8th
who are you, anyway?
I had the opportunity to ponder who I am and what I do when someone asked about my technical recruiting background. It turned into a little thought experiment/essay. I don’t know what to think of it except it is a good reminder for me, and maybe it says something about how I work.
I have been recruiting people for companies using open source skills since they began to gain acceptance in the business world. I cut my teeth on C/C++ multi-platform commercial software product developers – medical device products, embedded systems, and hardware design. I like that world – it is challenging. I will always have a soft spot for folks with that kind of experience because I like their development rigor and ability to work well with challenging stuff: multi-threading/scalability/parallel processing/distributed systems. I can taste the difference between a super smart passionate developer and someone who just writes code.
Many of my clients work extensively in the LAMP stack (both php and perl). As more J2EE people began to move into more lightweight Java I have moved into Tomcat, Spring, and Hibernate, among other open source Java projects. I work with companies using open source databases like PostgreSQL in addition to mySQL and I work with companies exploring Hadoop and Lucene and Tuscany. SOA, the cloud, virtualization, and mobile technologies are all part of what I do, and I remain especially sympathetic to folks using flavors of open source tech in those areas.
I don’t just recruit developers – I recruit folks who lead the developers, folks who support the products, folks who sell, folks who create marketing plans, folks who manage user communities, and folks who make and create the underpinnings of the organization. My deep technical understanding informs everything I do. I am the recruiter who never stops chewing on how all the pieces fit together. Recruiting is always about positioning, and knowledge is power.
My work speaks for me. Ask to talk to hiring managers who have used me to get their own positions and to build their teams. You can talk to developers, marketers and even human resources people who will tell you I am fantastic. But the proofs in the pudding. Can I make finding the people you need easier? Can I help you take your company to where you want it to be? I know I can. I have never met a real requirement I couldn’t tackle successfully.
Who knows, maybe I’ll have the guts to put it in the proposal.
