http://profiles.perl.org ???

One thing that I've been thinking about as I've been trying to finish the first draft of the proposed recruiter help page (see previous blogs about this) is how I wish I coul find a way to better bridge the gag between the "Perl.org" community (basically Perl programmers that are active by contributing to CPAN, blogging, attending conferences, etc.) and the greater Perl community.  You see, I just don't want to tell recruiters to look at CPAN to find good Perl programmers.  Not only is that not fair to the vast numbers of great Perl programmers that just never wrote a CPAN module, or had time or could figure out how to contribute to an existing project, its damaging to CPAN since it could lead to people 'gaming' the system by spamming CPAN in order to raise their profile.

I know a lot of Perl programmers use Linkedin, and there are a number of Perl Linkedin groups that are variously active.  Recruiters do use this.  However, Linkedin is not always the best place for recruiters to look since a lot of people have some Perl experience and write that on their resume, leading to a lot of false hits when recruiters search.

So I was thinking maybe we could create a profiles.perl.org which would just be single page precis for any Perl programmer than ways to belong.  We'd have to make it crazy easy to setup, but perhaps it could be a way to begin to entice our various groups to co-mingle a bit more.

Overkill?  Just continue with Linkedin, Facebook, etc?  Opinions?

Comments

[Glen]

I was thinking about putting this together the other day for Perl freelancers - a reverse jobs.perl.org that lists what devs are available for.

My concern is that I have an overall impression that Perl companies are not very forward-looking, so they might not take notice of the site. I'm still considering it, though; simply having something like this available might encourage some firms to change their ways.

For sure, it has to be a hip looking site - something that very clearly defies the expectation of a 20-year-old language.

[Mikegrb]

I think it's a great idea, thanks for volunteering for this, John!

/me runs

[Steven Haryanto]

I'm thinking something like http://perlresume.org/ but one that lets us add additional/custom fields. At least it solves the registration problem by using PAUSE.

[vti]

Why not combine our efforts? Like... improving http://perlresume.org? :)

[brian.d.foy@gmail.com]

Good recruiters don't look for just keywords in a résumé, so are you trying to help the bad ones who probably aren't going to look further than LinkedIn to a small site with virtually no brand recognition? If I were thinking about how to spend my time and who I'd be helping, I wouldn't want to help the group of recruiters this might help. I could spend that time helping some other group.

The people who already know how to manage their brand do it very well and don't need another website to spread their brand. The people who don't manage their brand aren't going to do it any better with another website. It's not that people are lacking a way to already do what you want to provide.

This is something I think about quite a bit since I manage the Advanced Perl Users and the CPAN Developer LinkedIn groups. I see a bunch of people with poor profiles who apply to be in those groups. They are more in need of social help than technological help. How is that going to be different with a new website? Who's going to vet the information to rule out the false hits? How is the end state going to be different from what it is now?

Instead of asking Perl people through the readers of your blog, ask a bunch of recruiters what they need to solve this problem.

But, let's assume that it is a good idea and that it's worthy of your time. I'd like to see something like about.me that can link various other profiles (http://about.me/brian_d_foy) but as a single expression of shareable, importable, exportable data. I first thought about the MetaCPAN profiles, but that requires people to be a CPAN Author. However, I also think that if you really want to get a Perl job, you'd be a CPAN author since a working example of your skills is better than a résumé. I'd like to have MetaCPAN profiles without CPAN, and a way for trusted people to ++ a profile. Personal recommendations are still the most valuable way to judge a candidate.