Too many resumes? Add USMC to filter!
January 31, 2008
The unemployment rate is really starting to affect our hiring. This week we posted a standard listing for a network engineering position at Architel. Our normal response is usually 5-10 resumes per day. Within hours we had received 1,500 resumes and they keep coming in 5-10 per HOUR! Craigslist was always a great recruiting tool because the participants were often more technical and it tended to have more signal to noise than say Monster.com. But with the added ‘noise’ caused by the downturn we needed a way to ‘filter’ potential candidates. I had an idea, filter based on military experience. Need a ‘killer’ network engineer? Hire a Marine! We have had the best luck with candidates with prior military service. From CNN:
More than 200,000 veterans leave the service every year, according to Transition Assistance Online and nearly all bring with them a familiarity with computers. In fact, more than 40% of them have worked directly in IT as computer operators, programmers, systems analysts, LAN specialists and IT managers. Veterans also bring a mind-set that makes for great IT leadership. “John [Lochow] is an awesome CIO,” says Tony Ibarguen, CEO of Tech Data Corp. in Clearwater, Fla. “He has a very structured methodology and people work well as a team under that structure. There’s no confusion and very little politics.”
