I did think of opening another thread, and since Bill H. requested it, here’s my post from the other “Any bosses here” thread:
Actually, when I interviewed for Microsoft, they were surprised I was local - and the initial interview was done on the phone. (What a way to interview: wearing sweats and having your kitties to give moral support 
)
Instead of a temp agency, why don’t you try a headhunter? With your credentials and desire to re-locate, they should be quite happy to find a job for you. You might also try one of the job websites for that area to get an idea of how many jobs are available for your expertise. I know that if I were willing to work in N. Dallas I could get a job in about a week.
Thanks, zyada. The note on Microsoft is encouraging (I applied for half-a-dozen positions there).
One of the managers I work with (the structure is supervisor-manager-director-V.P.) has a headhunter friend up there. She really wanted me to relocate, as she thought I was “too valuable” to lose. Yeah, I put her down as a reference! 
Her friend is in India and won’t be back 'til Monday. fingers crossed
I’ve thought of taking an entry-level job and then working my way up. That’s how I started, after all. What’s an initial few thousand a year less when you’re living among friends, in a beautiful place?
Different companies and agencies handle it different. I am a computer programmer and have gotten all my jobs through temp/contract agencies since 1993. Some agencies want to meet you and even have you take a skill test before they will look for a job for you. Others want to meet you before they actually send you out for the interview and some don’t care at all. Likewise the companies handle it quite differently too. I was hired for a job at Boeing in Seattle based on a phone interview while still living in Austin. Likewise I was hired for a job in Colorado Springs while living in Austin. In fact I was even offered a job with IBM in Austin while still living in Austin just based on a phone interview. But I have also had interviews where I had to go in for more than one physical interview, so as I said, it just varies.
I am in the process of looking for work right now, as I just moved to Fort Lauderdale from New Jersey. I put my resume on dice.com and monster.com before I left New Jersey, and I am interviewing now that I am here. I used to jump through all the hoops the agencies put out there, but because of my experience with the various types of agencies, I no longer even deal with agencies that require me to meet them before they will look, nor will I take skills tests because they are a pain in the ass and don’t prove anything at my level of expertise and there are enough agencies/employers who don’t require it so I just pass on those that do.
My advice is that you try a wider variety of agencies, post on the web, particularly dice.com and see if you can line something up before moving.
Good luck, hon. After 4 months of sending out resumes, I finally have an interview Tuesday at Capital One in Richmond. crossing fingers
I second the recommendation of using dice and headhunters for technical positions. I have had remarkable luck with them over the past few years. Just remember that headhunters will lie to you and stand to make 10K or more on your placement. They are a useful resource, but you need to remember where there payoff comes from. Sending resumes blind to HR offices, particularly for big companie, can be a lost cause. HR screenings based upon buzz words can land you in the dust bin simply because they don’t understand that Oracle is a relational database. If you send a resume, always try to find a specific job posting (company web sites usually have them listed) and tailor your resume for the listed qualifications (don’t lie – but stress the exact skillset they list if at all possible). To me, the best thing headhunters do for you is get your resume past a screener and onto the desk of a hiring manager. It may not be worth the full cut they take, but it is still a very valuable service.
BTW, wanderer, where in the Ft Lauderdale area are you? I am working out of Boca Raton right now.
Johnny,
Do everything possible to find the name and email address of a (as opposed **the[/bold]) person doing the hiring. Most companies looking for database people are having a hard time finding them. When you find the right person do not even acknowledge that you know they have openings. Just tell them that you have researched the company (and do your homework on this) and decided that you want to work there.
Avoid the HR dept completely. They are typically too busy trying to satisfy the legal department instead of actually filling positions with qualified, dedicated people. The people doing the hiring are also painfully aware of this and are just trying to get their staffing problems solved.
Tell them you are willing to interview at their site. Ask them to pre-pay the airline tickets. Be bold. We may never again see a market so lopsided toward potential employees.
Good luck. Carpe diem.
Some fine work I did on those codes. The message is: find any high level person at the company, and ask them to pass your qualifications along to the right person.
Well, you’ve got good skills in a good industry, plus you’ve got a cash buffer, so you really can’t go wrong. Here are the choices I see:
a) Sign up with a few temp agencies and move. You’ve got good skills, and you’ll be in a position very quickly. The temp agencies are correct that they need you there to rent you out. See, they work on short-term contracts, so they’ll send you out to interviews with the understanding that if it works out you’ll show up for work soon thereafter, possibly the next day.
b) Pick some companies you’d like in the new area and fire off resumes. If you do this (or #c below), you’ll find that you can probably interview via phone, and if that goes well they’ll fly you up for another.
c) Get in touch with a few headhunters and get them to set you up with some interviews in the new area.
