Speaking of Employment Wanted

Linux support?

Name the company and the pay/benefits....

I will discuss pay & benefits with the person that I offer the job too. It's a full time salaried postion.
Company:
http://www.aptilo.com/company_careers_job13.htm

Though, the address listed on our website for the office in Toledo is not accurate, or I wouldn't have posted this. I do not want anyone showing up at our office unannounced.

Okay, a job opening has been posted. Let's see about a little translation.

The job as Support Engineer with our company varies a great deal.

I don't think you'll find anyone at UT or BGSU declaring a major of Support Engineer. In fact, I'm almost 100% sure of it. Since this title is defined internally to the employer, some further reading for a clue is in order. The word varies sticks out, as it's usually used to mean "you'll be told to do a lot of things no one else wants to do".

You will have great opportunities to affect our customers' attitudes, therefore this role is very important and you must enjoy assisting our customers in a professional and friendly way!

Translation: You'll be doing telephone support. Your clients will be irate, ignorant minimum wage slaves who hate their jobs but who, like you, live at the bottom of the food chain. Now that they've found someone lower on the ladder than they are, they'll want to vent their frustrations. You must act like you enjoy verbal abuse, suck it up and ask for another helping.

Responsibilities:

Provide 2nd- and 3rd-line support to our customers and partners around the world.
Excuse me sir or madam, could you please speak English? No, I'm not bilingual, no I'm not fluent in Sudanic.

Troubleshooting on our own designed and developed products.
You'll be compensating for the I.S. departmental fuck ups - won't that be fun!

Work closely with our global support team in Asia and Sweden.
Vurk clusely veet oooor glubel sooppurt teem in Eseea und Sveden.
Wuk cwoswee wi' ah grobahl suppor tea i' Nippon ah Sweden.

Provide remote/local analysis of issues.
Meaning that when you don't have your ear glued to the phone trying to make sense out of someone who will never, ever speak English you get to run around the office and solve one inane problem after another.

Project managing of e.g. trials, upgrades, work orders and corrections.
Project managing? How many members are on the team and who does the hiring and firing? From the rest of the job description I would guess that you will be handed a list of fixes and told to implement it as soon as you test it thoroughly - deadline is 5:00 Friday (and it is now 4:30). Good bye weekend, hello castigation for being behind schedule.

Performing work orders and configuration changes that do not require code changes.
Right. You don't get to write any code, but you do get to implement the 'configuration' changes that the I.S. department made to cover up their recent screw ups, fatal errors and data file corruption.

Manage our hosted environment (i.e. installations, upgrades and backup/restore).
And in your copious free time, you are responsible for the system back up and restoration. You'll also get to explain to the CEO just why it is that the network slows down to a crawl and how the company really doesn't have to spend any more money on another server to fix this problem. People can just do their work at night instead of normal office hours.

Perform interoperability tests with other vendors.
Like EDI, for instance? If you want a real migraine, just get involved with some vendor's EDI system. I'm guessing that this is data exchange of some sort, and I suspect that no one can agree on field and record definitions.

Be alert to recognize sales opportunities and act on them.
You have got to be kidding. You mean you actually can find employees who are masochistic enough to add to their work load? Tell me, just out of curiosity, what's the commission rate on sales for this? Because every sales job I ever worked paid commission.

Your Profile:
Candidate must possess at least a professional degree in engineering for computers/telecommunications or equivalent.
Yeah, majoring in "support engineering".

Recent graduates/entry-level applicants are encouraged to apply.
And there is the dead give away. If you're right out of college and can't find a job anywhere, try us. If you can stand it, so can we.

Required skills:
Linux operating system.
Are you requiring an extensive knowledge of Linux internals? If so, which versions?

TCP/IP networking knowledge.
I would guess that this entails a little more than just starting the service and connecting. Yes?

Able to utilize all available sources proactively to search for solutions.
The key words are utilize, available and proactively. This means that since there will be no one to help you, you're on your own. You're getting paid good money to deal with the screaming client on the other end of the pipe.

Able to work independently and also in a group.
Able to be suitably subservient individually as well as having an unparalleled willingness to serve as group doormat when needed.

A professional and friendly approach.
Again, suck it up and ask for seconds.

Excellent communications skills in English, including reading and writing.
Okay, you've eliminated most candidates right there. If literacy actually is a requirement for this unique position then you're going to find precious few candidates; very few among recent graduates. Of course if the literacy requirement is flexible or maybe more of a guideline than a requirement, then you're home free.

Preferred skills:
Web development.
Check - but why apply here?

Basic knowledge about SQL databases.
Able to run MYSQL and understand relational databases without too much prompting.

Basic knowledge about script languages, such as Perl, PHP etc.
Because you'll have to catch the errors coming out of I.S. plus run a few queries of your own.

Fluency in the Spanish language.
Habla espanol, Senor? No, although I know a few phrases.

What we offer:

The possibility to work in the fast-paced and exciting area of wireless service management.
A sweat shop.

A chance to work in a small office locally with a winning team while working in an international environment.
Okay, a small sweat shop holding a host of H1Bs who can't speak, read or write English, but all of whom outrank you.

