Perl Training Australia -
Job Ad Guidelines
Perl Training Australia offers this service for free to Perl programmers and
Perl businesses. While recruitment firms are welcome to send Perl job ads via
this service, ads will only be accepted if they conform to these guidelines. In
particular it is a requirement of this service that the employing company's name
and location be provided. Job ads without this information will not be
published to the mailing list.
What happens to my job post?
Once you submit your job post it will be moderated, if it
passes it will be directed to our Perl jobs
mailing list. Hopefully you'll then
receive expressions of interest. It will not be published on our website. Once
posted it cannot be rescinded. You may also want to post your job ad at
the International Perl Jobs
Site.
Getting good employees
It's a programmer's market at the moment for Perl. There are many more jobs
available than programmers. It's much too easy to create a job ad that gets no
qualified responses. This may be because your job ad didn't
answer the questions that potential applicants had. We hope that the questions
on our site help you make your job ad great.
For further information on writing a job advertisments to attract high
quality programmers please read the following:
Requested information - About the job
This section discusses what each field means and what you might include. In
particular it covers why it's important that you provide this information to get
the most out of your job ad.
- Position Title
- A < 6 word description of the roll. Try to make it informative such as
Perl/mod_perl e-commerce developer rather than just "Perl developer".
- Employment Type
- There's a lot of ad-hoc contract work, and this is a fine place to advertise
for that. Likewise full-time, part-time and contracts are also welcome.
- Description
- This one's pretty obvious. However, if you're going to cut'n'paste the description
provided by HR then please make sure you first s/PERL/Perl/g.
- Expected Skills
- Don't make this a laundry list of skills. Instead list what your current
developers are using every single day. Don't specify "Oracle" or "MySQL" if all
you require is an understanding of database interaction and the ability to write
SQL. On the other hand if your business absolutely relies on a framework such
as Catalyst, mention that. Be clear on what's essential and what's just
wishing and ask your developers whether any of your "must haves" are things that a
competent programmer could pick up in a day or two.
- Job Basics
- Job descriptions tend to talk about things in really cool terms such as
"interface with weather monitoring balloons", but what does that mean the
employee is going to do every day? Will the employee spend all day maintaining
someone else's code or will they be writing new code. Will they be wading
through log files or working with data models? Summarise the tasks into these
higher level activities and select which apply.
- Salary Range
- We recommend that you supply a salary or at least a salary range. This
helps get your target market's attention.
- Development Toolkit
-
While most programmers like a challenge; finding that they have to fight for
basic tools such as version control, testing suites, bug tracking software and
the like in every new job gets boring fast. Use this field to convince the
reader that you're already using best practices, and you'll reap the rewards.
- Development Process
-
What process (if any) are you using in your software development? Does code
just get written to solve the current problem and then maintained as required,
or are requirements written down and the code designed first?
- How To Apply
-
Provide both an email address and a telephone number if available. Ask yourself
whether it really is essential that the applicant send their details to you in
Microsoft Office format? Would PDF, HTML or plain text be acceptable?
Requested information - About you
Many qualified programmers do not need to apply for jobs to nameless companies behind
a recruitment firm. However, hearing that you are looking for employees
might be enough to tempt them to apply. Identify yourself and explain what
it'll be like to work for you.
- Company Name
-
This is absolutely required. It cannot be the name of your recruitment company,
it must be the name of the employer.
- Location
-
You don't need to put in an address, but you must include both a suburb and
city. Jobs will only be accepted for Australia and New Zealand. Take
the opportunity to mention what public transport options exist near you if
you're outside of the CBD. Not everyone will want to drive every day.
- Company Website
-
Good programmers will find your website anyway. Providing this will
save them the time and give you an opportunity to direct them to any subpage you
wish.
- Industry Sector
-
What does your company do? Are you a bank? A university? A government
department? In retail? Applicants want to know what you do, and knowing the
industry gives them further information.
- What are you using Perl for?
-
Provide a brief description on your company's uses for Perl. In a big business
it's possible that the applicant won't get to participate in all of these areas,
but it may increase the appeal of your business.
- Environment
-
As most of us spend more time at work, commuting to/from work or thinking about
work than any other activity, the work environment matters. If you have a great
set-up say so! Do you offer free drinks or snacks? Is there a great
coffee machine? How are your employees treated?
- Company Size
-
Some people prefer small companies and will be willing to take a pay cut to work
at one which seems fun. Others prefer larger companies. Be up-front with this
information. It might even be a good idea to add something about how big the
applicant's team size will be.
- Joel Test Result
-
This is a three-minute test to determine the quality of your software
development team. You can find out
more about the test at The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code.
Read the questions, and answer yes or no to each. Count the number of "yes"
answers and that is your score. 12 is fantastic, less than 10 for a development
house may be a sign of problems.
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