (both as a recruiter and then looking for a new job.)
I've got lot's of emails generated from the posts - unfortunately only a few are from people who think I might be candidate for a job. In addition to these expected contacts, I've got contacts from financial institutions looking to see if I have a 401K to roll-over as well as personal marketing consultants. This last species is like an agent. Unlike the recruiters who get paid by the company that hires you, these agents get paid by you for their services to fix up your resume, polish you up, and get you in front of people who will hire you. A lot of them seem to want the money up front too.
Today I got an email from one that I'd been expecting - some friends had been contacted too. The company in question is McKenzie Scott and they do have slick marcom. They had previously sent me brochures, pamphlets and even a book on how helpful they can be.
Now anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm the suspicious type - I smell a scam cooking a mile away (probably even when it's just someone doing a little old sales spinning - nothing harmful.) So my radar is way up when I've heard that they charge 5 - 25K to campaign for you.
Since I've agreed to talk to them tomorrow, I figure I should do some research on them. Thank god for the internet - I ran across this. You gotta love google - just needed to enter "McKenzie Scott" bad as my google search. First hit.
So, armed with this information (and of course I have to consider that this information isn't guaranteed either) I'm going to listen with a very skeptical ear to the pitch and ask lots of pointed (polite) questions. In fact, these experience so much match my expectations, that I wouldn't even do the call if things were at all busy at work tomorrow... But, I think it should be an entertaining talk if nothing else - maybe good fodder for blogging.

In the beginning...

OK, so I'm starting a blog tonight. Why - who knows. I guess everyone else is doing it & I wanted to see what it's about.
I can think of 2 other (good?) reasons. The first is that I'm starting to look for a new job - the one I'm in has been eliminated due to a merger (OmniCare buys NeighborCare - boring SEC filing ) I've known my position was going away for a while (6 months) but have had golden handcuffs on till now, so I've just started looking). The short of it is that the job market seems really weird to me now and it struck me that blogging my experience might be interesting (to whom, I don't know, but just maybe...) And if I can add some tidbits that will help others along they way, then great (I think the search engines hit blogs, right ;-) )
The second is that from time to time I come across bits of arcane knowledge. Stuff that I search and search for on the web and am shocked that I can't find an answer. So then I invest time and find the answer. Seems a shame for it to disappear into the ether, so I figure capturing it in a blog for the bots and spiders to find might help some other poor soul out there. (again, I hope they look at blogs...)
So, whatever, it seems at least that this all created enough inertia to get me started.
Also inspiring was my brother who started blogging his trip to India - I found it interesting at least. Check it out!
So this is the start. We'll see how it goes.

Question: Am i the only one who thinks it's ironic that the spell-checker on this site doesn't know the word "blog."