HallmarcDotNet

Thank You!

Thank you for visiting my résumé.

This letter is meant to fill in the details that a résumé doesn't generally cover and help you understand not only what I can do for you or your client, but also how I got where I am now, and what I expect from you.

What I've Done Before

For more than fifteen years I have been a technical leader, programmer, writer, and system administrator with projects ranging from simple web page authoring and print newsletter editing in the beginning to distributed systems comprising hundreds of servers on four continents. Over those years, I have demonstrated success in multiple deployments and publications, with many systems still in production, supporting thousands of concurrent users and transactions, and many dozens of articles still referenced across the web and in libraries around the nation.

Some things that have fallen off my résumé — because they are so far in the past and/or unrelated to my current career — are stints as:

• Boy Scout camp staff
• Answering service operator
• Gardener/groundskeeper
• Warehouse supervisor/forklift operator
• Noon Duty Aide/lunch monitor
• Vacuum cleaner salesperson
• Mobile DeeJay

The point in listing these jobs being that I've paid my dues already, and learned more than a few things the hard way.

What I'm Doing Right Now

Currently, I am the Unix Administrator Lead at St. Anthony's Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri, where I am totally responsible for all Unix servers and SAN devices, as well as project management for power, cooling, and other infrastructural enhancements to our primary and secondary datacenters. These are life-critical systems, meaning downtime is measured in seconds per year.

Immediately prior to my brief tenure at St. Anthony's, at MasterCard Worldwide, I built and maintained a system configuration and monitoring solution that manages more than twelve hundred Unix and Windows servers on four continents in a 24/7/365 SLA environment. The system uses Perl, Mason, Apache, Tivoli Management Framework, and the Korn Shell to provide a web browser-based system management interface for our operations centers in support of more than a trillion (with a "T") transactions annually. I did this for nearly three years.

What I'll Do in the Future

Two weeks after I signed on at St. Anthony's, the manager who hired me announced his departure. Despite this unforseen event, I believed that I could make the position work for both St. Anthony's and me.

Unfortunately, after eight months, this has proven to be increasingly improbable -- The Information Services Department has been completely reorganized and a number of changes incompatible with my working style and professional needs have been made. As a result, I am looking for a change.

Despite these incompatibilities, most days I enjoy my job. However, I am always willing to consider new challenges. So, Yes, I am looking for a good career move, including direct-hire, right-to-hire, contract, and corp-to-corp. However, I do have a few ground rules...

Stand out from the Crowd

What can I say? I'm popular! In any given week, I receive at least a dozen inquiries from recruiters. Unfortunately, some of these inquiries are very clearly made by people who have not bothered to actually read my résumé (a keyword search does not reveal all), and (unfortunately) most of those recruiters won't read this, either.

As a result, those recruiters probably won't receive a helpful reply.

Fortunately, you are performing your due diligence, and I am grateful! So, when I receive an email (preferred over a phone call, thank you) from someone who has made a minimal effort to understand my career history and aspirations, I make every effort to respond promptly and with sufficient information to move forward, if the position interests me.

Three things you should be aware of:

1. Location, location, location

   I'm currently living and working in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. Due to family and career commitments, I am not eager to relocate out of this area before July 2009. Please do not ask me to move unless either you or your client is prepared to offer a mid-six-figure base salary (That's $500k-ish, not $150k-ish, for those unclear on what range is encompassed by the term "six-figure". I tried subtlety before; but, unfortunately, it didn't work.), signing bonus, the usual health/dental/vision/life/disability/dismemberment/etc. insurance benefits, profit sharing, matching retirement plan, stock options, bonus structure, and relocation package. I'll expect a written employment agreement stipulating specifics, not just a handshake deal, too.

   I have listed these requirements to be sure you understand that this is the value I have placed on uprooting my family before 2009 -- we all have a price, and that's mine.

   On the other hand, I'm quite open to a telecommute/up to 20 percent travel position based out of my home or a local office at much more reasonable rates.

2. Ex Officiousness

   In particular, I could be interested in the following types of opportunities (in preferential order):

   • Technical leadership – strategic direction and management in a technical environment (small company CIO, medium company IT director, large company engineering manager, team lead, project manager, etc.)
   • System architecture – integration of multiple systems into a cohesive whole or design of new systems (information architect, system architect, etc.)
   • Web development – middle-tier and browser- agnostic UI development (webmaster, web developer, UI designer, etc.)
   • Sales engineering – pre- and -post-sale support (sales engineer, implementation engineer, etc.)
   • System administration – Unix and Linux system administration and configuration management (sysadmin, configuration manager)
   • Technical communication – documentation for multiple audiences, both technical and non-technical (technical writer, technical editor, contributing writer, publications manager, etc.)

   I am most emphatically not a DBA or data architect, although I am comfortable building applications around databases that have already been developed by someone who knows how to do it right.

3. Tools, techniques, and trade secrets

   My preferred development environment is vim on Linux. I also prefer the LAMP stack on the server side, building Perl (and PHP as appropriate) applications with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, or DB2 backends, served by Apache. Further, I do AJAX/XmlHttpRequest DHTML/XHTML/HTML/XSL frontends, JavaScript, and related development work. However, I am an equal-opportunity developer and support the rights of those who lean toward the churches of EMACS and Eclipse, or even heresies like Microsoft Visual Studio, (If you didn't get that joke, just move on...)

   Yes, I am proficient with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash and Fireworks (although I prefer to avoid the last two), as well as all of the usual office productivity tools on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix platforms.

   Finally, I speak both Geek and Suit: I can make a fully buzzword-compliant business case and still hold the respect of a technically-oriented audience (although probably not at the same time in all venues).

What I expect from you

Professionalism is paramount. If you wish to open a productive dialog with me, I expect that you will have already read this open letter.

Please do not ask me about my willingness to relocate if you are unclear about my requirements. (Listed above, thanks.)

On the other hand, if you are contacting me about an opportunity in the Saint Louis area, but you are not located in the region, please be prepared to tell me what you and your firm have to offer that will demonstrate to the client company (and me, of course) that you are a better supplier of human resources than a local competitor is. I will not work with an out-of-the-area firm if it has no prior connections with a local client, or some other rationale.

Having said all that...

For More Information

I can be persuaded to provide a tailored résumé to you, if you would be good enough to send me a detailed position description.

In the meantime, as you have probably already seen, my generic résumé is available

Please feel free to contact me by email if you'd like to discuss a specific opportunity.