My resume was still loose on the internet.
Dice kept sending alerts for "Agent Network." Monster kept sending batches of jobs based on old search criteria. Recruiters found the same resume and offered everything from network administration to technical support.
Most of it was noise. Some of it was obviously automated. A surprising number of messages began by saying somebody had carefully reviewed my background, then offered a job that had almost nothing to do with it.
The subjects wandered all over the map. Assistant technical manager. Tutor. Test engineer. Network administrator. Some were real recruiters with specific Colorado jobs. Others were mass mail wearing a personalized greeting.
I left the resume online anyway.
I was already the IT director at Beatport. The work was real and getting larger. I had also replied to systems administrator postings because I wanted extra work. Keeping the resume visible was part ambition and part optionality. I did not want the next thing to depend on starting a job search from zero.
The downside was the inbox. Old job boards kept matching keywords: Windows, Linux, network, server, administrator. The better my resume described the work, the more automated messages it attracted.
There was no clever fix. I could remove the resume, turn off each alert, or keep deleting the junk while paying attention to the few messages that looked real.
For now, I kept the door open and the delete key busy.
The alerts did not tell me what job to take. They told me that my resume was still circulating and that keyword matching had become its own little industry.