The Cold Outreach Litmus Test

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I am introducing the following litmus test to define what a good recruitment email looks like: Message is personalized (beyond first name). Sender mentions a common interest or connection. Sender clearly read my blog, or my github. Sender sounds like a human, not a corporate PR robot. Pitch is targeted towards plausible next steps in growth of my personal career (skills, experience level, Read the article >>

Recruiter Rebuttals: I dont have time to customize outreach

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I push back on SPAM recruiter messages when I can.  The most common rebuttal I hear from recruiters is: "I don't have time to customize outreach" or "It would be too time consuming to customize outreach". Why it's nonsense: Let's do The Math Let's presume Recruiting is a full time job.  That means you have 40 hours a week * 60 minutes = 2,400 minutes each week. Let's liberally say a third is spent Read the article >>

What to say when a recruiter sends you a SPAM message

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I covered why you should stand up for yourself and other engineers when receiving a spam post from a recruiter here.  Here are some templates of what you can say to respond to a recruiters untargeted cold outreach: Template 1: Stop SPAMMING. NAME, I don't respond to spray & pray recruiter messages, and I'm not looking for work right now. You'd know that if you read my profile or customized Read the article >>

Recruitment is Good; Common Recruiter Tactics Are Bad.

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There truly is market value in helping folks find new careers.  Technical recruiters have the potential to be the grease in the wheel of the new economy, to help people achieve better, bigger, things with their skills;  To uplevel their salaries, to life them out of poverty.  And to help companies uplevel their teams and their products.   But if one separates the *tactics* from the *endgame* Read the article >>

Technology & Camera Creatives Meetup Group

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As a techie who has been getting interested in photography the last several years, I've been looking for opportunities to learn from other photographers in the Boulder community.   What I've found is that most of these people are usually either (1) creatives with BFA backgrounds who are trying to learn more about technology / gear or (2) techies like me who are trying to learn more about composition Read the article >>

Essential Mac Tools: CloudApp

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CloudApp is one my essential mac tools. CloudApp allows me to share a screenshot or a record a video with a couple keysrokes. I just press [Apple]-[Shirt]-4 and click-and-hold to drag an a square area on my desktop.  When I release, that screenshot is instantly uploaded to the cloud and the URL to that cloud image is copied to my clipboard. Here is a screenshot of my twitter feed that took Read the article >>

Essential Mac Tools: SpiderOak ONE

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SpiderOak One is one of my favorite tools for Mac OS X. SpiderOak One is like Dropbox, but they care about your privacy.  Their systems have *zero knowledge* of what's in your data.   All of the data on their servers (it can also be hosted on your own servers) is encrypted and SpiderOak does *not* have the keys. Plus, its as easy to use as Dropbox.  There is a mac application you download Read the article >>

Recruit A-List Engineers: What a cold recruitment message should look like

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I've written in the recent past about bad behavior by recruiters and have gotten some questions about how I would recruit engineers for my startup.  Great question, and it just so happens I have signed over 25 offer letters as a technical recruiter over the last several years.  Here's an example of how I cold LinkedIn-Message'd them a few weeks before the offer letter. [name], We're always Read the article >>

Reduce LinkedIn Spam with this Profile Headline

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If like me, you are a software engineer, you probably also get LinkedIn recruiter spam. I don't mind getting messages from folks who have read my profile and my twitter, considered my the best fit for my talents within their clients, and crafted a message to me.  But LinkedIn messages from recruiters are not like that.  They are spray-and-pray messages dogshit from folks who haven't even read Read the article >>

Coding Music 2015

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I love music, I love coding and I love coding to music. Some assorted coding favorites from this year: Radiohead Classical -- by Christopher O'Reilly Ronald Jenkees Beatles Classical Joy Wants Eternity Herbie Hancock Curated Coding Music Krishna Das The Amurrican Dollar Phutureprimitive John Hopkins Helios Read the article >>