Claiming an abundance of jobs in Linux, the Linux Foundation is launching a new job board specifically for open-source-related employment on the Linux.com site (jobs.linux.com). Since 2005, jobs in open-source technologies have grown some 80 percent, according to online recruiter JobThread, which the Linux Foundation has partnered with for job postings.

“Linux’s increasing use across industries is building high demand for Linux jobs despite national unemployment stats,” Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation, said in a statement. “Linux.com reaches millions of Linux professionals from all over the world. By providing a Jobs Board feature on the popular community site, we can bring together employers, recruiters and job seekers to lay the intellectual foundation for tomorrow’s IT industry.”

Ars Technica blogger Ryan Paul wrote on the Linux Foundation and job growth:

During the Linux Collaboration Summit last year, Zemlin declared Linux the “fastest-growing platform” and touted an IDC study which contended that the open source operating system would endure the economic recession better than its competitors. Although it’s still unclear if IDC’s speculation will prove true, the need for cost-cutting in the current economic climate has certainly helped to boost Linux adoption, a trend that is potentially contributing further Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, job boards, Job Postings, Job search, job seekers, jobs, Linux

In this latest Hiring Manager interview, Joseph Seibert, the senior vice president and CIO of The New York Times Company, counsels job seekers on how they can make great first impressions with their resumes and during job interviews. He also offers hiring managers advice based on the lesson he learned from his biggest hiring mistake.

When it comes to hiring staff for his technology department, Joseph Seibert has a soft spot for candidates who are underdogs. He admires IT professionals who’ve charged ahead in their careers despite starting at a disadvantage.

In the past, Seibert has grown so excited about an underdog’s personality that he says he has made the mistake of advancing a candidate through the interview process who had a great story but who was not right for the job. Seibert, now senior vice president and CIO of The New York Times Company, says the lesson he’s learned from that mistake is to know himself: to be aware of his tendency to get excited and to keep his excitement in check so that it doesn’t undermine his effort to hire the best person for the job. It’s practiced advice that all hiring managers can benefit from.

Job seekers can benefit from Seibert’s advice, too. In this latest Hiring Manager interview, Seibert describes the mistakes IT professionals make on their résumés and during job interviews that kill their chances of wooing employers. He spoke with CIO.com about his hiring practices and how the transformation of the media industry is affecting IT staffing at The New York Times Company.

Sarah Mitchell: How are the challenges facing the news industry affecting your hiring?

Joseph Seibert: The news industry is transforming. Traditional print and media organizations have to become multi-channel distributors of news and information, including digital channels, such as websites, blogs, iPhones, cell phones and BlackBerries. I was hired to transform the technology organization so that it has the right structure, skills and capabilities to support multi-channel distribution.

The technology organization is extremely important to this overall transformation, and it is very important that I get the right structure and the right people within that structure who understand multi-channel distribution, digital technology and traditional technologies. I need leaders who have worked in some type of media, including a pretty sizable digital environment, and who can work amidst transformation and uncertainty. They must know how to build the infrastructure that provides speed-to-market, flexibility, and that supports those many channels efficiently and effectively.

What organizational changes have you made to the Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career, Tips and Techniques Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, interview, interview success, Interview Tips, IT Careers, job, Job search, job seekers, Phone Interview Tips, Recruitment & Selection, resume, skills, Strategy

Despite the economic downturn, IT departments are still struggling with a “significant” skills gap, according to new research from accounting and consulting firm Deloitte.

It carried out a global survey of 306 IT decision-makers and executive business managers, and found that while IT bosses have an increasingly clear understanding of what they must do to effectively support their organisations’ business strategies, their existing IT talent strategies and programs appear to be falling short, leaving IT departments without the talent necessary to do the job.

The research showed that the majority of survey respondents (51 percent) strongly believe talent issues have limited their organisation’s productivity and efficiency. Half admitted that the talent shortage is limiting their ability to innovate.

In addition, a significant number of respondents indicated that IT talent issues are having a material impact on other key dimensions of business success – growth (58 percent), speed to market (54 percent), quality (53 percent) and customer relationships (53 percent).

The also showed that the vast majority of IT organisations expect to expand their workforces over the next three-to-five years. 47 percent said that they expect to see at least 5 percent annual growth in the IT workforce over that period – even as the pool of experienced and qualified IT workers in many countries gets smaller.

“Even in the midst of hiring freezes and layoffs, organisations continue to face talent shortages in critical areas such as IT,” said Jeff Schwartz, principal at Deloitte Consulting in a statement.

“We believe differentiation is key when trying to attract, develop and retain top IT talent. This means organisations will need to revitalize their efforts and focus on areas such as company brand, workforce flexibility, multi-generation workforce strategies, job rotations, Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, Deloitte, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, Job search, Recruitment & Selection, skills

Based on a poll in a September report on jobs and technology job hunting, a good number of job seekers discount the value of recruiters in getting a new job. A closer look at the daily frustrations of managing recruiters for IT workers reveals what is and is not working for them.

