Discouraged, need some career advice

[TheShaner]

Originally Posted by Spookster

Small world. Cubic has been gaining more and more ground in this arena. They recently took over the entire building I work in. Previously Lockheed Martin had the contract for the maintenance of our simulators. Cubic's contract comes up for renewal for us in October so I wil be renegotiating my salary and benefits. It's always a joyous time because we will get a bunch of companies trying to wine and dine us in an attempt to get us to send our resumes to them when they bid on the contract. Basically whoever gets our resumes gets the contract. I've been looking at doing this same job for both Lockheed Martin and Boeing but for diferent aircraft. Lockheed has F-16 simulators in Ft Worth, TX and Boeing has the F-22 Raptor simulators in Tukwila, WA. But for now I will stick with working on the AV-8B Harrier simulators. The Harrier is way more fun to fly.

Yeah, Cubic is getting pretty big. It must be interesting for you whenever the contract is up for recompete. You sometimes have no idea who your next employer may be, hehe. We've had the contractor ProActive low-ball a couple contracts recently during re-competes and just sometimes NavAir will overlook quality and experience and go with the inexeperienced company with the lowest price. Go figure.

And as for wining and dining you, you must get the other contractors also trying to get you to spill the beans on how your current employer's figures look, haha.

About 4 months ago, i went up to Jacksonville to visit our site there and see the P-3 simulators. I was suppose to get the chance to fly one, but unfortunately, when we arrived, I had missed the window between classes, so instead, i watched some of the cadets there fly. I was really hoping to jump on one and take a test drive, hehe.

-Shane

[KevinG]

this thread seems to have sidelined the original post. but here's my penny's worth. experience is king and i would start with a personal website about me to showcase my skills - yourname.com, i would display all the appropiate standards tags (w3.org etc), i would give a brief overview of different relevant technologies (in say, the tech section) i.e. css, ajax, php, asp etc etc, i would even create an rss feed and tag that on every page, i would have an bio section about my qualifications and lastly i would do some work for free and write overview of the website, with a thumbnail and link. maybe even start a blog.

treat the website as your cv and post it up here and i am sure people will help. i think that would demonstrate your abilities better than a piece a paper. be creative, don't be dishearted.