According to Politico, on the eve of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, an overwhelming majority of Americans cited strengthening the economy as their top priority for 2012 and most want him to concentrate on domestic issues, according to a new poll Monday.

“Economic issues are the top policy concerns Americans say they want the president and Congress to focus on in 2012, according to a Pew Research Center for the People & the Press poll. For 86 percent, the economy is a top priority, while 82 percent said improving the jobs situation in the country should be a primary concern for politicians.”

From a Tech sector standpoint, I believe the President and his advisers are still missing the point regarding job growth.  Too many jobs in Tech are going unfilled because we don’t have training opportunities which can teach more people skills that they can use in the fastest areas of growth in the World.  Every year people clamor to our one day seminars exposing beginner level developers to the arena of software development.  But yet we still do not have enough trade school type classes to fill the hiring requirements of the companies that have stalled development projects because of the lack of talent.

I know that Tech is not the only sector with a lack of skilled labor, manufacturing could use more machinists and welders, and Medical could use more nurses.  In contrast, tech can be done remotely and other nations such as India, China, and Brazil – will all train more people and their economies will be rewarded for it.  We’ve always been the leaders in Computer and Software innovation – we need to train more people to keep that innovation happening here.

Ethan Banks – I love ya’ man – your original article was funny as hell.  And I really get it.  If I hear myself saying any of these things when I talk to a potential candidate – I hope that someone will throw desk accessories at me until I stop.

10. I wanted to reach out to you. Yes, obviously. We can all assume you didn’t “reach out” to me against your better judgement or under duress. I mean, maybe. There could have been someone standing there behind your chair, pistol pointed at the meatiest part of your skull, finger quivering on the hair trigger, breathing out threats against your life if you didn’t give me an electronic hug in the form of a LinkedIn message. But generally speaking, I think we can all see that the message itself is evidence of your desire.

9. They pay for all certs. Oh, I’m sure they do. Absolutely. On the surface, this sounds so good, doesn’t it? But paying for all certs in all but the rarest of circumstances comes with a catch. Or two. We pay for the cert…if you pass the test. We pay for the cert…but it’s self-study on your own time using outdated courseware handed down from the six other engineers you work with. We pay for the cert…but you have to sign a contract to stay with us for X months or else we take the cost of the cert out of your last paycheck. We pay for the cert…but there’s no equipment for you to practice with.

8. Forward me a copy of your resume. This one drives me a little bonkers, because my LinkedIn profile is more or less my resume. Certainly it has most of the key information – after all, that’s how these people find me. I put skills, former employers, titles, responsibilities, and more out there, but even so, they all seem to want my resume in Word format. I guess because requiring a candidate’s resume in Word format is supposed to inspire confidence that the organization is a forward-thinking and exciting place to work? Yeah, that must be it. And hey, who isn’t giving out mad love to MS Word, anyway? I kid, I kid. Or do I?!?  

7. Do you know anyone? Yes. I know many people, in that strange way that social media connects us all. Yeah, we know each other, but we don’t *know* each other, right? We tweet back and forth, we read each other’s blogs, every once in a while we might connect in meatspace at some conference or other. Of course, they’re hoping that I know someone who wants to move to Misery City, Alaska to work a 3 month contract building a video surveillance network for an Eskimo school district out of duct tape, CAT3, betamax players, and 10 meg ethernet hubs donated by a forest-dwelling bear who didn’t want them for his cave anymore. So yeah, I know people, but no, I don’t know anyone who wants that gig. Maybe call the bear, though.

6. I came across your profile. Right up there with, “I wanted to reach out to you.” Ah, so you didn’t select my name at random? Say, out of a hat? Or because someone dared you? You actually searched, got a hit on my profile which I’ve carefully seeded with acronyms, abbreviations, vendor names, and equipment, and saw me? I *am* surprised. Who knew this whole SEO thing mattered?