Maybe all it takes is one or two bad experiences with an inexperienced recruiter with very little technology knowledge to get under the skin of tech job seekers. Maybe it’s all those unsolicited e-mails and phone calls. Maybe they just feel like a flock of mosquitoes, trying to pinch a little bit of your blood and soul while you are simply trying to manage the day to day of your job. Perhaps it’s as simple as you haven’t found a recruiter you can honestly trust.

What else would explain nearly 40 percent of respondents to a recent Dice poll saying that recruiters were a waste of time? Dice is a technology job board that is widely used by companies, recruiting agencies and independent recruiters looking to find the right match for open positions.

“While 39 percent is certainly a large proportion, it means 61 percent see at least some of the value recruiters bring to a job search: Twenty-eight percent said they got a job through a recruiter, 23 percent have gone to interviews set up by a recruiter, and 10 percent have gotten a contract position through one,” writes Dice Senior Vice President and CMO Tom Silver.

It’s no doubt that it’s in Dice’s best interest to talk about the value of recruiting, as it clearly does in The Dice Report for September. It certainly begs the question: Are recruiters really a bad use of your time?

Ok, yes, the majority still sees some value in recruiters. However, what Silver and Dice do not examine in any detail in the report is why that 39 percent want nothing or little to do with them. Dice would not need to look that far to see the headaches technology job seekers go through with recruiters.

In a Dice forum thread with the subject “Anyone else sick of recruiters?” you find a plethora of bitching, of course, but also of real experiences that burned people and also some more measured reactions.

Here are a few with a more measured tone:

From the contributor “vmunix”:

“It’s gotten so bad, I honestly don’t return 90% of the emails I get about jobs. Or calls. I have a very wide range of skills, combined with some very unique skills that are depressingly high in demand.

I say depressingly high because they result in a lot of garbage resume farmers from India pestering me about jobs it should be blatantly clear I have no interest in. See my name? Now, why on earth would I want to talk to somebody about a Windows NT 4 PDC to Active Directory migration?

Or my location preferences. It’s pretty clear; there are three places in the country I am interested in. Or straight telecommute. So of course, I get tons of recruiters asking if I’d be interested in a job in a completely different locale, which is so junior to me as to be nearly an insult.

(EDIT TIME!)
That said so far, I do have to admit, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some EXCELLENT recruiters and agencies. NOTHING pisses me off more than a brainless recruiter who has NO idea what it is that I do trying to tell me what it is that I do. But I’ve had a few from firms both large and small that were decent enough to come right Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career, Leadership Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, Job search, job seekers, recruiters, Recruitment & Selection

Thanks to the economic downturn, former employees of high-tech companies are staying in touch by joining alumni groups to find jobs, business opportunities and to socialize.

Thanks to the economic downturn, former employees of high-tech companies are staying in touch by joining alumni groups to find jobs, business opportunities and to socialize.

The sophistication of these groups varies but not their main mission: it’s all about networking.

The Microsoft Alumni Network, with its 10,000 members, charges membership fees and offers a range of benefits. The PeopleSoft Alumni Network makes its money exclusively from job ads on its Web site. It has about 3,800 members on LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals. They are chiefly people who worked at the company before it was acquired by Oracle Corp. in 2005 .

For those who join because of job loss, alumni groups provide a “psychological safety net,” said John Verrochi, who founded the Sun Microsystems Alumni Association Inc. in 2001 and is its president.

Members can use their connections to an alumni group to search out former colleagues at companies they’re interested in working for, to brainstorm and perhaps learn the name of a hiring manager, said Verrochi, a former product development executive at Sun and now an energy consultant. “My experience is most alums are willing to help out,” he said.

This year, to help its members cope with the recession , the PeopleSoft alumni group brought together about 50 volunteers to work on improving market intelligence and access to connections, said Steve Tennant, who started the group and is its president. He was formerly a vice president at PeopleSoft and now works as a private consultant.

Former PeopleSoft employees who now work as recruiters volunteered to look at resumes, and those now working at outplacement firms offered coaching and assessment. There were also people willing to do webinars on the latest PeopleSoft product enhancements to prepare job seekers for interview questions, Tennant said.

The Microsoft group was founded in 1995 by Tony Audino, a former Microsoft executive and director of product management for DOS, who today is the alumni group’s chairman. He saw so much value in these alumni organizations, that he later co-founded and works as CEO of Conenza Inc., in Seattle, a company that builds and manages private online communities.

