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Groupon Recruiter contacts Rails Creator to fill a Jr. role #fail
This happened seven months ago.
A Groupon Recruiter was roaming through github looking to fill a position without paying close attention to who he was actually contacting. Well he was in for a surpise because he got blasted. Check it out!
Hi David,I came across your profile online and wanted to reach out about DevelopmentOpportunities here at Groupon. The company is growing, and we’re alwayslooking for folks with solid skills that can make positive contribution toour continued success. Any chance you’d be open to a quick conversationabout opportunities, or for any possible networking potential? If so, let meknow when you’re free and we can set up a time to chat. Also, if you areinterested, it would be great if you could forward a current resume overthat I can take a look at. I look forward to hearing back from you! Pleaselet me know if you have any questions.Cheers
Github Recruiting
What is Github?
Headhunting does not have to start with Github. A recruiter can use various e-establishments to start his/her searching. Such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Linkedin etc. But for today’s sake we will allow this document to be solely based on the Github foundation.
When you approach github.com you can determine at that moment in time if it is in your best interest to sign up and register for an account or take the easy way out and just use the site as a search tool.
There are both pros and cons to doing both. As of right now (2011) github allows anonymous individuals to browse their site without a registration. However, the downside is obviously you have no access to e-mail if needed.
For our purpose, let us hypothetically assume you are registered and ready to go.
So the site’s layout that we need to pay attention to is on the top right below your account information. It is the search bar.
This is your gateway. Learn it and Love it. Searching is an art. It’s not just some random thing you take for granted in our industry. It’s serious business. Got it? Good! :)
As we proceed for training purposes we will use a current search that I used today (July 11th 2011) while I was working on Box.com. Box is a current client who has sent us a high priority “Lead Security Software Engineering” role. It’s an important role, and because we don’t get this type of REQ on a weekly/monthly basis, our Database lacks qualified candidates in the area/core skills of “XSS/ CSRF/SQL Injection”
What does this mean?
It means its time to become that traditional “Headhunter” that oh so many people talk about. Good or bad, its what we do.
Once you have accomplished the above visualization, your next step is to sift through the data. This means you go through the list. In our case, I had to go through 4 different candidates who I was able to disqualify due to three areas of interest. These are:
2. Followers
3. Public Repositories
Basically, I am inferring to you as a new individual, to lurk github, understand who has influence, develop a hierarchy in your mind and go from there.
In the case of Lorenzo, has 69. From my experience, and based on our recent success with him as a candidate, 69 is doable and influencial. However, match him against someone like Paul Irish from Google Chrome who is a innovator in HTML5. Lorenzo is no match. (Paul Irish:1,700k plus )
3. Public Repository (Subjective)
This as well is a subjective tool that we can use. Understand that there may be a diamond in a ruff on github, but for some reason he only has 5 public repositories on github.
So use these subjective tools with caution.
What this can tell you, is how passionate they are about the developer community, and the idea of “open-source”
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If your lucky, that the person has an e-mail attached to github, you then can add them to your Database. You will at least need a phone number or e-mail to consider it a successful headhunting task.