5. I would like to discuss with you. Yeah, but 99/100 times, I would not like to discuss with you. Why? Your grammar and punctuation is atrocious, you’re evasive about compensation, you don’t actually know anything about the position you’re recruiting for and therefore won’t be able to answer my questions, you want to voice chat when I’m all about e-mail (at least for starters), you’re a third party, and/or you’ve given me no incentive whatsoever to talk to you. Have we spoken before? Do you represent a company I’ve heard of? Does your message indicate you’ve read my simple contact instructions in my profile? No? Hmm…

4. I’m not trying to recruit you directly. No? Then why are you “reaching out”? If you want to see if I “know anyone”, then include the referral fee right up front. Why be coy? You want to get at the hundreds of people in my network, to leverage my connections, right? Cool, I get it – makes good sense. However, that comes with a price that makes it worth my while to troll my database, ping my peeps, and see what I can come up with for you. Or let’s put it another way – if you want me to help you do your job, I need a piece of the pie.

3. Stay in touch. Uh, sure. You can stay in touch if you like. I mean, it’s not like I hide away with secreted, private profiles where it’s obvious that all I want is to be left alone. I mean, I’m out there. That’s a choice I made. So, yeah. Ping me. All I ask is you do it manually. The personal touch goes a long way to making me care. Don’t put me on your “Super Tech Recruiter Top Tips” waste of bandwidth e-mail spam list newsletter that clutters my inbox. I won’t read it. I will unsubscribe, and if you ignore my unsubscribe request, I will rain down unholy packet terror upon your marketing e-mail server with such unrelenting fury that its power supply will explode in a giant fireball that will suck your data center into a singularity, warping the fabric of space-time. Okay, you caught me, just kidding – I only ever caused a black hole that one time, and the galactic courts ruled it as justifiable retribution. So, I mean yeah – stay in touch.

2. Very senior. About half the time, this is followed by “CCNA, CCNP, or CCIE preferred.” Uh…so do you need someone who’s been architecting data centers for 10 years, or someone who can build a router from a template and troubleshoot it if it breaks? It’s always fun to read the job description of this someone who’s supposed to be “very senior”. Sometimes, they really are. I look at the job description and think to myself that I wish I even KNEW someone like that, let alone could BE someone like that. Wow. Candidate will build an international carrier-grade network using technology that hasn’t been invented yet, shoots laser beams from his eyes at 100Gbps, AND loves his Mom? Awesome. But most of the time, I think “very senior” gets stuck in there because the last six yahoos that applied for the position couldn’t tell a packet from a Snickers bar.

1. Opportunity. It’s rarely a job or a position. Seems like it’s always an “opportunity.” I find this a curious choice of term, because “opportunity” seems implicitly hopeful and positive, but in reality can mean whatever you want it to mean. For instance, I like to hike in the mountains; sometimes my hiking takes me into moderately dangerous situations. So, hiking could be an opportunity to enjoy fresh air and fantastic scenery…or…an opportunity to plunge into a rocky abyss and fall to a horrible death. Jobs are the same – if you’ve had more than one, you know exactly what I mean.

Past the humor, there are some lessons to be learned here.  Technical people are some of the most intelligent people I know.  Talking with them in a scripted manor and with over-used phrases, is a very big mistake.

“I hope that when I’m presenting a very senior level opportunity or just staying in touch, people realize that I’m not trying to recruit them directly but rather have something I’d like to discuss with them and that is why I’m reaching out to them!” (How many of those crappy phrases did I get into that run-on sentence?)

Cheers!
JR

I came across this article on recruiting developers (Why are technical recruiters so clueless?) a little while back and at first, I was a little offended.  But then I thought 1) it really does not reflect me or my services, and 2) it serves as a reminder to me as to how poorly some recruiters treat people.

Another interesting point was that it was not just candidates that had disdain for the clueless technical recruiters – hiring managers gave feedback in the comments section that also told tales of how the clueless technical recruiters would send terrible candidates or not understand the positions or technologies involved.

Let me give my biased views on what the writer said:

QUOTE: “You’d think that the job of the recruiter would be to narrow down the field of suitable candidates by actually doing some research on them. If they’re just going to spam people from emails they find on tech sites, why not just pay some shady Russians to do it?”

DING DING DING! – Exactly.  How can I disagree with that?  Whenever I come across the name or someone refers me to the name of a developer that I’ve never heard of before, I like to go looking into his past work.  That means looking at the companies he’s been working for, the projects he’s been working on, open source contributions he’s made, the public portion of his GitHub account, and talking with people that I know who’ve worked with him. This keeps me from contacting people that my client is not going to have any interest in and increases the likelihood of my clients wanting to hire the people I do present.

