He likes to have his “cigar” in while presenting…

We lost one but gained 4! Heidi, Courtney, Christian and Kirill! We’re exited that our small team is growing and stronger than ever!

Before she left, Ashley brought us Heidi Armstrong… she’s like Neil Armstrong… BAD ASS. Heidi is coming up to speed fast. She’s a natural born recruiter. Loves to talk to people and has a keen eye for talent. Heidi is already thriving here at Wildcog, soaking up technical information like a sponge! In her spare time, Heidi farms kittens. Go Heidi!

Next came Courtney. Court was once a competitor. We’ve been after her for a while now. We would run into her at tech events and see her walk away with 50+ cards in 2 hours (no kidding). She’s a networking, head-hunting, friend-making, connection machine. She was being recruited by LinkedIn but decided to join the Wild Ones instead! As I write this Courtney has 3 people interviewing at some great companies… powerhouse! Go Court!

Christian Perry, our East Cost Emissary and West Cost Startup Ambassador has joined Wildcog in a sales role. To most tech people in SF Christian needs no introduction. He’s the wizard behind SF BETA, the preeminent SF Tech Social, as well as Snap Summit. He also co-founded geekSessions with Shon! Christian is splitting time between Boston and SF so he’s attacking both fronts and spearheading Wildcog’s effort to bring the magic to our friends on the East Coast. Christian just brought in Context Optional as a new client! Awww Yeah!

Our most recent Addition is Kirill. Kirill brings many years of HR/Management experience to the team. He turned down a plush Director Level Postion to come here and we’re glad he did! Most recruiting companies are founded and run by HR people. We were raised by engineers. Kirill brings balance to the team with a twist. He’s also a celebrated underground drum-n-bass DJ here in SF, he’s been an event promotor and has played at Love Parade and many of the city’s great parties. Kirill is doing both sales and recruiting at Wildcog. Rock on Kirill!

One of Wildcog’s founding recruiters, Ashley, has accepted a position with Google on the SRE recruiting team. We’ll miss Ashley but she will always be a cog at heart. The SRE team at Google has some of the best engineers on the planet.

Ashley is laid back and has a genuine love for geeky things and people. We took that love and helped her hone it into a razor-sharp head-hunting weapon. We’re sad to see her go but proud to see her join a great company and a great team.

Cheers Ash!

Including coffee. Shon and Ashley are about to swig their fresh Bacon Maple Lattes from Pirate Radio Cafe. MMMMmm… BACON!

Up and to the right!

Scale is a big thing these days. Web applications operating at “net scale”. Hard, interesting problems. Changes that effect hundreds of millions or billions of users instantly. Neat, very demanding stuff.

Speaking of scale,  Wildcog is now recruiting for 1 of the top 10 most-hit-highest-traffic-most-unique-and-repeat-vistors sites in the world. In fact top 10 is being modest…

Got scale? hit us up

When you work in recruiting you get to see a lot of hiring. Hiring generates data. Data should generate intelligence…. in a perfect world. Wildcog brings you “the 30 day cliff”. It’s a statistical point of no return. Sort of like a recruiting event-horizon. Basically after 30 days “in process” the likelihood that a candidate will accept an offer plunges dramatically. The model isn’t perfect and there are exceptions, such as executive positions, but in general we find the cliff to be a real, observable, recruiting  phenomena.

Something is going on here. In passive candidates we think that initial interviews peak their interest in leaving their position and they begin to interview more. In any case, the window to hire someone good seems to be narrow.

Languages would be bands:

1. Scala:         Only for the cooooolest companies and projects.
2. Erlang:       Pretty damned cool but not as cool as Scala.
3. Python:      Cool but getting too mainstream for anyone really indie.
4. Ruby:         Ruby is pretty and her friend Rails is easy.
5. PHP:          Way too popular to be cool.
6. Java:          It makes business people happy.
7. C++:           Cool because only the 31337 can avoid buffer overflows.
8. C#:             A great language for people who use Windows.

Not included in the list are more front-endy type languages which are usually paired with one of the above. These include (in order of coolness):

1. Unity (for when the web really turns in to the Metaverse)
2. ActionScript 3
3. Javascript
4. Objective-C

Here’s Tangie during her tax presentation to Wildcog board members:

We see a lot of resumes. Let’s say ~500 per month. 1000′s per year. Some are good. Many are bad. Not because the people are bad, but because people, humans in general, are just little pattern matching machines. We judge ‘good’ from ‘bad’ based on experience. Usually this works pretty well. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes great technical folks get passed up by good hiring managers because of subtle details in their resume that matched a ‘bad’ pattern in the manager’s head. This sucks. Hopefully these tips will help.

