Lookahead Search - Blog

Your resume is your pitch deck

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:14:00 +1000

Much of my recent career has been as a Rails developer within startups. In startup-land, pitching is a daily occurrence.

It’s become apparent that your resume is very similar to a startup’s pitch deck. It should be short and sharp. Its only purpose is to get a face to face meeting. That’s it.

The best resumes I’ve seen all have this in common:

Simple structure
Highlight the important bits
A glimpse of personality

Simple structure
Listing all the things in a list is … listy. Short paragraphs are better. Like a pitch deck, it’s quite formulaic. Contact details, single paragraph intro, slightly more in-depth last few roles, slightly less in-depth next roles, education, community involvement, interests.

Highlight the important bits
When talking about your skills, it’s OK to highlight the relevant bits for the role you’re applying for. That one time you worked at Maccas doesn’t have much of an influence on how good a coder you are.

A glimpse of personality
Just like a startup, you’re a unique snowflake. No one likes a resume full of bright pink text but if it contains a little piece of you, it may be the best way to make it stand out.

Remember that the one goal for your resume is to land you that first interview. After that your charm, wit and technical skills will have to take over.

If you need a hand with your resume, just ask. I’m happy to help!

^MA

Two great reads

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 15:48:00 +1000

Two of my favourite recruiting related articles, both more than 6 years old. Good content never dies.

The Phone Screen, by Joel Spolsky

A Glimpse and a Hook, by Michael Lopp

^SG

One More Thing

Tue, 28 May 2013 15:51:00 +1000

We love hanging out with the iOS community and when we heard the One More Thing conference was coming around again, I took the quick hop down to Melbourne.

It was great to catch up with mobile developers and designers pre-WWDC and speculate about what new announcements might be around the corner.

(photo credit: @omtconf)

The talks covered everything from why you should prototype apps to how you can make your apps resonate with their users but the stand out was Lex Friedman from Macworld. Lex provided some funny anecdotes from the world of app reviews and he gave some sound advice on how to get people to write about your apps.

Massive kudos to Anthony Agius and Lauren Watson for organising the event and lining up such an impressive set of speakers.

There are some nice notes and sketches on JellyStyle’s site: http://jellystyle.com/notes/one-more-thing/2013

^MK

Welcome aboard, Matta!

Mon, 27 May 2013 09:39:17 +1000

Last week, Matt Allen was consulting as a senior Ruby on Rails developer. Today, he joins us as a technical recruiter.

Matta is great with people and extremely well known within the Ruby and startup community. While our competition is matching buzz words, he will be drilling deep into the technical requirements of the jobs we’re hiring and the technical experience of the people we’re interviewing.

With his help, we will get better at identifying unsuitable candidates and more importantly, uncovering the quiet achievers in the community (of which there are many).

Needless to say, we think he will kick butt at Lookahead Search. Welcome!

Belated welcome aboard, G!

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:35:00 +1000

I have to admit that I am a lousy blogger. Georgina has been with us for 3 months and I’m only just getting to this blog post.

G moved back to Sydney from London, where she was working with a recruiting company we have a lot of respect for, RecWorks. Like us, they specialise (Java and graduate developers) and are well respected in technical communities.

In the short time G has been here we’ve achieved lots that wouldn’t have happened without her help:

We’ve become more in tune as to what’s going on with our clients and candidates.
We’re hiring more developers than ever and building entire development teams.
One particular team of 3 Ruby on Rails developers was built in an outstanding 2 weeks.

Rather than saying welcome abord, I should be saying thank you, G!

^SG

Speaking at IT18 conference

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:11:00 +1000

Last month I spoke at the IT18 conference, which was the first IT recruitment conference in Sydney.

There were a solid lineup of speakers. The highlights for me were Andy Newman from OBS, Fiona Hathaway from Microsoft and Joris Luijke from Atlassian.

Talking alongside them was daunting and it was the first event I’d spoken at where people actually paid to be there. Thankfully, I was talking alongside the awesome Toby Hede which made it a fun experience.