If I find out good things about him, I’ll contact him/her in polite ways to find out if there would be any interest in investigating a new position.  I might be selling a new position, but I’m not a pushy douche bag in a boiler room.  If you as a candidate don’t have interest today – I’m not going to badger you.  Hell, I’d rather have a new friend than a placement.  Sounds crazy right?  It’s not.  I know hundreds of Ruby Developers that I consider friends.  And they know that I have their best interest in mind when I talk with them about their careers.

I’m not thinking short term.  My profession is about relationships. Not about cold calls and spam emails.  I’m glad that the developers in the Ruby community speak out about IT recruiters and technical recruiters being clueless.  I just wish those who work in boiler room recruiting outfits would realize that they are loathed and would get enough of a conscience to either change (the way they work) or get the hell out.

The responses to the article in the comments section go on and on and on. Mostly it’s recruiters trying to differentiate themselves from the negativity.  I get that – but several of them work for companies that are notorious for lousy recruiting methods and even go as far as to hire technically clueless people that come from lousy sales jobs and train them to be sleaziest of recruiters.

One of the firms named multiple times in the comments has had to change the name of the company several times because they have such a poor reputation.  One of my friends, Jason, was told that he needed to come into their office in Santa Monica to meet in-person with his tech recruiter (who portrayed himself as being a ruby on rails recruiter).  While Jason was sitting in their office, he witnessed the staff ringing a brass ships bell every time someone got an interview appointment (referred to as a ‘send-out’).  He was so turned off by this that he never wanted to be near them again and when he told me about this incident – I could see the disdain for them in his face.

I don’t think a good recruiter has to be a developer. I do think they have to be technical enough to read a little code, be able to ask pertinent questions, and be able to discuss development with hiring managers and candidates with an understanding of the development environment, the tools, and the skills.

I have recruiters all the time that ask if they can work for me.  I ask a lot of questions of them regarding how they work with people.  If I like what I hear, and they tell me they’ve got experience in recruiting specifically for Rails – I check them with a few questions:

1. In Rails, if you wanted to quickly check someones code to see if they’re writing tests, where would you look? What might you do to run their tests?
2. What’s the difference between a class and a method?  And can a class contain a method? And can a method contain another method?
3. What’s YOUR Github account?

If a recruiter can’t give me pretty good answers to these questions – I don’t have any use for them.  I can come up with a hundred other ways to check a recruiter – but if I were a developer (or a hiring manager contemplating partnering with a recruiter), I’d consider asking a recruiter these things too.

Cheers!
JR

Being unemployed can be stressful, but the psychological toll of having a poorly paid, demanding job can be just as bad for mental health as having no job at all, a new study finds.

In addition, becoming employed isn't always a boon for mental health. Study participants who transitioned from being unemployed to being employed in a poor-quality job showed a worsening of their mental health, the researchers, from The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, say.

The findings suggest government policies shouldn't focus solely on reducing unemployment. The conditions of those jobs, including benefits, hours and flexibility, should be considered as well, said Joseph Grzywacz, an associate professor of family and community medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., who was not involved with the study.

"The people who look at employment and unemployment tend to think that all jobs are created equal,"  Grzywacz told MyHealthNewsDaily. "This is further evidence suggesting that all jobs are not created equal."

Employment and mental health
The researchers examined results from a nationally representative household survey of more than 7,000 people living in Australia. They looked at seven years' worth of responses, beginning in 2001.

Job quality was graded based on four factors: stress and level of demand, amount of control employees said they had over their work, job security (or potential for a future) and whether or not the pay was fair.

Participants also filled out a mental health questionnaire that assessed symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as positive emotions, including feeling happy and calm.

Overall, those who were employed had better mental health than those who were unemployed.

But after taking into account factors that could influence the findings — such as an individual's age, gender, marital status and level of education – the mental health of unemployed individuals was on par with, or better than, the mental health of those with poor-quality jobs.

Those with the poorest-quality jobs showed a greater drop in mental health over time compared with those who were unemployed.