The Microsoft Alumni Network appears to have a close relationship with the parent company, which posts job ads on the group’s board and helps validate prospective alumni to ensure they previously worked at the software maker. The benefits flow both ways.

Microsoft taps into the alumni group to help with recruiting, and ongoing connections with former employees can help lead to new business relationships, all of which can deliver millions Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career, Tips and Techniques Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, Job search, layoffs, social networks

If you’re job hunting, it’s still about who you know. Hiring managers ranked traditional networking and social networking as the most effective way for professionals to find jobs, according to a survey recently conducted by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Forget job fairs and spamming potential employers with your résumé. If you’re looking for a new job, networking should be your primary job search strategy, according to the results of a recent survey conducted by Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

The outplacement firm asked HR executives to rate on a scale of one to five which of nine job search methods were most effective:

networking

using social networking sites

targeting management recruiting firms

using online job boards

applying to jobs via an employer’s website

cold-calling employers

sending unsolicited résumés to employers

responding to newspaper classified ads and

attending job fairs

Networking came out on top, with a 3.98 rating and nearly half of hiring managers (48 percent) ranking it a five (with five being the best).

Hiring managers named online social networking as the second most effective job search tool. They gave websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter a 3.3 score, with 47 percent of survey respondents rating it four or five.

Targeting management recruiting firms and using internet job boards tied for third place. Both methods earned average ratings of three from hiring managers. Applying directly to a position posted on an employer’s website ranked fourth, with just under a three rating.

The poll results also showed that hiring managers don’t think much of cold-calling. They rated it 2.2 on the five-point scale, which placed it squarely in fifth place.

Responding to newspaper classified ads and sending unsolicited résumés to employers didn’t fare much better, both of which received a 1.7 rating.

Job fairs were deemed the least effective method, Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, Job search, networking, social networks

Social networking sites offer IT job seekers the resources to find peers with similar skills and learn more about employers. But candidates should be aware that the online outlets also provide employees a glimpse into the personal lives of potential hires. That can be good or it can be very bad, according to Rona Borre, president and CEO of Instant Technology, an IT recruiting and staff augmentation firm in Chicago. Borre recently talked with Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie about how new technologies can boost or torpedo job searches.

As an IT recruiter for some 15 years, what do you think has changed the most for high-tech job seekers?
With today’s unconventional recruiting methods such as social networking sites, there are so many ways now to really put yourself out there and get connected to people with the same interests as you. That has really changed the landscape of recruiting for IT talent.

How has it changed the process for recruiters?
It has allowed us to better match clients with candidates in a cultural way. We can search on Facebook and Google, for instance, and get just a glimpse or even deeper insight into their character. Interests outside of work such as music or art could lead an employer that is in a particular industry to one candidate over another. We can use social networking sites to find out more about an organization’s culture as well. If employees are in clubs or groups listed online, that gives us a perspective on the people that already work there and helps us culturally match others.

What would be considered a bad cultural match?
If you look at dot-com companies that are very fast-paced and work long hours, and someone coming from a structured financial institution and is accustomed to working set hours, such as 9 am to 5 pm—that is not a good cultural fit.

How can IT job seekers use those sites to find work?
A lot of candidates are going to sites and learning more about an organization and connecting with people that already work there to better understand the jobs and culture. For their own profiles, they should make sure the profile is well-written and tasteful. They need to display the work that could differentiate them as a candidate, such as interest in music, art, clubs or athletics. That type of information could give them the added boost with an employer and really make them stand out.

Do you have any examples?
We work with a lot of online media companies. One of those clients was looking for a developer, not just a coder, someone that offered a bit more to the role, someone more interesting and original. We had a candidate that was a rapper, a music video rapper. The client went to the candidate’s YouTube site and found the candidate’s personal information and rap video very original and creative in terms of music and other personal interests—attributes beyond his job qualifications and technical skills. It was a very positive representation for that candidate. The client saw that his creativity would translate well to their online media company and be able to provide what they needed to produce for their clients. It was more about looking at the person as a whole as opposed to a one-dimensional piece of paper that has their credentials. It’s not really about that anymore.

What if you aren’t a rapper or you don’t have art to display?
It is also very important to not only talk about your education and work experience, but also what you did at the school or university or former employer, such as social clubs or teams you were involved in. And always remember to be human and relatable. These sites are about humans trying to connect with each other so you have to put that human element forward. Social networking is another sales tool, another way to showcase the best attributes you have.

How can putting personal information on social networking sites hurt a candidate’s job search efforts?
There are a lot of don’ts in terms of what you want to do with your profile. People are definitely more aware of what they are putting on their sites, giving some people the ability to look at some things and keeping some aspects private. I think now people are becoming much smarter because they might have had pictures of themselves up partying in college and now they know that it can be seen and found by potential employers and that the information they post Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career, Tips and Techniques Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, Job search, job seekers, social networks

The need to constantly update their technical skills keeps IT workers under tremendous stress, a new study finds.