***Warning: These tips are for technical resumes. Managers should cover their eyes.

• Think like a marketer, make it punchy. Make your resume more specific to the position. Don’t lie. Do be selective. Resumes are often too long. People have lots of knowledge and experience. Choose what you include, highlight based on the position you’re going for and trim out the rest. That verilog circuit design experience may be cool, but is it relevant to the front-end PHP postion you’re applying for? Cut it and highlight applicable skills.
• Pick a title. People often wear multiple hats but your job titles should not. Listing job titles like “Lead Developer / Project Manager / Technical Writer” is bad. Even if true, this is confusing to the person reading the resume. It appears less focused. Think about the position you’re trying to get. Select the most relevant title and ditch the rest.
• List the technologies that you used at the job for each listed job. Again, these are the technologies that you used . This is different from the technologies in the “environment“. Nothing will get you killed in a technical interview like listing a bunch of technologies that you only have a summary knowledge of. This will throw your entire skill set into question. If you used it at the job, list it and be ready to speak to it. Why did you choose Symphony over Cake? etc..
• Regarding education: if you don’t have a degree, don’t worry about it. It’s better to play to your strengths than to list random classes you’ve taken. If you have a degree, list it with right details. School, year, degree earned, etc. Including a GPA? Unless it’s stellar, don’t bother.
• Certifications? If you have 500 certifications, pick the relevant ones. Being a “certification whore” isn’t always looked at as a good thing. People with too many are sometimes assumed just to be cramming for the tests. You want to list them if they’re relevant and add real credibility. CCIE (with number) is great for a Networking Position. A+ Certification for a Flash Developer, cut it.
• Extracurricular: Contributions to Open Source projects are golden. Involvement in ACM, NANOG, IEEE, etc., great. Things that show you love what you do are always good. A one liner showing diversity or talking about your hobbies is cool. Avid Skateboarder, woodworker, closet roboticist, cellist, etc… If it’s not work related be careful about adding Too Much Information. You never know who your audience is.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for our post on Technical Interviewing Tips!

Muhaha… while explaining NP-C to Ash I found this XKCD. =D

TallChair and Wildcog get down to business. And take a quick break for some more ice cream…

Wildcog is working in the Mission at the Tall Chair Productions HQ. We stepped out for some killer tacos and a few scoops of amazing ice cream. Anya lost her ice cream after the first lick!

So what makes a resume an Ach Ja! and what makes it a Nicht-Nicht?

When we are looking at resumes it makes us really happy when we see detailed descriptions for every job on what projects the person has worked on and with what technologies.  When we come across resumes like that, we immediately say: that’s an Ach Ja!

On the contrary, when the resume has only the name of the company, title and one sentence without mentioning any technical responsibilites, we have nothing more to do but to shake our heads and say: thats a Nitch-Nitch!

Our first bizSessions event is on 7/14/09. This is the business focused counterpart to geekSessions. Come check it out and stop by the Wildcog table to say hi!

And that’s not all! We’re gearing up for a new geekSessions on Key Value Databases.

But before we do that, we thought we’d throw a litte mmmmixer event to warm up. The Sessions Mixer will be a networking mashup of all 3 events. bizSessions, geekSessions and pixelSessions!

What happens when you get geeks, biz folks, and designers in the same room? Either a revolution or a fist fight… maybe both! No presentations just drinks and networking, scheming, thinktanking, etc…. Maybe some demos… hopefully some cool giveaways from sponsors.

So come and join us for a drink on 7/28 at the Sessions Mixer Event!

The wildpigs have discovered the latest snacking craze! “Doritos Late Night, Last Call, Jalapeno Popper” chips. 

While none of us profess to be super huger fans of the TGIF appetizer Jalapeno Poppers, these chips are certainly awesome.  Maybe we are just swayed by the name “late night last call,” or maybe the chemical cream cheese flavor is addictive . . . . words still out.

Our office is small so we like to get out for a change of scenery. We’ve been known to decend upon, and rule various coffee shops and public spaces in the city from time to time. It’s nice to move around and mix things up. However, this can be counter productive at times if the venue has a) crappy wifi, or b) a lack of convenient power taps.

Today we got a new toy that makes crappy wifi a non-issue… a Novatel MiFi celluar / wifi router from Sprint. This thing is totally Gibsonian. So much so that when I whipped it out today at Arlequin in Hayes Valley, I heard this in my head: “Shon palmed the thin sliver of metal coated plastic and placed it on the table. He pressed a small recessed power stud which began to glow green and in a few seconds they were all connected to the net. A rogue clan of headhunters, shunning the establishment’s pedestrian shared WiFi connection in favor of their own broadband cellular uplink, complete with heavy crypto…”

Our new design focused pixelSessions event went very well with a packed house!

Wildcog in force at pixelSessions

The innagural Wildcog Taco Eating Competition. A photo essay:

I heard a rumor that Twitter brought in Accenture and was headed for j2ee on the back-end. But according to this article they’re moving to Scala for the cool factor… er I mean, scalabily purposes. Can Scala crush the dreaded “too many tweets” problem?