People who became employed in a high-quality job saw their mental health score go up an average of 3 points. But if they took on a poor-quality job, their mental health declined by 5.6 points. The mental health of this group was worse than those who remained unemployed throughout the study period. A difference of just 4 or 5 points on this test is considered clinically relevant, meaning you can see changes in a person's mental health, the researchers say.

The findings suggest that "employment strategies seeking to promote positive outcomes for unemployed individuals need to also take account of job design and workplace policy," the researchers write online in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

What can be done?
One way to improve job quality would be to put protections in place to promote job security, Grzywacz said. For instance, not having an employment contract creates a sense of insecurity because "people don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring," he said. Employers could reduce the amount of independent contract work and bring back the notion that "if you toil for a company, you have a future with that company."

Organizations could also try and reduce the number of "forced choices" employees are required to make, such as the choice between finishing something at work or taking care of a sick child, Grzywacz said. Employers could create flexible leave policies so that employers aren't forced to choose between their job and their family, he said.

Finally, the idea jobs can be created by cutting full-time jobs in half might not be the best thing for employees. The benefits of these part-time jobs may not be enough for a family to survive, Grzywacz said.

"You may not be getting any additional gain from putting everybody back to work," he added.

Pass it on: A job with poor conditions, including low pay and high stress, can be just as bad for mental health as no job at all.

Article Source:  http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=423787486&ids=0Od34Ne3cNczgIdzsUdjoSejoOb3oUd3sUdPcOd2MSc38Udz4NczgIc3wPdjcTcjcP&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=yiaag-104

Can you be fired for asking for a raise?

Of course.  You can also be fired for picking your nose, wearing ugly shoes, and getting on the boss’s nerves.  In fact, the only things you can’t be fired for are those things that are protected by law.  (For instance, race, gender, pregnancy, disability and, increasingly, Facebook posts, although don’t quote me on that last one.)

My BNET colleague, Kimberly Weisul, reported on a study that seemed to indicate the easiest way to get a raise was to ask for one.  Rather quickly, the comments started filling up with people asking if it was possible to get fired for asking for a raise.   BNET commenter SueGallo shared her bad story:

I asked for a raise and was fired. I was a consultant, and my client asked me to become a division manager (which was a new pay level for my company) and thought if the company would bill more for my time for a position I won for the company, I should also be paid more. My company disagreed. Then I was hired by a competing firm to do the same job (the client wanted me in that position). Even with a “happy” ending I won’t ask for a raise again.

Lovely and not normal.  Most of the time you won’t be fired for asking for a raise, even though it’s almost always legal to do so.  (Exceptions would be if you ask in the context of pointing out that you are being paid less than your coworkers who perform similar tasks at similar skill levels who are all a different race than you are, for instance.)

But, why would this be a concern on so many people’s minds?  What on earth would make a boss fire someone for asking a completely logical and understandable question.  We all want to make more money.  Here are 6 reasons why you may be fired, or otherwise punished, when you ask for a raise.

1. You are incompetent and don’t recognize it. Yes, let’s start with blaming the victim, but there are some completely inept, incapable and incompetent people out there who are utterly convinced that they are geniuses and are deserving of huge raises, promotions and company cars.  You have worked with some of these people.  If you were their managers, you’d be likely to want to fire them for asking for a completely undeserved raise.
2. Your request is seen as ungrateful. This is most likely to happen in a small business where the boss is the owner.  Sometimes these people see their employees as people who would be homeless if it wasn’t for their largess in giving jobs out, as if it were free candy.  They fail to recognize that your work benefits them.  So, when you ask one of these people for a raise, they think you should be grateful just to be employed, and when you’re not, it’s time for you to hit the road.
3. The boss doesn’t like to be wrong. When you come asking for a raise, you’re also saying that you think the boss is wrong.  That if she were smart and attentive, she would know that you deserve a raise.  This is especially likely to happen if you try to go over this person’s head, to HR or the boss’s boss.  Bosses like this take such requests as personal attacks.
4. You won’t take no for an answer. Sometimes the answer will be no and you need to learn to deal with it.  There are some employees who repeatedly ask for raises and promotions and ignore the boss’s increasingly annoyed negative responses.  When you’re fired, or otherwise punished after you ask for a raise for the 15th time, it’s not your question, it’s the annoyance of it being repeated.
5. Your boss is just a complete whack job. It’s entirely possible that you have the misfortune of working for an irrational jerk.  You managed to tick him off just the right (wrong?) way by asking and it’s pink slip time for you.
6. You’ve presented your boss with an ultimatum. “Either you give me a raise or I’m quitting!” May well result in the boss firing you before you can get that letter of resignation written.  Only issue ultimatums when you really mean it.

