Working with employers...

On Sep 10, 2008, at 12:01 PM, Ben Ramsey wrote:
> Community support: ... We would like to do much more with local  
> employers, etc., but finding those who want to be involved has been  
> difficult.

This is an area where we've been pretty successful, but it took some  
experimentation.

Fact A: PHP has historically been a freelance market.
Fact B: Freelance markets are generally reputation driven. ("Hey, do  
you know any good developers?")
Fact C: Word-of-mouth hiring is practically invisible to those  
outside the process.

The end result is that PHP in Dallas was an underground job market.   
No one advertised, they wanted recommendations.  No companies knew  
how many talented PHP developers were in the area, and no PHP  
developers knew which companies would hire PHP developers.  Another  
side effect of the reputation driven market is that talented  
developers are relentlessly contacted by headhunters and recruiters,  
an experience which many of them really despise.

 From the day I started handling the web sites for DallasPHP, I was  
contacted constantly by local companies, each and every one asking me  
to throw them the best and brightest (who quickly made it very clear  
that, being fully employed, they would much rather not be  
bothered).   There was also the issue that, meeting the membership  
for approximately two hours a month, I simply could not reliably  
judge a member's experience or skill.  If I made recommendations, I  
could only do so for the very few members I knew personally, which  
would simply not be fair to the rest of the membership.

In the end, supporting the reputation market would ultimately manage  
to annoy every member we had, and being a voluntary org, that would  
be "A bad thing."

So I decided to force the game above-ground.  RULE NUMBER ONE is to  
NEVER provide contact information for your members to anyone.  Even  
other members.  Relay messages if there's a reason, but don't hand  
out email addresses or phone numbers.

As for jobs, the only fair way to distribute job opportunities to our  
members was to deliver them to all members at the same time.  No  
favorites.  The only way to not annoy those that didn't want to be  
bothered by the announcements was to make it strictly Opt In.  So we  
set up our Job Board, and every single hiring opportunity that comes  
along goes to the board for all members to see, and respond if they  
see fit.  We deliberately restrict the board to work that local  
developers can do, and we accent jobs from companies that have direct  
ties to North Texas.

This was not originally popular with the companies.  They all wanted  
the cream of the crop.  So I wrote a speech/form letter for them  
whenever they complained.  It described (in great detail) how many  
times a month I was contacted by companies asking for me to point  
good people out, and why I couldn't, in good conscience, do so.  Then  
it spelled out our reasoning: As long as hiring PHP developers  
remained a word-of-mouth exercise, no one would have an accurate  
picture of the job market.  By posting job openings, we could prove  
to moderately skilled PHP developers that there were good jobs with  
salaries and benefits out there for EXCEPTIONALLY skilled PHP  
developers.  The Job Board became our Carrot to entice developers to  
learn the skills DallasPHP planned to teach.  It had the added  
benefit of reassuring companies that were nervous about jumping into  
PHP because they weren't certain it was viable.  When they saw how  
many other companies were relying on PHP, they often felt better  
about the viability of the language.

In short, our agreement with the local companies is that we attempt  
to create PHP developers with the enterprise level development skills  
they need (or would greatly benefit from), and that they can use our  
Job Board as the means to contact any members who are looking for  
work.  We also welcome employers to attend our meetings, introduce  
themselves, get to know our members, and see what we are teaching at  
the same time.  The opportunity we offer them to see the developers  
interact is a tradeoff that compensates nicely for the fact that we  
can't pre-filter job applicants for them.

In a slightly controversial move, we make the same offer to  
recruiters and headhunters, professions many PHP developers view as  
little more than pond scum.  Fortunately, human nature plays to our  
advantage: The dishonest, disreputable ones rarely go through the  
bother of showing up.  Most show up once.  A few have turned out to  
be great partners, finding jobs for more than a half-dozen members.   
I can also say that if you need monetary sponsors for an event,  
recruiting agencies are often the first ones willing to put down  
cash.  All you MUST do is restrict their access to make it as  
unobtrusive as possible.  PROTECT YOUR MEMBERS.  Let recruiters  
introduce themselves and distribute paperwork, if they have it.   
Also, you probably want to mark any job postings submitted by  
recruiters - as opposed to those provided by employers themselves.

Summary: Companies want skilled developers.  Recruiters just want  
access to them.  As a User Group, you can provide both.  Ultimately,  
they'll love you for it.  But they have to understand what you're doing.


Tim Stiles,
Co-Organizer, DallasPHP
WatchMaker, Icomex.com