I was chatting with a recruiter from New York City, and he told me that in the past 12 years, this has been the worst market for IT hiring that he has ever seen.  I can believe it.  I have been without a job for several months now, and have come frustratingly close to scoring some really good positions, only to be edged out by minutiae.

I applied for a Senior C# developer position at a well-known energy exploration company.  The process started in November, and it took a while before they would even consent to interview me.  They were very interested in my resume, and invited me for an interview.  I thought I had totally bombed the interview - I drove home despondently.  But the intervening recruiter told me that they have rave reviews for me and were very interested and they wanted me back for a second interview.  This gave me a little bit of hope.  So for my second interview I dressed to the nines, I was spot on with every question they flung at me.  I was friendly, funny and fantastic.  There was no way I could have blown this.  But then I got no response for a week from the recruiter.  So I called to ask what was going on.  She told me that they decided to pass on me because I didn't knowa WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) yet and they decided to go with the two other candidates where were "already approved" by the HR department.  This truly sucked because I thought we had a genuine rapport, and I still think I would have been the best candidate for that position.

And I trudge onward...