After reading all these possibilities, calm down.  It’s rare to be fired for asking for a raise.  It’s more likely you’ll get one, especially if you have good reasons for deserving one.  I don’t think it’s as high as 85% as the Accenture study seems to indicate.  They asked people if they had ever asked for a raise (note the plural nature of that question) and then asked what the result (singular) was.  My bet is that (like me) people have asked for raises more than once and been successful at least one of those times, but not every one.  Still, unless you think your situation falls into one of the above categories (and if you’re number 1, you’re too stupid to recognize it anyway), and a raise is justified, go ahead and ask.

Article Source:  http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=421168206&ids=0Od34Ne3cNczgIdzsUdjoSejoOb3oUd3sUdPcOd2MSc38Udz4NczgIc3wPdjcTcjcP&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=yiaag-104

As recruiters wade cautiously back into hiring mode, they're throwing out their old playbooks. Rather than sift through mounds of online applications, they are going out to hunt for candidates themselves.

Many plan to scale back their use of online job boards, which they say generate mostly unqualified leads, and hunt for candidates with a particular expertise on places like LinkedIn Corp.'s professional networking site before they post an opening. As the market gets more competitive again, they are hiring recruiters with expertise in headhunting and networking, rather than those with experience processing paperwork.

Inundated by online applicants, McLean, Va.-based government contractor Science Applications International Corp. plans to cut the number of job boards it uses in the coming fiscal year to six from 15 or so, says company vice president Kara Yarnot.

SAIC has asked its 125 U.S. recruiters to find candidates for analyst, engineering, and other jobs on professional social networks instead.

"It's almost a throwback to the old, dial-for-dollars method of recruiting," says Ms. Yarnot. "We need to reach candidates earlier, before they're being pursued by competitors."

About 24% of companies plan to decrease their usage of third-party employment websites and job boards this year, according to a December survey from the Corporate Executive Board Co., a business consulting firm. Meanwhile, nearly 80% of respondents said they plan to increase their use of job-board alternative methods this year, such as employee referrals and other websites like Facebook Inc. or LinkedIn.

Food services company Sodexo USA, owned by Paris-based Sodexo SA, slashed the number of jobs it posts to third-party job boards by more than half since the recession started, says vice president of talent acquisition Arie Ball. The number of applications to some executive openings at Sodexo rose more than 50% to 300 since the downturn started, Ms. Ball says, but the increase brought many unqualified candidates.

"Recruiters had to put in all this extra time to read applications but we didn't get benefit from it," she says. Now, the company is hiring different types of recruiters who specialize in headhunting, including finding candidates to poach from competitors, rather than those who are good at processing and filtering applications.

Companies are adapting their plans as they start hiring again after the downturn. Between November 2009 and November 2010, the total number of job openings rose 32%, according to the Labor Department.

Job seekers who were reluctant to leave their existing jobs—as well as unemployed workers sitting on the sidelines—have begun casting about for opportunities, too. Between December 2009 and December 2010, recruiters saw a 17% increase in applications per opening, according to the Corporate Executive Board.

The trend has in many ways been a boon for job boards, which say they haven't noticed any impact from some companies' pullback. But some of the largest sites acknowledge that the new environment means they must do more to keep customers happy.

In the coming months, Monster Worldwide Inc. plans to roll out technology that ranks candidates based on how well their applications fit requirements set by the recruiter, says chief global marketing officer Ted Gilvar. The product has been available to some customers since late last year.

Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group Inc. remains concerned that relying too much on job boards could be bad for business.

Melissa Mounce, the company's senior vice president of corporate talent acquisition, says the company became concerned that its slow response time to applications was hurting its retail bank's brand. "Someone who applies for a bank-teller position might also be a customer or potential customer, and we were letting those applications fall into a black hole," she says.

PNC has reduced its overall spending on general job boards, such as Monster and CareerBuilder, but still uses niche boards, like Dice.com for tech professionals, when the need arises. "We used to post everything, but in this environment, you have to think strategically," she says.

