jobmatchbox

It isn’t that they go, but the frothiness does. I built teams through the 2008+ downturn and plenty of teams froze hiring, but many were still hiring through it. What this poster doesn’t get at is the fact that it changes what types of opportunities rise to the top—you get more scratch and dent or problematic roles vs. straight up the middle quality roles.

You may be able to talk to the founders of Printless Plans, a Baltimore based startup that has been working with large e-ink displays.

Here is update on this theme:

Every now and then I post a resume on the big job boards to see what kind of crap the people I recruit have to put up with so I know why they have generally lost that loving feeling toward recruiters. Last night I posted one. The responses make me question whether or not I am in the right industry.

I can't help but ask myself how the hell I chose to work in a profession where my customers and the people I interact with are going to be judged by the behavior of my peers. This reminds me of why so many developers get angry at recruiters. If nothing else, it reminds me why I have not paid for a job board account since 2007.

Here is a link to my blog post with some selected emails from recruiters who responded on Dice, Monster and CareerBuilder:

http://staffmagnet.com/some-really-bad-recruiters-dont-judge...

Link works/worked, you clicked when a plugin upgrade was in process.

Luke,

Thanks for the feedback! I will take some time and make some formatting enhancements as well as add some visuals. I plan to really dig into the "cost" as soon as I have some time to get back to writing. I decided to focus on the cost of building an MVP for this series rather than a product. For this first post in the series the focus is on defining an MVP. Since there are so many similar, yet distinct ideas about what an MVP actually is I want to get this right before I tackle actual costs. A lot of founders get lost chasing a huge product rather than an MVP, but they think they are going after an MVP. This is especially true for first time founders. This is ultimately an experiment/research effort in search of a scalable business not a product (i.e. photo sharing service, SaaS product, mobile messaging app). The business may reject the initial hypothetical business or product and re-focus or even change focus.

Bob

The best job offers come when someone knows who you are. To get there you need to have some sort of presence on the radar of the right recruiters. I have jumped in and out of recruiting and development so I'm not guessing on this. The product is the chemistry and courtship assistance, not the person. A good recruiter can help, a bad one can waste time. The same is true with a good vs. bad developer.

Recruiter messages are not spam. Crappy, generic messages from people who attempt to do recruiting but who don't read your profile at all is.

That is not good advice. Ruby on Rails is widely used. Java would be a good option, but it would probably not be something that could be picked up as easily or as quickly as something with RoR, Python, PHP or JavaScript. C# would narrow your options much more because it would lock you into the proprietary MS world. Something with iOS or Android would be preferable. Note: I'm not saying C# is bad, I have used it and will again. I'm just pointing in the direction of what could be picked up and then turned into a career move skillset in self study timeframe.

Have you considered doing some mobile stuff, maybe iOS? That might translate better for you.

Are you near a major city? If so, which one? The job market there will shape the opportunities available to you there.

Just getting something built that you can show people is about as important as the language or framework that you choose to do it in. That said, the mainstream is Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python (usually with Django), and mobile stuff. You could do something with JavaScript paired with another scripting language and that would be good. If you don't have time to do any of that, maybe pick up a book on HTML5 Game development and build something with it. There is a lot you can do there.

If you take a closer look at the bus, it says "Powered by YCombinator" right by the door.

There are people who volunteer to work on things like Presidential campaigns and for startups because of who they are working with rather than because of what they are being paid.

The only people who seem to use it here on the East Coast in the USA are government contractors and people who leave government contractors to go to work in the private sector.

There are some great places to find internships and individuals should not assume that just because someone calls something a common application that it is a gateway into all, most or even more than a few startups.

If you are an intern looking for an internship in the Washington, DC startup or tech community area you should join one of many startup discussions in the area and tell people you are looking.

If you are a programmer this means you should be announcing yourself in the programmer user groups - think DCRUG (Ruby on Rails) or BMore On Rails (Ruby on Rails) or NoVARUG (Ruby on Rails), DC Python (Python), etc. Most of these are on Meetup.org. There are also some great general discussion areas like DC Tech and Baltimore Tech on Facebook. Another great group to check out is Refresh DC - this is more web agency and web development and design oriented. Refresh Baltimore is similar.

In addition, there are a ton of great places to find out what is happening in the Washington area as well as to find out about startup and tech jobs and internships in the area. Craigslist has some great stuff. SocialMatchbox.com has some great stuff. DCTechEvents.com has some great stuff. BaltimoreTechEvents.com has some great stuff. There is also a Hacker News Meetup in DC - a great bunch of people are involved in it. Baltimore has a similar group that meets up called the Hacker Stroll, they go to a lot of different events together and have a monthly happy hour.

There are tons of great tech and startup companies in the Washington, DC area. The community is growing and very diverse. There are a ton of things going on and so many different people trying to come up with ways to organize all of it that it is hard to keep track of it all. No one website has all the answers or all the people so don't miss out on that.

And on the annoying candidate list.

Who are you talking to and where are you finding them? They must be coming from offshore because no self-respecting recruiter in the US would go that low or be allowed to go that low if they were working for an agency.

On second thought, what a brilliant way to reward bad recruiters - by by taxing them for helping you waste your own time and simultaneously testing good will of people in your network. Save yourself the time and use your spam filter on bad recruiters. Not good enough? Change your email address, stop posting your resume on job boards, and stop talking to bad staffing agencies. Better yet, save yourself the time and get to know a handful of good recruiters and then forget about all the bad ones. Only let good ones through.