Dice sent me a Denver technology employment report.
It promised the five IT skills employers wanted most, a first-quarter market review, and local growth trends. It also linked straight to Denver jobs and asked me to post my resume.
The actual rankings and numbers are gone. Only the email description survived, so I am not rebuilding a 2006 labor report from a marketing subject line.
I was already using Dice and Craigslist. In March I sent applications for Linux support, network administration, and consulting work. Recruiter notes and confirmations kept coming through the spring.
I was still employed at SimAuthor and still running Praxis. The resume was current: Windows, Linux, Unix, network security, Active Directory, Exchange, virtualization, scripted installation, consulting, and network design.
The report was marketing, but it reached the right person. I was watching Denver systems jobs and keeping the resume ready for the next batch.
The timing was not subtle. SimAuthor had been acquired less than a month earlier. I was still running its network and systems, but I had already tested the market with a full day of applications on March 6. The Dice report joined the recruiter messages and job-board confirmations already in the inbox.
My next application batch came in June. By then I was sending through Dice and following up directly when I did not trust the automated system.
The top-five list is missing from the email. I was looking at it for the same reason I was reading the job posts: compare the work I knew with what Denver employers were asking for, then send the resume where the overlap made sense.