OK, Here's one of the most original additions to a resume I've seen in a long time! My hat goes off to Sripresanna Narayanasamy! He had a brilliant idea to list each place he'd consider for relocation and he listed each and every area code. Brilliant! His resume popped right up when I did a resume search for people within our search area code. Great idea worth repeating. Check out his resume.

Going off to the EREXPO tomorrow. Should be very interesting to hear about the newest techniques and gadgets for recruiting (believe or not... there are recruiter geeks out there!). If I run into something really pretty out there, I'll post it right away. I'll pay particular attention to techniques and technologies that force your excellent resumes to float to the top.

Like most industries, there were a lot of players in the software world during the dot-com boom, all fighting for a piece of a targeted market. After the crash, a number of players died or were consumed leaving just a few leaders to swallow up the remaining customer base. An example would be the CRM software industry. I haven't really seen this consolidation in the recruiting/HR software world. In fact, I would say that there are actually more choices for recruiting folk for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) nowadays covering a very large range of costs of implementation. I'm excited to see who shows up at the show!

Also, it should also be pretty interesting to get a pulse on the job market out there! The next posting should be from the field. :)

Have to point out my article in TheOpenEnterprise! OK, it's not my article since it really was written by Jason Levitt, but it was an interview with me getting a job in the open source job market. If you've been reading my blog you'll see some overlap there. Jason's a great guy and did an excellent job. I'm always a bit nervous about talking to reporters. I've had a few bad experiences where I'm quoted saying things that never left my mouth. Jason was really right on target and was a pleasure to talk to. He's also quite familiar with and slashdotted! That's really pretty cool and generated just tons of email, calls, etc. Most of the comments seemed rather good, others were pure flaming. Oh well ;)

Wow! It's been far too long. Since my last posting I can see a shift in the market that is interesting. It's beginning to heat up on the high-end positions. What I mean by that is that very senior-level engineers, administrators, etc. are beginning to poke their heads up for the first time in over a year and looking around to see what's out there. It's a bit like the WWII bombing raids on London. It was simply much safer to duck-and-cover and stay in those bomb shelters until things settled down. I'm seeing the first signs of the battle-hardened, best-of-breed knocking off the dust, opening the hatches, and squinting in the bright daylight.

It's also interesting that they are getting scooped up quickly. That shouldn't be surprising given their level of skills. It just means that recruiters must be more efficient and move quickly. In other words, don't window shop too long. If you see a person with excellent skills and a great work ethic, make the decision and make an offer! That's good news for an industry that has had some serious tough times lately.