Yaztromo's Journal: Re-branding self.

This summer, I'm expecting to finish up my Masters thesis, and wind up my role as a student in a formal educational environment for many years. Gigi is also finishing off her Masters project, and should be finished with her studies at the same time.

Education has been expensive. I've been fortunate that I've been able to teach some undergraduate courses (I'm teaching a 4th year software engineering course starting May 5th) for income, but with rising food and fuel costs, we barely scrape by. As such, I'm interested in moving straight from school back to the work environment with minimal delay; putting food on the table pretty much requires such. So I've been applying for jobs.

Flashback nine years ago when I finished my undergraduate degree. My initial desire was to do my Masters degree right away. I had just finished releasing the very first feature complete version of the jSyncManager (which is celebrating it's tenth year of development this year, FWIW). However, I also had no less then seven job offers from companies in both Canada and the United States (and took the one offered by IBM Canada, where I worked for nearly 3 years) six months before graduating.

Fast-forward back to today and I've got nothing. I have significantly more experience under my belt (my work at IBM, my time in the Canadian Forces, a consulting gig with the Faculty of Medicine at UBC, three courses worth of University level teaching experience, conferences, publications, four patent applications (with IBM), not to mention nearly a dozen Open Source projects (some obscure, some successful)), but getting my foot in the door anywhere just doesn't seem to be happening.

As such, I'm trying to re-brand myself. My first step is to re-design my personal homepage to be more of an interactive Curriculum Vitae -- a one-stop shop listing my research, publications, patents, teaching experience, work experience, and OSS projects. I'm going to hit my university's Career Services office to see what they can provide.

Has anyone else here gone through the process of self-rebranding? If anyone has and useful insights, please share them below.

Yaz.