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Im curious what peoples predictions for the coming demographic decline is for the US and other countries? Here is mine: An increase in healthcare related work, and a stagnation of other job sectors. Apparently, excluding healthcare, the amount of jobs in the US is on the decline or stagnating. Not such a fun job market, especially for someone like myself you falls in the "information" category. This will probably continue as the population declines and ages.
Its fascinating, because many people in the gen-z bracket were told to got to college, get a degree, and you'd have a nice cushy office job lined up. While this wasnt all the way bullshit, as i do actually have one of these jobs - as someone who is competing in the current job market, it is BRUTAL. I've had applied to a around ~ 50 jobs (All of these jobs that are at least close to my skill level & credentials, i live in florida for reference and its not the best market for tech to begin with, even though the tech sector is growing here according to the data). In total ive gotten about 3-4 call backs 2 - 3 interview. One were i made it to the final round after 3, and was rejected. Ghosted in another, and have one up and coming.
For more perspective here is my resume (& yes, im aware of the slight formatting error in the projects section). Multiple internships, degrees, & certificates, im trying my best to be competitive. More than one person in my friend group is happy to hear about this population decline; the job search is just so tough for them cant say id blame them, but what many dont understand about declining populations is that population both creates and takes jobs simultaneously. Sure if the population declines, you might have less competition, but you'd also have fewer openings as well. Hard to get hired when a lot of people are not around to create the job you'd be working to start with. The whole demographic decline is good because there will be less people to compete with strikes me as a shortsighted perspective - Humans make the wheels turn all the way down and less people being around isnt gonna create more opportunities for us as a whole.
Still, i can't help but empathize with the sentiment. Constantly apply to every job listing, going through multiple round interview, just to get rejected is so incredibly brutal. Many countries outside the US like china and italy have it even worse with high youth unemployment. It certainly doesnt feel like having more people would be a good from that perspective, even if it likely would. Aging populations mean that a lot of our future jobs and productivity is gonna be directed toward the health sector of our economies, inevitably taking away from or slowing growth from other sectors. I envy people who already have a strong career with high pay and benefits, its insanely difficult for the rest of us.
Looking at your resume, I see someone I'd invite to an interview for a tech or junior sysadmin role, if we had one open (we don't right now, but we had recently, twice in the last year).
I'll ask you the three questions I always ask in interviews, maybe it will help understand how the hiring process looks like from the other side of the table:
A user is unable to login to their computer, list as many possible reasons as you can think of this could happen.
Describe to me the process you go through to troubleshoot an issue you're never encountered before.
A piece of software on Windows crashes during a common operation, but there is no error message that pops up. Where do you go look to find more information.
Question one is an open-ended experience yardstick. Everyone who's worked operations has encountered login issues, they exist at every support "level", how many come to mind will tell me exactly how much shit you've seen. It can be as simple as "user is not entering the password correctly" and the slightly trickier "caps lock was on", then harder ones like AD account issues (lockouts) or the user might be trying to log on to an AD-joined computer with uncached credentials on a computer that isn't able to talk to a DC, the list really goes on and on... At your level, I would expect the easy "user error" ones and at least a few trickier ones.
Question two is to make sure you work in a structured way. I honestly don't really care what the process specifically is, as long as you DO have a way to untangle an issue you've never seen. I've had to work with juniors who did not have a process, and it was really annoying as they would either end up asking me every single thing or just spin their wheels making fruitless google searches with generic error messages or behaviors, before they even tried isolating the issue, eliminating possibilities, etc... If you tell me that you try to find error messages or logs that are unique to the issue, so that you can narrow your searches, that's good.
Question three, as long as it's not completely entry level, I expect you to at least go looking for log files, and ideally you'd mention the Event Viewer by name. If it's a linux position, log files and JournalD.
If I were sitting in an interview with you, if you got these three right, you'd get the thumbs up from me. If there are multiple candidates that got the thumbs up from me, then it comes down to whether I feel like you'd make our users/clients feel confident, etc...
I could probably beat those 3 questions without issue. My technical knowledge is fairly sharp - I probably need to find a way to just beat out the other candidates out via soft skills. Not that i dont have them. But at the final stages ive heard many people say it can come down to who the HM likes more, who has a better personality if all else is equal. "Culture Fit" so to speak.
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