First Draft "Perl for Recruiters" Page on Google Docs

So in the past I mentioned that our community should do a better job of reaching out to recruiters.  I got a lot of great comments (summarized here) on that, and as a result have written a first draft document, which I'd like to share.  Its on Google Docs over here, (public link).  If anyone wants to help shape it, or has comments please let me know.

BTW, I'm happy to move this to a different plcae if that makes it easier for everyone, I jsut use Google Docs as default lately, makes it easy for me to no loose stuff.  Suggestions welcomed.

Thanks!

Comments

[Glen]

Fantastic!

I'm tempted to forward it to some recruiters immediately, but I'll wait through a couple revisions, to be safe.

One point - I think you meant the opposite:
"If you look at their resume and see PERL instead of Perl, that’s not a bad indicator they are not particular strong (same thing goes for the hiring manager BTW, if a company says they want a PERL programmer, they are probably stuck in the 1990’s :) )

I would remove the smiley faces from that particular statement so there's no miscommunication. There's no tongue & cheek humor here, it's just truth.

[john]

Sounds good, I'll make those changes. And don't be afraid to start bouncing this off any recruiters you know. Just caveat that it is a draft and we welcome input.

[Darin]

"As I mentioned, not all good Perl programmers contribute to CPAN." -- what you failed to mention is that not all contributors to CPAN are good Perl programmers, but it does give the interviewer a chance to review some of a candidate's code before interviewing the candidate directly.

[kd]

Anoter complicating issue is that people who make substantial contributions to CPAN modules (particularly the "stack" distributions like Catalyst etc.) won't have their name on the CPAN distribution as the person who released it, although they may have made substantial contributions.

[bigpresh]

@kd's point is valid - but if you know the username someone tends to use for CPAN, you can always drop it into http://grep.cpan.me/ or similar to look for mentions of their contributions in CHANGES files - for e.g. http://grep.cpan.me/?q=BIGPRESH

[bigpresh]

I somewhat wonder whether this document should be developed on GitHub (perhaps via GitHub pages) so interested parties can easily fork it and submit pull requests without having to ask for access first.

[bigpresh]

Bah - I should have mentioned in my comment regarding searching CPAN for an author's contributions, to also search for their full name too, as some people will credit authors by their PAUSE ID, and some by name. Thankfully, it's easy enough to do both at the same time, e.g. http://grep.cpan.me/?q=David+Precious|bigpresh

[john]

Hey all, I will move it to github pages, that's a great idea. I will also caveat the CPAN stuff a bit more, although I have noticed that the general quality of CPAN contribs seems higher now than before. And it does at least tell you that someone knows how to write Perl applications in the community supported manner (which is to write everything like a CPAN module, even if its staying internal). But I don't want to start 'gaming' CPAN and have people put shit there just because that's how to get noticed. I'll give it more thought.