Additionally, the company is currently reorganizing its recruiting staff to better handle the tens of thousands of applications it receives in a given month. Instead of using senior recruiters to filter through the company's applicants, lower-level screeners process them first and only hand off the most-qualified. A separate set of recruiters actively searches for more experienced candidates who aren't likely to come in through a job board.

Article Source:  http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=331735380&ids=0Od34Ne3cNczgIdzsUdjoSejoOb3oUd3sUdPcOd2MSc38Udz4NczgIc3wPdjcTcjcP&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=yiaag-104

Since December, the economy has added about 130,000 jobs a month, barely more than what is needed to keep up with population growth, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Meanwhile, the number of job openings advertised online has grown by more than 400,000, to 4.2 million, according to the Conference Board, a research organization. That increase continued a trend that began in the spring of 2009.

Recruiters say they are having trouble finding candidates for many skilled positions, and once candidates are found, hiring managers are taking longer to pull the trigger.

Positions that typically took two months to fill before the recession are sometimes taking four times longer, recruiters say, as hiring managers are holding out for better candidates.

Managers invited between five and six candidates on average for second-round interviews last year, twice as many as in 2007, according to a survey of 1,500 recruiters at large companies by the Corporate Executive Board, a research organization.

"Nowadays, if managers speak to a really great candidate, instead of hiring him, they take it as an indication that there must be 10 even better people out there," says Todd Safferstone, director of CLC Recruiting, a unit of the Corporate Executive Board.

PepsiCo Inc. aims to make offers to job candidates within two months of posting an opening, but since the recession began, some positions have taken up to 90 days to fill, says Paul Marchand, head of talent acquisition for the Purchase, N.Y., food-and-beverage company.

Certain candidates, such as scientists and some kinds of marketing professionals, are in short supply in the labor market or, if they are available, are unwilling to relocate to fill the position, he says. But even when qualified candidates are found, hiring managers sometimes want recruiters to find more candidates, thinking better matches must be possible, Mr. Marchand says.

"People think that with all the available talent, time-to-fill would go down, but it's just the opposite. When you're still trying to find quality candidates, it's actually taken longer," he says. Less-skilled positions, as in sales and customer service, take less time to fill, he says.

Eight months ago, Catholic Health Initiatives, a Denver-based nonprofit that runs hospitals and other health-care facilities, began looking for 50 highly skilled project and program managers. Eighteen of those positions still aren't filled, says Director of Recruitment Tracie Grant. Before the recession, it typically took the company 60 days to fill positions.

"Hiring managers hear the news and see the high unemployment rate and tell us that they want to continue looking for better candidates," she says. "They want the perfect candidate, when the reality is, there is no perfect candidate."

Zions Bancorp has about 430 openings in such areas as compliance, credit, auditing and risk, says Chief Human Resources Officer Connie Linardakis. After a six-month search, the company recently hired six senior vice presidents to help manage its credit department, she says. A few years ago, it might have only taken three months, she says.

The company, which is based in Salt Lake City, is trying to find a manager for its compliance department in San Diego but is competing with 15 other banks for the same kind of manager, she says. That will probably mean the opening will take months to fill, she says.

At videogame maker Electronic Arts Inc., there is a gap between the skill requirements the company posts and the experience of the people who apply, Gabrielle Toledano, executive vice president of human resources, says by email. That means the Redwood City, Calif., company's recruiters have to woo candidates who work at other companies, which can extend the time it takes to fill a position and push up compensation, she says.

"We're seeing a problem of companies unable to find the right skills in the right places," says David Arkless, president of corporate and government affairs for Milwaukee-based staffing firm Manpower Inc. For a position that would have needed two or three candidates a couple years ago, now companies want five or more, he says. "Companies want to make the hire count."

Article Source:  http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=406807280&ids=0PczARdP8Rc3gIe38TcP4Ue30Qb30UczsMe3oMd2MRcz0SdjcMcjgIdz0ScPkRdP0Q&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=yiaag-104

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — With launch costs low and valuations soaring, startups are multiplying like rabbits in tech hot zones like New York and Silicon Valley.

That has sparked a talent war over the industry's scarcest resource: skilled engineers and developers.

