TOT Gizzajob

[The Natural Philosopher]

Most orf those are already written and live in your system libraries.

[Tim S]

The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

Someone has to write the libraries :)

[dennis]

When I was coding in the early '80s there wasn't any code to rip off. We had to do it from scratch. The code you rip off is probably the stuff we wrote.

The best software designer/writer I knew at the time was a zoologist BTW. When we (GEC) were recruiting we didn't care what degree people had as long as they could think. Even then a lot of graduates couldn't think. I did notice the low regard for software degrees though. The largest group had degrees in physics.

We were a bit atypical though as we also designed the hardware and would sometimes change the hardware as it was easier than changing the software.

We also did things like designing in hardware to trace execution of code so we could see what was happening without having to single step stuff (not much use on multiprocessor real time systems).

[Clive George]

Too many people haven't :-(

[Tim S]

dennis@home coughed up some electrons that declared:

Only if you write open source software.

Cool

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not any more..

[Tim S]

The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

They do if a new language is developed.

Or if those libraries depend on so many other libraries or were written in a fat or OO framework that makes it impractical to port to a tiny architechture like an AVR or PIC.

[Owain]

I remember 1st Word Plus on the Atari (used it in 1st year undergrad). IIRC it had the endearing habit of, when renumbering footnotes meant footnote 10 became footnote 9, leaving a superfluous space in front of the 9.

Before that I used WordStar at college and then at uni I had to write my essays in vecce on the VAX before I bought my Atari. I can remember my excitement at getting a computer with half a megabyte of memory when the VAXen only had 4 or 6.

And I had a printer - Star LC-10. *That* was the luxury, there were quite a few BBC Micros on the corridor in hall, but not many people had printers.

I suspect TeX's user interface was pretty primitive in those days but then so was most other things apart from Mac.

Owain

[Adrian]

Owain gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

God, yes - I had an LC-10, too. I remember the HP Deskjet 500 coming out

- major lust object, an INKJET! And so cheap! Only £500...

And pricing up a PC - oooh, I could almost stretch to a 386SX, if I specced it up carefully - only about £1500.

Mind you, the first computer we had at home was a Sinclair, of course. Not a Speccy. Not even a ZX81. A ZX80... Then a Sharp MZ-80K. Think they're still in my mother's loft somewhere.

[Pete Verdon]

Probably not, but we do have plenty of people with non-CS degrees around the place. I know an astronomer and an agricultural chemist, and I've heard tell that somewhere around the place is a guy with a postgraduate qualification in Crustacean Pharmacology (prescribing drugs to lobsters?).

Mostly Maths, Physics and CS though, it's true.

Pete

[Adrian]

Pete Verdon gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

I can't be the only one who initially read that as Crustacean Psychology.

[The Natural Philosopher]

..sit on the couch whilst I murmur into your shell-like..

[Owain]

Between the LC10 and the IBM4019 I had a Panasonic daisywheel typewriter with an external parallel i/f adapter. WordPerfect were nice enough to write me a custom printer driver.

I did stretch to a 386SX.

I even believed the advert that said it would run Windows.

Had an Epson 1200 baud modem for it as well for CIXing.

Owain

[Adrian]

Owain gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Migawd, can you imagine that these days...?

[Andrew Gabriel]

I've done lots of IT recruiting as a manager, so I'll tell you what's important to me when looking for someone. It might help you with your technique if you know what's going on behind the scenes. However, I'll warn that most recruiters are thoroughly incompetent, never having been trained to do it, and the successful candidate is often little more than a random choice because the employer doesn't know how to select the best candidate. (I'll also add that in my current role I don't do recruiting, before people start pointlessly sending me CVs...)

I create a job description, which will (amongst other things) list the skills required for the role and the level of each skill. The skills list is passed to agencies to match against the people they have on their books. From that I get a list of CV's, in theory filtered against my requirements, but in practice about 1 in 10 of the CV's I get from most agencies really do match. I take each CV and score it on a spreadsheet against each skill, weighted so the mandatory skills get higher scores than desirable skills. I'll aim to look for about 4 people with the best scores to interview, but in practice I often don't actually find that many and have to interview fewer.

At this point I'll say that qualifications almost never feature on my list of requirements. I know that's unusual because agencies sometimes come back and ask if I missed them off accidentally. However, I'm usually looking for experienced staff, and hence I only care about their experience. (If I'm looking for inexperienced staff, such as to bring in to a graduate recruitment program or a sandwich course year, then that's different, but not relevant here.)

So, for candidates which get invited to interview, there are two things I'm looking for. Most important -- am I sure they will fit in to the existing team and keep it working smoothly? There's no way to gleen this from a CV, it's all down to how they come across at interview, and I will put specific questions designed to see how they have worked in teams in the past. This is much more important to me than their skills; missing skills can usually be learned, but hiring someone with the wrong personality to fit in can't be fixed. Secondly, do they have the skills they claimed on their CV. IME, about 1 in 3 interviewees will make it past both these checks, and I only make an offer if someone does. The cost of recruiting the wrong person is enormous; it's very many times their salary, so that's a mistake you need to avoid as a recruiter. I will sometimes do a second interview (although it's not always necessary if the process is followed correctly), and I always make sure someone in the team also interviews a final candidate (and of course HR will interview them too in most companies).

So, now you know how it works, what can you do?

You need a well written CV - there's plenty of advice around on how to do that. Key things - make sure you include all the keywords which identify your skills. These are sometimes searched for by computer. Make sure your CV is concise and to the point, with the key bits up front. Give your CV to someone to read, and without telling them in advance, stop them after 90 seconds. How far did they get? Have they got a good grasp of your key skills, or have they only discovered you were born in London and went to a junior school in Wales? Do they know what _you_ did (important) or what the company made (usually irrelevant). Don't lie on your CV - you won't believe how obvious that is at interview (if the interviewer knows what they're doing). If you have a long career, don't try and cram in everything you've done. More recent experience is more important, plus things that are particularly relevant to the job you're applying for (you don't necessarily use the same CV for all job applications).

The CV is really just to get you to interview. There's an important method for short circuiting this though, and that's networking - making use of your network of friends and former work colleagues. As a recruiter, a personal recommendation is worth far more than any CV, so get linked to your former colleagues through services such as linkedin.com so you don't lose contact. It's often stated that most successful applicants made the initial approach through their network, not through agencies. (You still need just as good a CV though.)

[S Viemeister]

One other very important thing - have someone else proof-read it for you, and make sure there are no errors in either your grammar or your spelling. I've sifted through thousands of CVs, and the surest way to have yours binned, is lack of attention to detail. Anyone who can't be bothered to get his CV right, isn't likely to be careful and precise in the execution of his duties.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Don't need to: lived through them. Wrote the odd driver too..

[geoff]

In message , "dennis@home" writes

You're a laugh a minute dennis

Unless it was a Ph.D

We're the creme de la creme denboi

Like most small early development teams denboi

[Andy Champ]

Just to chip in late - what exactly were you doing on your compsci degree that didn't involve _any_ software engineering?

I'd be fascinated to know where it was. Not the same place as Bob or Tim, I imagine.

Andy

[Adrian]

Andy Champ gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

There is _quite_ a lot more to "Computer Science" than being a code- monkey, of course.

Sure, there was some SE in the first two years, and this was 20yrs ago, but I don't recall Knuth's name even vaguely. Mebbe we did cover him, and I've just forgotten.

When it came to final year, which is where he'd probably have come in, we chose what to study. I went down the Info Systems Mgmt & HCI/UI routes.

Greenwich.