Corp Diving

Corp Diving for fun and profit

If you have played your cards right up to now, the option of Corp Diving is still open to you.  Corp Diving means to take a job inside a corp for resources.  These may be financial, recruitment, office supply, information, or social resources.  After these resources are gained, the corp dive ends and the agent leaves that position in the most acceptable way possible.  A succesful corp dive ends with an agent being invited to take their old job back in the future. 

Planning 

You can holistically jump from corp dive to corp dive as they become available.  This is the best way to learn and the easiest way to find SOMETHING.  Having a specific target in mind makes the dive significantly more difficult.  If you DO have a specific target, you will have to research possible targets based on geographic location, size, corp wide minimum employment requirements, security requirements, blood and waste sample tests, and the like.

If your wanted resource is something extremely specific, such as toner for a certain model of printer or a training manual for repairing a piece of proprietary hardware, you will have to do a LOT of planning as well as comprehensive site and security surveys.  

Getting In

Some people live their lives for decades and put themselves up for financial ruin in order to get the type of job that a good Agent can waltz into with the proper preperation.  You have to compete with the underemployed college graduate swarm as well as free agent contractors.  It's not at all as hard as it sounds!

Resume

Your resume is VERY important. 

Education -If you have a college degree, no matter what it is, INCLUDE IT.  Having a degree that is relevant to the job you are applying to is NOT A REQUIREMENT.  For most professional positions all that it matters is that you hold a degree, and it doesn't really matter what in.  If you do not have a degree, but require proof of specific training, study the subject matter in a creative way and GET A REFERENCE. You can study with a graduate student at a local university and validly place that on your resume as 'Independent Study Session'.  If you spend some time at OpenCourseWare it is now acceptable to reference this on your resume as well.  As long as you have a specialist who can vouch for your learning abilities in the subject matter, it is fair game.  An agent can even omit the entire education section from thier resumes entirely, which is a risky move but can serve in some cases. 

Experience -  This is THE MOST important part of your resume.  The old rule applies here as well.  If you have a valid reference, then it's valid for your resume!  There are a million and one ways to get experience in any field anywhere.  Project Management, Marketing, IT, Media Production.... it goes on forever.  Be sure to include a specific list of tasks and responsibilities you have had at these jobs.   Your experience will get you the job or keep you out of it.

Personal References

This does NOT mean the references on your resume.  Most jobs that an agent gets will come from personal friends who 'know someone' inside the target corp.  (Insert statistic here!)% of jobs are gotten by FOAF networks, which means that the only thing that a recruiter is looking for in an applicant is MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS.

After a target corp is identified and a position decided on, an agent must then identify key employees at this corp and attempt to get to know them casually.  Agents should probably be doing this at all times anyway, keeping business cards from everyone they can meet and tracking what companies they already have fingers into.

If the company is large enough, it will have a human resources department.  This is the sweet spot for a wanna be empoyee.  Do ANYTHING to work in a human resources department for a short period of time, prefferably as an intern or volenteer.  BRING bribes  cookies, coffee, and valuable IT help to the swarm of secretaries and managers that run the HR department.  HR departments are very hard to get into.