We talked about what software developers are actually like and what they’re looking for in a work environment. We also pointed out a few companies who are doing things right and getting most our of their engineers (thanks, Icelab!). Some of this stuff might be obvious to developers but it seems like we got our message across to a wide audience of people hiring developers. ^SG

(photo credit: @trishkhoo)

(photo credit: @martinnkelly)

MongoDB March Madness Hackathon

Tue, 07 May 2013 15:05:00 +1000

In March, we proudly sponsored the Sydney leg of MongoDB’s global hackathon at Fishburners. First place was claimed by Josh Stevenson (@lemon_lime) and Andy Sharman (@udjamaflip) for their live dashboarding platform, Leafblower. The pair went on to beat international competition from the USA and London to win the global competition outright.

Sincere thanks to the team at 10gen for organising the event, especially @stennie and @tiamsorensen and to Fishburners for providing the facilities.

—Martin Kelly

What I value

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:36:01 +1100

This is a brillant and honest article written by Alex North, an inspiring guy from Sydney: http://alexn.id.au/2013/03/28/what-i-value/

Everyone is unique. Think deeply about what you value in a workplace, it’ll make spotting your dream job easier.

RubyConf coffee sponsors

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:01:00 +1100

We’re proud to be sponsoring coffee at the first RubyConf in Australia which kicks off today in Melbourne.

(photo credit: @toolmantim)

A huge thanks to Martin, Mike, Keith and Josh for your help in making this happen. It’s been incredible to see how far this community has grown over the years.

If you’re looking for more interesting work or would like to talk about building your team, come find me at the conference or get in touch.

Ask tough questions

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:57:00 +1100

This sounds obvious, yet a number of companies are offering development roles without asking real technical questions.

If your interview process is too easy a smart developer will worry about the sort of people you let into the company. And rightly so!

You can go overboard on technical questions so here’s my recommended interview process. I feel it balances being thorough with being responsive in a tight market.

This post was inspired by How I hire writers.

Steve featured in Offscreen Magazine

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:14:18 +1100

I’ve been a fan of Offscreen Magazine since it started last year. The idea of reading about people in the web industry away from our overused screens is a winner.

Many of my internet heroes have been interviewed and a few great Australian success stories have been told. It’s a huge honour to be in such good company even though we’ve achieved pales in comparison.

You can find me in the Logbook section where I talk about how I spend my day. Buy a copy before they sell out or drop in and borrow a copy from our office library.

Helping new hires launch their next company

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:26:00 +1100

Helping new hires launch their next company:

…in addition to the typical promises of personal growth, competitive compensation, equity, and free meals, we’ll help you launch your next company.

Upon two years of employment at 500friends, we will provide $25k-$50k seed capital

Many of the best developers have aspirations to build their own product. These are the people you want building *your* product, and often the most difficult to hire.

In Silicon Valley, 2 years is decent tenure [citation needed] and I would be surprised to see how many stick around anyway.

Even if this idea does not turn out the way they planned, the tech media attention alone makes this a win.

^SG

Welcome aboard, Martin!

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:05:00 +1000

I’m proud to announce that Martin Kelly (@martinnkelly) joined us today.

Martin originally came from a technical background and is now an experienced technical recruiter. He will help build up mobile and JavaScript development teams.

While his coding skills may be as rusty as mine, we share the belief that recruiters should know what they’re talking about and take great care in the way they operate within a community. We both realise there is more we can do to improve the recruiting process and look forward to working on this as a team.

If you see him at a meetup, please say hello and be sure to allocate the appropriate number of high fives!

A brief mention in the SMH

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:59:44 +1000

“Candidates should really keep track of where their CV is going,” he says. “‘Really good candidates are quite careful about where they send their resume and some avoid job boards altogether. They don’t send it out indiscriminately to everyone that will read it.”

