A few days ago, I wrote about how hard it is for good, employed job seekers to search for new work while retaining anonymity.

But what if a candidate is not really “looking”, but also wouldn’t pass up the right opportunity if it, well, fell in their lap…?

Sometimes the difference between someone “happily employed” and “happily employed… but listening” isn’t very much.  As an employer, how can you be attuned to those subtle shifts in perception of both your company as an employer, and their outlook as a candidate?

As far as I can tell, there is no way for someone to easily, passively and privately tell a company, “yeah, if you had something great for me, I would be interested.”

Is there?

A few days ago, I was part of an interesting conversation. I had a lunch meeting with three managers of a department for one of my clients. One (male) had just completed several first-round interviews with candidates I had provided. Another manager (female) asked him a very simple, but awkward question:

How many girls did you hire?

Of course, I chimed in quickly that our candidates are selected solely on skill-match, qualifications, education and relevant experience and NOT on their gender… which is the truth.

However, a few days later that comment is ringing in my head.

Its not that I have never recruited a woman to fill a job… we do it a lot… but there is no denying it that, if I was to take a look at the gender of my candidates, most of them are male. Of course, I don’t TRACK that sort of thing in my office.

Also, my company is likely one of the most fair/balance organizations I’ve ever worked for in terms of men/women employees…

About a month ago, Gizmodo published a story reporting that Girl Geeks are “On the Rise”

the male-dominated era of technology and gadgets may be coming to an end. Some activities, such as using a DVR to record a TV show, or streaming movies or games, are more popular amongst women than men.

But, when it comes to filling technical jobs with a balanced number of male/female candidates, where ARE the girl geeks?

I have a few theories:

• My recruiting processes are structured in such a way that our jobs are just not interesting to female applicants?
• Girl Geeks have secret clubs that they tell nobody about… and they share their jobs with each other only.
• Girl Geeks have a drive and purpose that is different than the current bulk of candidates I work with. It appears that many professional women I know have a strong entrepreneurial “I can do it myself” streak… maybe “workin’ for da man” (pun only half-way intended) is even LESS interesting to women?

Please comment, below… especially if you are a girl-geek and you have some insight for me?  I would especially like to know if, as a woman, you feel the existing job-search “system” out there is unfair to you, and why…

Our client is immediately seeking top candidates to help fill a key-critical Senior Application Developer/Engineer position in their Draper, Utah office (Salt Lake City Metro Area). This is a Direct Hire opportunity with our client.

This position will be highly visible within their company, as you will report directly to VP-Engineering. Experienced software engineers with excellent development prowess plus innovative thinking, problem-solving and team-leadership are wanted for this position.

Job Requirements:

The successful candidate will prove excellence in development using Java and C# .Net, and have good experience with medium-scale, highly-available systems written in Java, C++, etc.

Client systems are installed on-location for customers and used throughout their corporate networks. Strong understanding of Client/Server application development is key. A strong bias toward web-only development will not be favorable, however those skills, if balanced with client-server experience, will be valuable.

Your abilities to architect solutions, participate collaboratively with like-minded peers, document solutions and provide best-way innovative solutions to key problems will be needed regularly. You will actively work to propose and collaborate on directions and determine priorities and trade-offs between goals and requirements.

Your ability to distill core simplicity from complex problems and scenarios is paramount. Plus, you will constantly work with a very diverse team of senior engineers who will, along with you, ensure the product retains its reputation as best-of-breed software.

Combined with your development skills, your ability to accurately communicate, collaborate and evolve with the changing and dynamic nature of the applications being developed will be key-critical.  All candidates will be thoroughly screened.

Raw aptitude and talent are more important than degrees and certifications, however a CS degree from a credible university or 4-year institution (or other applicable degree) is required.

Job Duties/Skills:
- Code in Java, C# .NET
- Clear experience of client/server development
- Clear ability to lead and collaborate with a very diverse team of brilliant engineers
- Clear record of making significant and unique contributions to projects with which you have been involved

About Our Client
Client is a small, well-funded technology company in South Salt Lake City (Draper) with a proven track-record of success developing applications for Fortune 500 companies. The environment is very fresh and active, and you will work with brilliant people.

A full-range of benefits including health, medical, dental, etc. plus stock-options, generous 401(k) matching and other perks are provided.

Salary expectations depend on experience, but range between $80K to $110K/yr as part of a total compensation package.

Qualified applicants should immediately contact a recruiter with SOS Engineering and Technology. Those without a pre-existing recruiter relationship can contact us below:

SOS Engineering & Technology — Orem, Utah Office
1256 S. State #101
Orem, Utah 84097

phone: 801-426-6121
Send a resume to: apply056@sostechnical.com

Today, I listened to Peter Clayton’s Total Picture Radio interview with Jim McGovern of ItzBig.  In the interview, he addressed something in a way–I am embarassed to admit–I never fully grasped before:

The Anonymity Problem for Job Seekers

The simple fact of the matter is, the Recruiting Industry has long been too sympathetic to the employer or hiring manager, and far too hard on the seeker.

Regularly, I have HR/Hiring managers confess to me their worst sins… like throwing out a whole stack of resumes or deleting their whole “candidates” folder in their email program “on accident” because they needed to clean up space on their hard-drive to make room for their grandson’s little league photos.

At the end of the day, I do believe job-seekers work too hard to have their careers tossed into black holes, set to puree, and hopefully something turns out at the other end.

More than that, McGovern is right–truly excellent, talented candidates who are currently employed can’t afford to be found looking around.  In an economy like ours where “bouncing back” from being fired would be relatively hard… passive candidates need better tools to keep their identity private when job-seeking until they are ready to reveal it.

