Obviously doesn’t get good karma for that one-

http://www.jobmatchlive.com

http://www.jobmatchlive.com

1. employee cost (salary+benefits)
2. proximity to upper management
3. project viability (are you working on something that makes money)
4. Age – (you may be productive now but how about 5yrs)
5. and last but not least, who you know.

Yes, in a perfect world with a complete meritocracy, the least efficient employees would be laid off.

I was at a brick-and-mortar recruiter a few years back. Also there was a systems support guy who was extremely experienced. He said, “I have never gotten a job from these recruiters.” This is over many years. This story tells one particular tale – recruiters can be the worst place to go. Also, by the time one gets to a recruiter, it may mean they have already tried everything else.

Noob, it is as simple as this: Establish yourself as a “goto” person. Our lead programmer can sit down at any system where code is running, figure out how it works, and repair or modify it. The communications protocols, the programming code, it can be something he has never seen before. When you can apply your schooling and experience to any problem that comes your way, you will be able to get a job anywhere. You will just need to place a few calls first.

I have been recruiting for various product development jobs over the last year and here is my take on effectiveness of the various methods:

Product Managers, Project Managers, Marketing and Biz Dev : LinkedIn is most effective. These folks network like hell and you can find for reasonable job posting fees.

Java Developers, QA, Designers and almost any contract positions: Craigslist is as good as anything else but you will have to sift through a lot of crap to find a few gems.

Ruby On Rails Developers and top notch eningeering talent that are hard to find: Specialty boards like CrunchBoard and LinkedIn are worth a try, but if you want access to passive (i.e. already employed and not looking) candidates, contingent recruiting is still the way to go to find the best talent.

Executives: Again, try LinkedIn first if you have time but in my experience you must use retained searches to find the top quality folks. Expensive as hell, but the execs are the ones who are going to be hiring the rest of the team so no reason to save money and make a bad hire that can sink your company.

Of course, work your internal network and use employee referrals as well, but that is my take on the current state of things having hired about 20 folks in the last 2 years with at least 10 or so more to go.

Being a well funded startup with a business model helps, of course.

When people are laid off from a company…who are those who are going to be laid off first? the most inefficient ones right? (the bottom 5-10%) and in high tech industries skill and efficiency is a big question… we are not physical labors. So the 300,000 currently laid off is the most inefficient ones logically and this is the hard truth. Maybe because of hard time to save the citizens some dumb guys are still employed but in capitalist society this will not make sense in the long run.

All engineers & techies are not employable.. there are differences in caliber amongst techies and the technology industry always looks for the brightest to bring there products early and in with top notch features.

So I guess there are still jobs as the job boards are not empty you see but not a good time for a fresher…