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  • #2341268

    Hard time getting back after being a stay home dad for 3 years

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    by sakulati ·

    Hi all,

    I worked as an IT support / Tech support in a corporate environment for more than 6 years.HW/SW troubleshooting became my passion since 2003 and I have been doing this stuff for at least 10 years now.

    In 2012, my family and I moved to the US permanently and part of our plan was for me to be a full time stay at home dad while my wife works full time in the hospital.

    Its been 3 years, my kids are in school and I thought it’s about time for me to get back to business. I dearly missed it! I took the A+ and passed but man, I just realized that the hardest part is getting a job!

    I have tried applying in all places, even used staffing agencies but no luck. Is it really this hard to find a job here? Is the competition this tough? Should I go back to school, I mean I already have a degree in CS? I could really use some advice right now, please let me hear your points. Thank you.

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    • #2449070

      I was once unemployed for 69 months

      by john.a.wills ·

      In reply to Hard time getting back after being a stay home dad for 3 years

      but that was mostly in Europe where at first they said I was overqualified and then that my skills were stale. A crooked firm hight IT-MacS took me to New Jersey and then (illegally) fired me. Already having a Green Card, I stayed and got a good job in 3 or 4 months, the U.S. employers being more appreciative of my worth than European ones (I took one of 3 more or less simultaneous offers). There must be something you do not yet recognize hindering you – perhaps they are suspicious of a foreign degree (if your degree is foreign, you do not say), although in fact U.S. bachelor degrees are worth less than those of many countries, due to lack of external examiners and so forth. Perhaps you have an annoying accent (though mine annoys some people).
      My advice is to join a job club, if there are such in your state, and there acquire relevant job-seeking skills, besides having fun with people in a similar boat.

    • #2448522

      Suggestion

      by dsponenberg ·

      In reply to Hard time getting back after being a stay home dad for 3 years

      I would try going throught a recruiting agency. There many of them out there. Have you been watching indeed.com or monster. A euro degree should not matter much. As experience is matter really matters. Many companies use recruiting companies now. I know big one in my area is kforce. They expand into new york, new jersey, Pennsylivania , maryland , virgina, delaware.

    • #2448438

      WOOOH!

      by anniechow ·

      In reply to Hard time getting back after being a stay home dad for 3 years

      Why not ask your wife’s advice?

    • #2448427

      Career change??

      by mjd420nova ·

      In reply to Hard time getting back after being a stay home dad for 3 years

      I left the corporate service part in ’94 but managed to carry a few clients for two years to enter a new market that was blossoming. Six years later and the youngsters took over and I was looking again. Two years of trivial “job shop” assignments and a temp to hire engineers position brought things along. The electro-mechanical is most important today, and the hike to this level can easy for me, not so for others. Wizards are fine behind a keyboard but the real work gets done in the field, on site. No amount of guidance by remote, phone or otherwise can hope to match the hands on expertise needed today. Many will stop, afraid to get your hands dirty. An entire world is turning to robotics and that is pure electro-mechanical with a custom PC receiving commands and issuing signals to control motors of all types and taking in sensor inputs to double check its own actions are according to directions issued. Some are huge units that rotate and weld 1,500 pounds of steel together to make a car or as simple as an OCR reading addresses on envelopes and printing a barcode on the same envelope for easier sorting. Maybe the reading head is dirty or a letter snagged the rail, jammed the line and pushed the sensor out of alignment. Some simple, some complex but so diverse in function and form.

    • #2420516

      Find another profession

      by swcamper ·

      In reply to Hard time getting back after being a stay home dad for 3 years

      I would suggest finding another profession. My experience has been, having been on several interviews, that you don’t stand a chance in the IT field, it does not matter how many certifications you have or anything else. Many IT departments are run by *** holes, and in the interim, if they don’t like your answer to one stupid question, you might as well consider the opportunity blown out of the water. I would suggest moving on to something else.

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