That workers often feel stressed and harried while on the job is nothing new.

Mounting workloads, hurried paces and at times colliding demands on employees times are typical expectations of the workplace today.

However, IT workers claim they have it worse, reporting that they are in a constant state of “running races to keep up” and in a “constant battle to learn new IT skills,” according to a Canadian graduate business school study.

Furthermore, the study concludes that the reality for IT pros is even more intense because their skills are continually depleted while non-IT workers see their skills accumulate over time

“Simply possessing information technology is an insufficient condition for achieving the tangible outcomes in which shareholders are interested, such as improving the bottom line. An organization may be committed to deploying the latest IT but will harvest little from its investment if the potential of the technology is not fully understood and realized,” wrote authors Hsing-Yi Tsai, Deborah Compeau and Nicole Haggerty in “Of Races to Run and Battles to be Won: Technical Skill Updating, Stress and Coping of IT Professionals.”

“IT professionals play a crucial role in achieving these advantages because they develop and exploit information technology to extract value by delivering the right technological solution to business problems.”

The IT professionals who handled this stress the best used a balance of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies to deal with the stress of staying perpetually up-to-date in their technical skills, found the study by the London, Ontario Richard Ivey Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, Job search, skills

Laid-off? There may be no better time than the present to develop that product you’ve been daydreaming about or launch that consulting firm. Here are some tips to get you started.

Many people think about starting their own business. Most, however, get comfortable with the salary coming in and regard it as madness to give that up on a gamble. So the loss of a job might actually represent an opportunity to make that long lost dream a reality.

Of course, there is always the fact of having to pay the bills. That causes most people to engage in a frantic search for something, anything to get some money coming in. But why take some poorly paying IT gig when you could be running your own show and possibly making more within a year?

Divide and Conquer
For those lucky enough to have a supportive spouse or partner, one good strategy could be called divide and conquer. The concept is this: One person (who is still employed) agrees to support the home, pay the bills, and so on, while the other attacks the establishment of a new IT business with vigor.

In some cases, this is easily manageable. In others, severe cutbacks in expenses will be required. But the sacrifice could be worth it in the end.

For this to work, it is best to set a timeline of around a year (i.e., you have a year to give it your best shot). Without that deadline, the years can drift by and the amount of money poured into the business can just keep multiplying. A year also provides enough time to see how well you do and adds some necessity level to get into gear rapidly.

Arranging Your Time
If you don’t have the luxury of having a partner who can support you while you launch your idea, there are other options. Your parents may help, for example, or you can get a job and spend time on the new business during your off-hours.

That can only succeed, though, if you apportion your time. If you have a day job, set a clear-cut schedule to work on the business plan — perhaps 7 pm to 10 pm Monday to Friday and all day Saturday. If you are doing software development to launch a new application, such a schedule can certainly make sense. But if your new activity requires interfacing with clients, potential clients and suppliers during office hours, you are going to run into a time constraint that will likely cripple the embryonic venture. In that case, take a job evenings or weekends, and leave the days to your chosen career path.

Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of sleeping in until noon and dabbling at it. Set your clock early, get started by 9, no fail, and Read more…

Administrator CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career, Tips and Techniques Career, career planning, challenges, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, job loss, Job search

What does the quote wherever you go, there you are mean to you? That quote came to mind the other day and I’ve been mulling it around from the perspective of a job seeker since.

Just how far would you go to get a job in these trying times? Would you lie? Would you cheat? Would you falsify information? Would you misrepresent yourself? Would you fake your references? Would you create a job history that was untruthful? Would you pretend to have a supervisor that never was? Would you create an employment background that didn’t exist? Would you order a degree you didn’t earn? Would you provide a phone number to a reference who turns out to be your best buddy posing as your former boss? Would you ask your friends, family, or professional network to lie for you just to get ahead in today’s super-competitive job market?

Wherever you go, there you are…what does that mean to you? I don’t know what it means to you, but here are a few ideas of what it means to me:

* You can try and be something you are not, but in the end (and in the beginning), you might as well let others see the real you. Wherever you go, there you are. And if the real you with your real assets and your real liabilities isn’t the right fit for the opportunity at hand, keep moving, keep rolling, until something else materializes. As your Uncle Bob may have told you, there are plenty of fish.

* You cannot run away from your problems and challenges. You can try, but they will still be with you…wherever you go, there you are. Looking for a job is incredibly hard work and unbelievably overwhelming in this market. That said, do not compound your problems by letting them fester until you’re in a real mess — address them, take action; recognize and resolve.

* Love your brand or leave it! If you don’t like brand you, Read more…

Administrator CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, CMDN Hot Jobs, employment, job, Job search