"Nobody in Portland seems interested in inexperienced computer scientists."
Color me skeptical about this claim. I find it hard to believe you can find even a software tech support, QA or DevOps job wouldn't at least pay $15/hr, especially as a contractor. I recently quit a contract gig at Intel as Network Software Test Technician that paid $30/hr. Although I was a CS major prior to the Internet, I don't have any real world programming experience and just have some now expired SysAdmin / Networking certs. Their ideal candidate would have some programming knowledge from Powershell, Bash up to C / C++. It's interesting to me that almost every Sys Admin job I look at or get contacted about wants someone with programming skills that I don't have and somehow I'm able to still get jobs. Not the dream jobs. Although I have a few good references and a lot of varied work experience on my resume due to my struggle to stay at a job longer than a year and a half or so. But I'm nothing special in today's IT world. In fact I've been struggling with finding a Linux Sys Admin job because I don't have any scripting/programming experience. Anywho, here's some ideas that might be more fruitful in your job search than an internship at Free Geek. 1. Go to some of the many daily Tech events in Portland that are listed on http://calagator.org/events . Some are meetup groups, some are study groups, some actually work on projects and others are talks. But all of them will provide you with the opportunity to network with people who work in the Tech industry in Portland. I import the Calagator calendar into my Thunderbird email client via gmail to stay abreast of all the events. 2. There's a Portland tech job fair coming up on April 27th. https://portland.craigslist.org/wsc/sad/6066445489.html 3. LinuxFest NW is coming up. May 6th & 7th. Another networking opportunity. In my 20 years of working in the tech field, I've found nary evidence that finding an IT job isn't much more than doing the work to get a job. That's a good resume, cover letter, phone calls, emails, networking, interviews and good ol' fashioned persistence. I dare say that being a decent human being, with a well written resume and cover letter who knows how to take an interview that is so often stiff and awkward and turn into a conversation about the problems the hiring manager is currently trying to solve and that you have the skills, knowledge, experience and/or personality characteristics to help solve those problems gets the job. I hope that's helpful. Cheers, Mike _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
