Helping Recruiters understand the Perl Community Better

Recently one of my coworkers here at Shutterstock wrote a blog post about her experience of YAPC:NA 2012 through the eyes of a recruiter.  I asked her to write this blog because I thought it would be a great way to kick off a discussion about how we as a community can do a better job comunicating to recruiters.  I think doing so would be the next logical step in improving our ability to represent Perl and everything that is great about it to the world at large.

Over the past few years we've done a lot to bust out of our bubble and start talking about all the great stuff we are doing with Perl.  We blog, we post our code on popular open source oriented repositories like Github, we loudly celebrate our public conferences (as we did with the recent YAPC:NA 2012 conference and the past YAPC:Asia conference in 2011).  All these things have a positive effect.  Yet for the most part they are activities aimed at other programmers (ourselves and people we'd like to entice to join our community).  This is not a bad thing, it is a great thing of course.  But there are more people in IT then just programmers.  There's product and project managers, C levels (like the CTO and CEO of a company) and of course recruiters.  We ignore reaching these groups at our peril!

Recruiters do more than introduce programmers to potential jobs.  They speak to hiring managers a lot about the types of technologies and potential recruits they have.  Which means recruiters are the next level out from programmers regarding how a hiring manager or a C level perceives Perl.  Right now, what I hear a lot is that recruiters tend to say things like "Its very hard to find qualified Perl programmers", or "I'm not seeing a lot of young people interested in Perl".  Now, when a recruiter says stuff like that to the CTO or to the Director of Software for a company, that has a negative impact on the perception of Perl amongst a group of people that wield tremendous influence in a company's technology choices.

Additionally recruiters seem to have a hard time understanding what makes a good Perl programmer.  Since we haven't widely advertised outside our community until recently, most recruiters are not in touch with modern Perl practices.  They don't know about Plack, or Moose for example.  They might know about mod_perl, which is not really considered a best practice for web development anymore.  They in general have a hard time understanding a companies technology base and matching that up to a resume.  This is not a problem they have (for example) when placing Java candidates.  Typically a Java shop will have a pretty clear stack and can give the recruiter a list of technologies to help better match potential recruits.  It would be great if we had a recruiter oriented FAQ of the modern Perl stack, for example.  We could also help recruiters better understand CPAN and vet candidates that contribute to projects.  In general there are a lot of things we could do to help recruiters vet possible candidates.

Recruiters also need help understanding how a company is using Perl.  Not all Perl shops are modern, for example.  Are they using mod_perl and Apache?  Do they manage dependencies with a Makefile.PL and do they write there applications like CPAN module or have they grown their own project management system?  Does a company use CPAN modules much, or are they stuck on whatever came with the server they installed?  Are they using modern tools like local-lib or do they use the system Perl?  Understanding how a company uses Perl will help a recruiter better match a candidate and also better communicate to a candidate what the job is like.

Lastly, we need to learn how to better represent ourselves on our resume to recruiters.  We need to call out our technology experience, our CPAN authorship, our YAPC attendence and presentations for example.  This will both make recruiters understand who we are better and has the nice side effect of making recruiters start to understand that Perl is vibrant and growing.  If you are enthusiastic about Perl and communicate that on the resume, recruiters will see and feel that excitement as well.

My goal would be to see recruiters excited about Perl candidates and expressing that to hiring managers.  Additionally as more programmers become part of what we call "Modern Perl" and recruiters learn how to realize that when they see resumes perhaps it will help us in our quest to prod companies stuck on older technologies a bit. 

I'm thinking we should start with a simple Recruiters FAQ that could live on Perl.org website.  This would just be a FAQ aimed at helping recruiters understand Perl, and understand how to better find qualified Perl candidates.  It should also offer a bit of advice to Perl programmers about how to make sure a recruiter understands you, your needs and your resume.  So, what do you all think?  Suggestions!  Lets get it started!

Comments

[Andy Lester]

Right now, what I hear a lot is that recruiters tend to say things like "Its very hard to find qualified Perl programmers", or "I'm not seeing a lot of young people interested in Perl".

The problem there, I think, is not that recruiters say those things, but that those things are true, at least for that recruiter's experience. It's good to help recruiters learn, but we have to address those underlying problems as well.

[john]

Andy,

There's little doubt it is harder to find qualified Perl programmers than we'd like. I really don't like to say that Perl is harder than say PHP or Javascript, because I don't think its a complete apple to apple's comparison, although it is often cast that way.

I do think we need to be honest, and say that yes it is not as easy as it could be to find good Perl programmers, both because the total number isn't as high as we'd like and also the community doesn't shout as loudly as we might. That would be fair to say. What I think is not accurate is the often times conclusion that a company that is using Perl should stop using Perl for that reason. We can I think do some things right away to help recruiters do a better job of locating and understanding good Perl programmers now, while over time our advocacy attracts new programmers and grows the base, which is the true long term solution.

[Lurk Quietly]

The Perl "community" is a small pool.

There are a lot of highly qualified Perl programmers out there that can claim nearly two decades of experience with the language, have written tens of thousands of lines of production code, have stayed up-to-date on new developments with perl, have acted as advocates for the language through training others and using it appropriately in their workplaces, and who have nothing or next to nothing on CPAN, don't hang out on PerlMonks or IRC, and have never attended a Perl Mongers meeting, much less a YAPC.

[Barefootcoder]

You know, you're absolutely right about adding things like CPAN modules and Perl Mongers attendance to our resumes. I'm going to go do that right away. (Well, figuratively speaking, of course. ;-> )

[Emily]

As a recruiter, currently searching for a Perl developer, having an FAQ to go to would be very helpful! Often the hiring manager isn't a Perl person themselves and really lack the understanding of what they need. Coupled with the time it takes to find Perl developers with specific backgrounds, we run out of resources. Right now I don't feel as though I could log into IRC to find the people I need and I can't always wait weeks or months to go to a meetup or gathering to possibly find someone. I don't want to come off as sneaky when what I want to do is find people jobs.

Along with FAQs for recruiters, a list of resources on where to find interested parties would be immensely helpful as well.