A diverse team of people in an organization that practices a flat organizational structure and an "open door" policy.
Yeah, the door's always open alright. Pass right on through. Usually a flat corporate hierarchy means that it's a proprietorship (monarchy with a despot on the throne and no room for another courtier) that has grown a lot more structure than will ever be needed, and no one really works for a living. Everyone is supporting, leading, taking advantage of, leveraging and developing. Even the coders don't write code; they develop.

An opportunity for an international career.
Tell me when the newest candidate leaves for Stockholm. Never, that's when.

From the Aptilo website:
Aptilo Networks’ headquarters are located in Stockholm, Sweden, with regional offices in Kuala Lumpur, as well as in the US in Dallas, Texas and Toledo, Ohio. Founded in 2001, Aptilo Networks is privately held with Norvestor Equity as the majority shareholder.

Privately held by Norvestor, who could not possibly care less about the career of a college graduate trying desperately to find the first rung of the ladder.

From TLM: I will discuss pay & benefits with the person that I offer the job too. It's a full time salaried postion.
Oh, I see. A full time salaried position, meaning that the employee can work all the hours he wants without fear of running into that nasty old pre-approval for overtime clause.

Since the salary range and benefits are not provided up front, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the salary is minimal and the benefits are practically non-existent. Maybe health insurance, maybe not.

From TLM: Though, the address listed on our website for the office in Toledo is not accurate, or I wouldn't have posted this. I do not want anyone showing up at our office unannounced.

Holy smoke. The company won't publish their address? So you want people to send you their resume, including correct and accurate contact information while you sit in anonymity and decide if you'll respond or not, and if you do you'll reveal the real location of the office? On top of this you refuse to list the salary range and benefits?

I surmise that the salary is very low, the hours incredibly long, the employee will be on call 24/7, and the benefits are marginal at best. Working conditions very likely suck pond scum.

If you really want to attract people, publish the starting salary and benefits at a minimum. Include being on call 24/7 if it applies. Emphasize training and outstanding working conditions (if you don't have them, create them and ask yourself why you're working without them). Publish the contact information for the company and include a caveat about phone calls. Personally, I wouldn't take a direct placement position with a company who refuses to publish the company address. What are you trying to hide? I'd possibly take a contract position if I knew and trusted the headhunter. Contractors are hourly, meaning no work equals no pay. That also means that when I get told to stay until the job is done, I just shrug and keep working because, you see, I'm getting paid. If the phone rings at 2:00 AM I roll out of bed and start the clock. I get paid to answer the phone and go to work.

You might also keep in mind just why people work. It's nice to enjoy your job, but most of us work as a means to an end. Vacation, financial gain and stability, health care and investment opportunities that the rest of the planet doesn't get - those are a few reasons why we work. See?

MJ_ you made me laugh this morning. I actually have a couple of guys in the same position I am hiring for (YAY for expansion in a technology field in Toledo!) who are on the boards here and I bet if they see this they will laugh too.
You are about 95% wrong. The salary is actually very good for the position, the hours are flexible and normally shorter than the average American work week, and the working conditions are excellent. Mostly, because you will be working with me.
Since you know my current medical situation from my other blog I will tel you that the attitude of this company allowed me to keep working over the last four months from wherever I was, home, desk, or hospital and the benefits tend to be more based on the European model so in general are much better than the standard US company.
I'll let you use your imagination to figure out the 5% you got right.
I used the Swedish advert to see if I got a better response than the ad I normally put in when I am hiring so I think the wording is a little different than people in the US are use to seeing.
Oh! And the address is wrong because we moved our offices last spring (Again I say, YAY for a technology company in Toledo able to expand and upgrade their location) and I never thought to have it updated until I ran this ad. But I do love your conspiracy theory attitude. Especially since I just finished 11/22/63 and I'm in that kind of mode.

Only 95%? I was trying for a perfect score... What was the give away?

tlm0000, does your company have or expect to have any secretarial/clerical openings?

Working with TLM is a benefit in and of itself. :)

Definitely a good thing to see any type of tech company expand up there. The fact that this thread was already trolled by a typical negative Toledoan doesn't shock me.

Madjack has a unique sense of humor, but I wouldn't call him a negative troll.

Mrs.Phoenix_No, I'm sorry. We don't run a typical office out of Toledo, a bunch of tech people and me only.

JustaSooner_Thanks, that explains why you left town when we didn't work together any longer. :)

I know someone who would be ideal for this spot if it weren't for the Spanish requirement.

tim0000 I just finished 11/22/63 too. I thought it was pretty decent.

madjack, you always crack me up :-)

GameGrrl_the Spanish is a "hope" but at this point not a requirement. Please feel free to point them towards the ad.

My apologizes then. I really should have been asleep instead of posting at that time. LOL

TLM - I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to flee in order to heal from the loss. lol

No problem. I read the post and my original response was something on the order of:

If you're having trouble attracting applicants, you really should re-consider posting a salary range, benefits and elaborating on the working conditions.

Then I spilled my bourbon all over the keyboard and tried to clean it up with a box of Kleenex. Then I took the Kleenexes out of the box...

MJ_The like is for the bourbon. :)