Surprisingly, I have the opposite trouble: how do I stop recruiters trying to recruit me? I have about 15-20 recruiters contacting me per week however what I put it down to is:
1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially.
2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages.
3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does seem to be a factor...)
What I find however that recruiters don't necessarily look for anything BUT the above things. I've been approached for the weirdest jobs (considering my experience) from what I believe as a simple keyword search. When it comes to interviewing, the recruiters typically have no idea what they're talking about. This means that they're more interested in forwarding the resume from a brief "do you know this, have you had experience in this" as opposed to really understanding the position. Fortunately, I have had enough experience to interview the recruiters as opposed to them interviewing me.
My advice for developers struggling to get jobs (from how I hire...):
1. Have experience - whether professional or hobby. If it is a hobby: open source it.
2. Show initiative. You need to show you have the ability to actually think.
3. You don't need to know the answers. It's all about the approach to the problem.
4. Try to stand out amongst the resumes. I feel bad to say this: but unfortunately it's true. Given 100 resumes, you're probably only going to really look at 10.
5. Show charisma
I'd recommend other's to add to this: it's just a list I made from what is off the top of my head. But in regards to the article I disagree with:
1. Startup experience. It depends on what type of job you're going for - some will admire the drive, some will fear it (will you leave after a year)
2. School. I don't give a flying f* if they're from MIT or the University of Waikato. However I would give SOME preference to them studying at a school which includes algorithms and memory management (but that is me). Believe me: that (unfortunately) isn't a given...
I'm sure I'll probably get down votes for this; but please comment if you do disagree :) I'm only speaking from my experience as both a student (always) and as an employer.
I've actually had a similar struggle with the incessant but spammy recruitment emails, that I was able to fix almost perfectly. In the "Summary" section of my LinkedIn[1], I have a sentence that says this:
"If you wish to contact me, please put the word 'Waffles'
in your message. It sounds silly, but it lets me know that
you have taken a little time to asses my profile, rather than
mass messaging people based on a keyword search."
"Waffles" will never be added by coincidence, so if I ever see that in the subject line of an email, I know that the recruiter has actually read my profile, and took the time to write a custom email to me. If it doesn't have the word "Waffles", I just ignore/delete it. It has dramatically improved the quality of emails I get from this vector
I see you worked for Jardine. I own a company that is also a SEMA member, and for those programmers out there looking for work, most of the members of SEMA could use advanced technical help. SEMA.org is the automotive aftermarket industry group and is for the most part not very technical. In other words they need a lot of help. They just launched a big initiative this year that has the bold goal of standardizing industry data, so they are just now getting into the computer age with gusto (to be fair, many larger companies have been using EDI for years).
Sorry for wandering off topic. I have used a method similar to your "waffles" technique when hiring for positions. It reduces the 100's of applicants for a job down to a few, simply because most people won't read your postings clearly. It has saved me hundreds of hours in the recruitment process.
My solution to your initial problem is to have a "note to recruiters" linked prominently at the top of my resume (and linkedin). It covers what kind of places I'd be a good fit for and vice versa. Things like I am not going to update the recruiter's database, tell me company names, small companies/startups etc.
It becomes very apparent very quickly which recruiters have made any effort to read it and if they can't do that, they are unlikely to be paying much attention to their clients either. Since I run my own mail server, I then add the most egregious cases to a block list. (They also tend to be repeat offenders so that problem is solved too.)
When recruiting I look at the initial acronym soup. I especially like people who categorise what they are very good at versus ok. Then I look everything else for substantiation and to get a flavour of experience. For example is networking there, mobile, low level languages (eg C), web stuff, Python/Ruby etc. It is generally a good idea to include the acronym soup for each item in the resume (eg if doing a network server say what language and frameworks were used).
Open source stuff is excellent because it is actually concrete - something I can look at, and far more informative than generic text elsewhere can ever be.
What I am usually ultimately looking for is "smart and gets things done". (Joel has articles with more detail.)
The general bad things people do are what appears to be a bulk send, really long but irrelevant cover letters, and not substantiating things. I was looking at a resume this morning where C++ was listed as the first skill yet could find no mention of it anywhere else. It immediately makes me sceptical of everything else listed.
I once had some programming languages listed on my resume that I didn't substantiate there. The actual meaning of that was "this resume will overflow one or two pages if I list everything I ever did to know every language I know."
Length isn't that big a deal these days, and there isn't a need to write down every single language, framework and library you have ever written hello world in. If you listed 100 items there is no way you are proficient at all of them right now. The highlights will fit in a line or two.
I'm in a similar boat. I'm not "senior", but I am skilled and have plenty of experience with a successful start-up and a top digital agency AND I am skilled in multiple languages/platforms. I constantly get calls, emails and stalked on Twitter and LinkedIn by recruiters. It's a real hassle...
However, now I am on the market (at the worst possible time of the year). Logically, a recruiter would be the best person to go to for work, but my relationship with recruiters is tainted, and it appears that there are a lot of good companies that simply won't deal with them.
Christmas isn't the best time to be looking for jobs, but even following all the rules won't necessarily get you noticed.
I'm in the same boat as you, but on a smaller scale. I'm based out of Charlotte. So there is "less potential." However, I don't understand the whole deal that recruiters try to recruit you for the town you're in.
What about candidates who are willing to relocate? What about overseas relocation? Not being married and liking travel that sounds like fun to me.
New Zealanders other than me come here! It's funny that the Waikato reference is used the same way in an international forum as a it would be on a New Zealand one.
1. Location. Since I moved to SF the job offers have increased substantially.
2. Skill set. Fortunately I'm skilled in some "popular" languages.
3. Years of experience. I'm in the "hot spot" - not too old, and not too young (sorry - it does seem to be a factor...)
What I find however that recruiters don't necessarily look for anything BUT the above things. I've been approached for the weirdest jobs (considering my experience) from what I believe as a simple keyword search. When it comes to interviewing, the recruiters typically have no idea what they're talking about. This means that they're more interested in forwarding the resume from a brief "do you know this, have you had experience in this" as opposed to really understanding the position. Fortunately, I have had enough experience to interview the recruiters as opposed to them interviewing me.
My advice for developers struggling to get jobs (from how I hire...):
1. Have experience - whether professional or hobby. If it is a hobby: open source it.
2. Show initiative. You need to show you have the ability to actually think.
3. You don't need to know the answers. It's all about the approach to the problem.
4. Try to stand out amongst the resumes. I feel bad to say this: but unfortunately it's true. Given 100 resumes, you're probably only going to really look at 10.
5. Show charisma
I'd recommend other's to add to this: it's just a list I made from what is off the top of my head. But in regards to the article I disagree with:
1. Startup experience. It depends on what type of job you're going for - some will admire the drive, some will fear it (will you leave after a year)
2. School. I don't give a flying f* if they're from MIT or the University of Waikato. However I would give SOME preference to them studying at a school which includes algorithms and memory management (but that is me). Believe me: that (unfortunately) isn't a given...
I'm sure I'll probably get down votes for this; but please comment if you do disagree :) I'm only speaking from my experience as both a student (always) and as an employer.