And in parallel with any of these three, you can tell your current employer that you’re looking and when it comes in you’ll have to leave. You may be surprised to find that all of sudden tele-commuting makes sense.
You should think about whether you want to contract or get a full-time position. Contract will pay better with less stability, and will require you to switch jobs occasionally and sometimes be without work for a while.
Also, if you want to go full time, there’s the question between using headhunters or not. If you use a headhunter, you’ll likely find more possibilities, since they’ll work hard to find you positions. On the other hand, the company will pay the equivalent of about 3 months of your salary to the headhunter, so if you don’t use one you’ll be in a better position to negotiate for a signing bonus.
Ok, I just went through a job search here in Atlanta, and compared to when I got out of college and was unemployed for 8 months, this was a breeze. Last time I used an employment agency(fee paid by me), this time I talked to some headhunters, but the job I ended up with was one that I found in the Sunday paper.
Seattle(is that’s where you sid you want to move to, right?) may be a bit different from the market in Atlanta, but if you have some savings, I’d say go for the move, then find the job. I’m in finance, and it took me 1 month from being laid off to the first day one the new job. I only missed one paycheck.
-Lsura
I’ve been telling them for a year that if they didn’t let me relocate, I’d move. The director said he’d help out as much as he could (no wories about getting time off for interviews). He said he’d write a letter of recommendation, but HR said that’s against policy. No, the new V.P. tried telecommuting once, and he said he couldn’t concentrate on his work. I guess that means that nobody else can either. He did have a point that casual conversations around the coffee maker often lead to solutions, and that dynamic would be gone if people were scattered; but I don’t think that’s a very great factor since everyone in our department e-mails each other anyway.
The sad thing is, it’s not even telecommuting! I wanted to work on an Experian computer in an Experian office with Experian people. Not as if I’d “come to work” in my living room, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt! 
Good ideas and advice, everyone! I’m already doing some of them. I’ll have to try the others.
Thanks!
Hmmm. If I could get them to lay me off, I could collect unemployment while I move…!
You didn’t ask, but… While you’re in switching mode, you really should consider moving from mainframes to more modern technologies.
a) It’s a perfect time, since you’re moving anyway
b) It’ll be more interesting work
c) It’ll involve learning new stuff which is always cool
c) In five years you’ll have more and better opportunities.
I’m sure you can find something else with considerable overlap with your current skill set.
Also, re: telecommuting…
If the company isn’t too huge, and you’re adding a lot of value, policy can be changed quickly, especially this particular policy. If this is important to you, push hard and you may be surprised with the results. I.e. work out a specific plan on paper justifying telecommuting with the benefits to the company and force meetings on the subject.
Well, I agree with him. For all the reasons he suggested: no informal hallway meetings, less concentration on work, and tough for him to manage. The last company I was at, we made a VPN box which was specifically designed to enable telecommuters, and guess what, we didn’t allow our own folks to telecommute. To be honest, my experiences with telecommuting (from an employers point of view) haven’t been very good.
Thanks, Bill.
Actually, the company does allow telecommuting. What HR has a policy against is letters of recommendation.
I agree with your statements about mainframes. In my present postion, I use PC-based programs about half of the time; but the actual processing of data has to run on a mainframe IBM. In the not-too-distant future we’ll be switching over to a UNIX machine.
All of your points about getting away from the MF are valid. I took a 1-week JAVA class within the company, but my workload has prevented me from using it. Got a good book though. I’m hoping that my data processing and analysis skills will put me in a company where I can get a good grasp of JAVA and C++. Right now I can look at COBOL and pretty-much figure out what it’s doing, and I can program in Easytrieve Plus (which no one has ever heard of!) fairly well. My main strength is that I can pick up new ways of doing things quickly.
As far as telecommuting, I can see the V.P.'s point, and I understand why you agree with him. I tend to work better without interruptions though. I’m more than happy to help people out (I’m kind of the “answer guy” in our dept.), but it would be nice if people would have to send me an e-mail instead of dropping by my box… er, “cubicle” while I’m in the middle of something. Also, the plan I developed had me in an actual office, so technically (or at least as it pertains to the written policy) it’s not telecommuting. It’s just a desk in a different part of the company.