"There are a lot of ideas, but to actually do it you need someone to build it," says Daniel Gruneberg, who co-founded Zozi in San Francisco last year. The daily-deal site sells discounted activities like bicycling tours and wine-tasting trips. As an added lure for employees, Zozi offers some of its deals up for free to its staff — and to the people who refer them.

"There is definitely a strain on engineering and developer hiring, especially mobile developers," says Gowalla founder Josh Williams, who relies on mobile coding gurus to enhance his company's location-based check-in application.

"The boom in app development has left a big need here all around," he says. "Those positions still take us the longest to fill."

Everyone is in the hunt. On any given day, Twitter is filled with tweets advertising open spots for "rockstar" developers. IPhone app developer Bump went one better, soliciting by tweet for "rockstarninja" engineers and designers.

Entrepreneur Francisco Hui even launched a business venture to cater to the constant recruiters: His Interactees shirts let those who are hiring literally wear their job ad. Need a UI designer? There's a t-shirt for that.

The startups are competing for talent not just with each other, but also against established companies with much deeper pockets. A study by consulting firm BDO found that 46% of top U.S. technology companies plan to increase their employee headcount in 2011.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), which recently gave its workers an across-the-board 10% pay raise, often starts new computer-science college grads off at salaries that top $100,000 — and it's willing to pay more if there's a competing offer from rivals like Facebook or Twitter. It's also on a hiring tear, looking to add at least 6,000 workers to its ranks this year.

At SEOmoz, a Seattle startup that sells SEO tools, engineers are so prized that the company offers a $12,000 reward for referrals that lead to a hire.

"Things have gotten harder," says CEO Rand Fishkin. "Prices are going up, competition is heating up and there's a much lower supply of engineers on the market."

With the job market so fierce, companies often find themselves covetously eying their neighbors' engineers. Poaching is a time-honored tech industry practice — one that some businesses go to extremes to fend off. A full 15% of Facebook's staff previously worked at Google.

"Good talent is always employed," says Shannon Callahan, who recruits for companies backed by venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz.

That can lead to some sticky situations. "As CEO, one generally doesn't have many true friends in business and raiding your friend's company is a sure way to lose one," Andreessen-Horowitz partner Ben Horowitz wrote last month in a blog post on the ethics of poaching.

As one New York entrepreneur recently put it, right after wrapping up a $1 million funding round: "Hide your designers, hide your developers, because we're recruiting everybody out there." 

While working at the Ford Design Center in Dearborn, Mich., Edgar Camez became a specialist in designing engine mounts for cars. But the 37-year-old engineer wanted to do something different after working 11 years, and he felt his small niche limited his career options.

Dennis Nishi

So he gradually eased his way into the hybrid-technology unit at Ford Motor, pursuing in-house training as well as a master's degree in automotive engineering. His efforts led to a new job as senior program manager of hybrid electric vehicles for Warrenville, Ill.-based Navistar.

"It's a much smaller company, so I do a bit of everything," says Mr. Camez, who is currently pursuing a master's in business administration at the University of Michigan.

When times are good, companies tend to hire specialists, says Tim Gardner, associate professor of management at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Specialists "perform optimally within their narrow range of expertise and are good bets when the economy is doing well," he says.

But the recession has made many companies leery about hiring employees who may not be able to adapt to volatile market changes. That's why experts say it's important to routinely re-evaluate your skill set. You want to be able to recognize when changes in your career are needed, so you can find ways to position yourself for new opportunities as they arise.

Having breadth can often be more valuable than a raft of technical skills since the former requires a more comprehensive knowledge that allows you to be plugged into different roles. It also can save you from being laid off when managers are faced with reorganizing or downsizing a department.

One of the best ways to increase your marketability is to broaden your expertise within specific disciplines, says Rick Gibbs, senior human-resources specialist at Administaff, a human-resources firm in Kingwood, Texas. If you're an IT worker who manages Oracle databases in finance, for example, it might be helpful to also learn to work on managing human-resources, operations and marketing systems or even network security.

Take advantage of any learning or mentorship opportunities within the company and acquire skills and certifications that can be put to use immediately.