ItzBig’s subtitle says it all: “Be Found — Not Found Out” I wish them all the luck.

Mozy, a very cool/hot tech company in Utah, is hosting a BIG SHIN-DIG on Friday night this week… and to make enough room, they rented out the entire

HARD ROCK CAFE, SLC
505 S 600 E
Salt Lake City, UT 84102

Get Directions(801) 532-7625 (Google Map)

RSVP on Facebook, if you like… or just show up ready to geek out and party

Details:

When: Friday, May 2nd, 2008 from 7:00-9:00 PM
(Don’t worry though, no one’s going to kick you out at 9:01)
What’s happening: Food and prizes, including: a MacBook Air, an iPhone, an iPod Touch and multiple iTunes gift cards (employees are eligible to win these prizes), entertainment by “Dueling Pianos Anywhere” Come for a minute or come for hours – just make sure you come, cause it’ll be worth one of your Friday nights!

Over and over again when I meet people seeking a job change, there’s three basic things everyone needs:

• A Purpose - I am amazed at the number of people that don’t quite know what they want… they just want something different. Well, that’s a start, but won’t get you far.
• A Resume that Works - There’s a key difference between a resume, and a resume that works… does it help you accomplish your Purpose (see above) or simply list where you’ve been and when you left?
• Promoters - Its hard for anybody to tell their own story. Our society doesn’t believe self-promoters much. Who do you have cheering for you? This isn’t just references, but people who will make calls on your behalf (and your mom shouldn’t be one of them… Hi mom). Marketers hire celebrities and rock-stars to help them tell their stories… who can help you tell yours?

My BFF drew this for me…  What do you think?

Thanks to my blackberry 8830 not having a camera (grr), I finally uploaded a bunch of pictures to flickr. Animoto turned some of them into a cool 30 second video. Check it:

Some social-network administration I’ve been doing includes:

• I just joined Friendfeed and Lijit.
• Twitter says Jeff Barr will be in town today, but his Dopplr doesn’t say where.
  Note that Jeff Barr got me hooked on twitter in December 2006 (woah).
• I’ve gone through all my little accounts and updated my icons to be the same… the now-famous “guy in the car” photo that people recognize me from at various meetups, etc.
• Finally got facebook and twitter talking so my statuses work.
• I listened to Cris Russell’s Social Media Recruiting cast with some interesting news articles that got me really thinking…
• Thinking about personal branding. Always impressed with Peter Clayton’s Total Picture Radio.
• I seem to be the last person in the Western Hemisphere to know about Laura Fitton, but twitter took care of that in about a 3-minute round-trip. Cool.
  (actually, I’ve read her blog here and there, just didn’t realize what a rock star she is)
• Blogged about the G33k Dinner/Lunch @ Tucanos next week (salivating).
• Speaking of podcasts, listening to Tech Weekly from Guardian.co.uk is like sugar for my ears.

And it’s just now 7:30.  Off to get kids to school, and myself to work…

P.S. And I wish Wordpress 2.5’s wysiwyg editor didn’t put “http://” in the URL linking box.

This month’s Geek Lunch is going to be in downtown SLC at the Tucanos in the Gateway!

I have setup reservations for 15 though I’m pretty sure that will need to increase this. Please Please Please RSVP so that I can give an accurate count to them. This is their opening week, in fact, the day after grand opening, so it’ll likely be packed!

Info:

RSVP on upcoming.org or See the calendar item on Utah Tech Events

Also register online with Tucanos and get a $10 Gift Card in honor of the SLC Tucanos Grand Opening!

Today, on the couch, we have Brad Baldwin of Rocky Mountain Voices. He’s interviewed some very interesting companies lately, and he’s coming on the show today to talk to us about it.

Showtime is HIGH NOON (Mountain). Listen in at (347) 324-3797 (limited lines) or stream online with a chat-room at couchcast.org. Download the show as a podcast, or you can also follow us on twitter @couchcast

Contact Brad by visiting Rocky Mountain Voices or on twitter @bradbaldwin

If you’re reading this, my website here has been upgraded to the shiny, new Wordpress version 2.5.  Everything looks really nice, so feel free to check it out.

But, as soon as I installed/upgraded it (on two different blogs I put it on) I got a bone-chilling 500 Internal Server Error message. No, I hadn’t backed this up, and yes that was stupid.

I freaked.

A quick googling told me that maybe my plugins were bad. I renamed my plugin directory in my FTP program, but that didn’t change the problem (so I changed it back).

Other things I found included the wp-cache plugin, having a custom database, and others.  Until I noticed someone mentioning a CORRUPT .HTACCESS file as the culprit.

I went into FTP, downloaded the file to my harddrive and deleted it off the server; refreshed, and *poof* all was back in action.

When everything was working again, I got up from the computer and walked around, wiping the now-cold sweat off my forehead.

Then I dug into the .htaccess file to find out what was wrong.  Apparently, my Wordpress upgrade added content to the .htaccess file (which is normal) but instead of beginning its edits on a new line, it appended its edit to an EXISTING line, breaking the file.

So, if you’re upgrading Wordpress to 2.5 and you get a 500 Internal Server Error, open your .htaccess file,  and Look for the phrase “#BEGIN WORDPRESS” (no quotes) somewhere in the middle of a line.  That should be on its own line.

If that doesn’t work, backup a copy of the file (or rename it on your server to something else) and reload your blog to see if that is where the problem is!

Joseph Scott, who works with Automattic, the company behind wordpress.org and wordpress.com, talks to us about cool upcoming projects, Wordpress’ next release, Google summer of Code, what it’s like working as a virtual employee, and more. Check it.