Absolutely No Machete Juggling

I've recently begun a low-priority job search. This isn't a "I desperately need a new job" kind of thing, but more of a "I'm pretty unhappy where I am and would love to change, given the right opportunity." My boss, who I greatly admire and respect, had been thinking the same way for a while, and recently took a position elsewhere. He was one of my closest allies at my current company, and without him I worry I won't have as much political power or information. This is important, because the company is (unfortunately) extremely political, so you have to stay on top of things pretty well to make sure you don't get steamrolled.

In any case, I thought about how long it took me to find a good job (a few months) when I moved out to Colorado two years ago. I figured since my job search was going to be an even lower-priority thing than my search was then, I may as well go ahead and put my resume out there and apply a few places. Two years ago, I didn't hear back from virtually any of the places I applied. I think they saw that I graduated from college the year prior, and figured I had no industry experience. In fact, I worked at a regular software development company nearly full-time when I was in college, so I had three years of experience already at the time, but I can understand the misinterpretation.

Well, what a difference two years makes. Two years, two certifications, and a handful of new learned skills later, my phone has been ringing off the hook. I posted my resume Saturday night, and I had gotten one call by Sunday. As of today (Monday), I've gotten about 20 phone calls on my cell phone, and a number of e-mails. Mostly recruiters, but I'm still amazed at the response. Just while writing this post, I got 3 more e-mails.

What's so strange is, I'm basically the same guy I was two years ago. I have some additional skills on the resume, but if I had joined another company I would have simply learned different ones, as I'm a very quick learner. The differences between my old resume and my new one seem so small to me, yet it's resulted in a completely different reaction.

Now I'm not sure what to do. I expected a slow reaction to the posting, one that would operate at a rate that would keep interesting job offers coming in only every so often, until I was truly ready to leave my current company (assuming they don't fix their faults), but now I have positions pouring in. I feel bad for recruiters though, because you can tell they are slightly disappointed. They find a resume that matches what they've got, and then I'm not interested enough and I ask them to keep looking.

The other strange thing is, I get the impression very few job seekers care about the company itself. A lot of times I'll respond to the recruiter e-mails by asking for more details on the company and the job. What I'm looking for is "company X makes these kinds of products for this kind of market" and "you'd be working on their blah product", but what I get is a laundry list of skills they want for the job. Do other job seekers not care what the company does? A big part of why I want to leave my current employer is that I don't particularly like what they actually do, and I'd like to feel better about what I'm contributing to. It's surprisingly hard to extract this information sometimes.

In any case, it's very nice to feel like I actually have some power when job hunting. My first job I got because my professor in college wanted me to join a company he was starting. My second was a basic job hunt online, knowing I was unemployed (I moved to Colorado without a job in the queue) and running out of money. So really, the only "job hunt" experience I have is me desperately needing dough, willing to take almost anything. It's nice to feel like I can be relatively choosy now. I could even choose to stay at my current employer.

That being said, if anyone out there works in the Denverish area and would like to hire a pleasant, curious nerd to do software development, drop me a comment. ;)