The skills don't necessarily have to be complementary, but you need to be able to show a direct benefit to prospective employers who will also want proven skills. This may involve volunteering for additional duties that allow you to actually use your new skills.

In some cases, companies will post highly detailed job requirements in want ads, despite the fact that the job may actually require a generalist candidate with a broad set of skills. Learn to read between the lines so as not to overlook viable employment opportunities.

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Your company doesn’t care one whit about you and will fire you at the drop of a hat, so why on earth should you give them two weeks–or any length–of notice before you quit?  In a discussion when to give notice, BNET commenter Bouchart wrote:

If possible don’t quit your job until the day before you start your new one. You want as little down time as possible between jobs. It’s a little trickier if you need to relocate, though…

Bosses would be willing to sabotage your job change because they think they are understaffed and can’t afford to lose you. Don’t you think? You need to give them as little time as possible to do that.

I do understand the logic behind this.  Bosses sometimes go crazy when employees resign.  Some bosses will terminate you immediately, regardless of how long you’ve said you have until your last day.  Legally (in most situations) they can do this.  It’s reprehensible behavior.  If they don’t want you to come into work once you’re committed to working for a competitor, they should pay you for a reasonable notice period.

I have even heard stories of bosses calling the new employer and attempting to destroy the employee’s reputation.

These things are not normal.  Normally a boss might be a bit cranky and even angry at you for leaving, but that doesn’t justify bad behavior on your part.  With few exceptions (see below) you should never quit without warning.  Here’s why:

1. Your boss isn’t the only person that matters. Your peers, your direct reports, your clients, and your boss’s peers also matter a great deal.  They aren’t going to blame your boss if you leave with only 15 minutes notice, no matter how bad your boss was.  They are going to be mad because you left them hanging.
2. You will run into these people again. There is a lot of churn within industries.  The coworker who got stuck figuring out your projects with no transition time, may end up as a hiring manager for a job you want, and certainly won’t get.
3. You may want to come back to this company in the future. Now you think I’m truly crazy.  You’d never want to work for this rotten company again!  Well, remember that whole churn factor?  5 years down the road, the people who made your life miserable have all moved on to new companies and now you want to go back, but you can’t because there is a comment tied to your social security number that says, “Not eligible for rehire.”
4. There is such a thing as a “permanent record.” Sure, it’s not the one your 7th grade math teacher threatened you with, but it is permanent within the company.  And if your former company gets purchased by a big company, they transfer your records to the new company.  That means that your poor exit from a tiny company you never want to work for ever again, prevents you from ever being employed by the big multinational company that bought out your little company, even if all they did was fire everyone who worked for small company.
5. There are financial benefits to giving notice. Many companies have a written notice policy in their handbook.  It’s usually 2 weeks, but could be more.  If you don’t give two weeks notice, you may lose any vacation pay out or planned bonus that you would otherwise receive.
6. You’ve guaranteed yourself a bad reference from this boss. So what?  You’ll never put her down as a reference.  Yeah, well, she was your boss and it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to find previous bosses.  She might be annoyed by your departure but three years later when you’re looking for another new job she’ll remember you as the jerk who didn’t give any notice, which caused nightmares for the people you left behind.

Now I said there were situations in which you could quit without notice.  There are two.

1. Your boss fires everyone who gives notice. In this case, go ahead and tell the new company you’ll start on Monday and quit on Friday.  In your resignation letter note that the reason you are not giving notice is that your boss terminated Kevin Gray, Sheila Blue and Randolph Green as soon as they gave notice.  Regardless of your reasons, please note that HR will not care and will not pay out your vacation or other benefits that are predicated upon proper notice.  A better way to do it is to give two weeks notice and be fired yourself.
2. The situation is so bad that it puts you in physical or mental jeopardy. Then  you should just get out and let the chips fall where they may.

If you notify your boss and she reacts badly don’t tell her what your new job is and call the new boss and warn him that your old boss did not react well.  Keep in mind that if I got an unsolicited call from someone claiming to be my new hire’s former boss and that person was trashing this person, I would be more likely to think this person was the nut case than I would the new hire.  I would ask, “If this person was so awful, why didn’t you fire him in the first place and aren’t you just glad to be rid of him?”

No method is risk free, but if you’re playing the odds, it’s safer to give notice than to run out the door.

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