I recently started a minimal-but-hopefully-effective job board ‘round here. But why? Everyone’s got a job board. Also, doesn’t everyone just use Craig’s List anyway? That one is freakin’ FREE!
There are several reasons that I felt a job board tailored to the passionate, user-group-attending programmers in the Indianapolis area would be valuable for both the programmers and the employers.
There’s no good place to find or post those jobs now. There are a surprising number of jobs open for that demographic in the area.
IndyHackers is already tailored to the user-group-attending programmers of the area. The site was originally created to simply hold information about meetings in the area that might be interesting to a programmer. So, many of the rock stars 1, ninjas, or no-buzz-word-needed solid programmers in Indy are checking the site frequently. In other words, the audience that many employers want already exists here.
There’s no effective, targeted, and affordable place to find or post these jobs now. There are several places you can find and post jobs. CareerBuilder. Monster. Newspaper classifieds. Craigslist. Posting to CareerBuilder $419. Posting to Monster costs $385. Currently, posting to the Indy Star uses CareerBuilder (and thus costs $410). Craigslist is currently free for Indianapolis (though it’s reasonable to think it won’t always be — Craigslist charges in SF, elsewhere). Whose eyes are viewing the jobs on Craigslist? Whose eyes are looking at the big boys for your ~$400? In my experience, the answer to both of those questions is “contractors and recruiters”. If you’re a programmer, do you ever find yourself browsing CareerBuilder or Monster? Craigslist? Perhaps it’s just me, but I never look at either. I do check IndyHackers frequently, though.
There are a surprising number of jobs open in the area. In the past couple months, I have heard rumor of seven to eight Ruby on Rails jobs. I was not seeking a new job, or asking around about jobs available, and yet, in the small Indianapolis Ruby programmers community, there were seven to eight jobs floating around. In what most people are calling a (still) down economy. Is that possible? The New York Times seems to think so, as they talk about in their article Will Startups Get Squeezed by a Tech Hiring Binge? . So, now, not only is there a tech hiring binge by existing companies, but startups need to work harder to find the people they need as well.
IndyHackers has an audience. It fills a need. There are a lot of jobs that should be posted to this sort of job board. Indy needs a hacker-oriented job board!
I hate seeing rock star, ninja, and various other buzz terms in job postings, but I hate to the same degree the number of people who vomit the same view of why it’s wrong: “You don’t want a rock star, all rock stars are coke-head, prima donna, flaky, outcast assholes.” Rock stars can often be confident, hard-working, incredibly passionate people who take immense pride in their craft. In other words, both parties are wrong and ridiculous. ↩