Read the full article here: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/top-5-it-candidate-gripes-20120716-225q6.html

Thoughts on interviewing

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 16:24:00 +1000

Hiring developers?

I recommend having two interviews, with the more technical interview coming last. This balances the need to be thorough while minimising the chance of missing out on talent.

However, a one-size-fits-all interview structure doesn’t exist so consider this a guide. Be flexible and tailor it to your own situation.

1) Phone screen (optional)

If you’re dealing with many candidates, a round of phone screening helps filter some out. Joel explains the phone screen brilliantly on his blog.

Working with Lookahead Search? You can skip this step as there are only one or two carefully chosen candidates to review. The shameless self promotion ends here :)

2) Face to face interview
Have a plan. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a long list of interview questions, but there should a rough guide of what you’d like to get through. An interview structure creates a level playing field for all candidates and allows you to substitute interviewers on short notice.

Have the decision makers present. That way, if a competitor makes an offer to your star candidate, the right people are motivated to move decisively.

Finally, remember that an interview goes both ways. Sell the role, explain your company culture and be honest about what’s not so great. Give them a chance to ask their own questions too.

3) In depth technical interview
Everyone is a little more familiar and a little less nervous on the second round. Do your technical grilling now, rather than at the start of the process (more on this below).

I personally like the idea of a senior engineer pairing with the candidate to fix bugs. It gives you a real idea of what they would be like on the job and also shows the candidate what they’re getting themselves into. You might not be able to do that, which is fine. Just keep in mind that every time someone sends me the FizzBuzz test I die a little inside.

—

Assorted notes:

Ask candidates for a detailed technical screening *after* meeting them.
A tough technical interview can actually be enjoyable for good candidates, but it’s unreasonable to expect people to go through rigorous testing before they’ve met you. Give them a chance to buy in to what you’re doing first, then ask them to spend an hour completing a technical assignment.

Companies who start with the technical test risk losing people in the process. One of those people could be a brilliant developer who had other less demanding opportunities.

Have as few stages as possible.
Talent gets snapped up so you need to move quickly. Apple, Google and Atlassian hire brilliant engineers despite their lengthy interview process, not because of it.

If you have a lot to get through, it’s better to pack more into each session. An 11:30am technical interview followed by a 12:30pm team lunch is a winner in my opinion.

Close each meeting with clear timeframes.
Momentum is extremely valuable and easy to lose. Close each meeting with a plan on what the next steps are going to be and keep the meetings as close to each other as possible. If you leave it a week between interviews, the candidate might lose interest or secure another role.

Be aware of your body clock
I found that late afternoon interviews aren’t ideal for me. I would hate for that to affect my decision making abilities so I instead aim for morning or early afternoon. Have a think about this next time you book an interview at the start or end of the day.

—

I hope this helps. As I get time to write more of my thoughts down, I will update the article. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts of your own, get in touch: steve@lookahead.com.au.

Valve's new employee handbook

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 21:14:12 +1000

Not something I expected to read cover to cover on a Sunday night. It’s fascinating to learn how they keep a completely flat organisational structure.

Download it here: http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf

Don't work

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:33:17 +1000

Reminds me of the saying “Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

It also reminds me to be thankful. People actually pay me to meet up and hang out with smart people. Couldn’t be happier doing what I do.

The whole article is worth reading: http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someone

"At Atari we hired based on hobbies and not grades in school. We ended up with he best engineering..."

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:06:16 +1000

“At Atari we hired based on hobbies and not grades in school. We ended up with he best engineering group in the world.”

- https://twitter.com/#!/NolanBushnell/status/98789741268447232

Say no to the counter offer

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 09:58:00 +1100

Say no to the counter offer:

Once you’ve resigned, stay resigned. Here’s one of the better articles that explains why.

"Better resumes — have an objective, tell me what you learned in past gigs, and sound like a..."

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:07:00 +1100

“Better resumes — have an objective, tell me what you learned in past gigs, and sound like a human.”

- https://twitter.com/#!/rands/status/26011981613899776