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 Job ads without this information will not be published to the mailing list.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 It will not be published on our website. Once posted it cannot be rescinded.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.