

Reverse job fair Jan 16th: Job seekers have tables, recruiters walk around. - TimothyFitz
http://hackerdojo.pbworks.com/Hacker-Dojo-Job-Fair

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nandemo
Reminds of this study on speed dating:

 _When men rotated, women (the ones sitting) were more selective. But when
women did the rotating, men (the ones sitting) were more selective. Nothing
else changed in the experiment, so it was the act of doing the approaching (or
being approached) that helped determine a person’s selectivity toward their
partner._

<http://www.livescience.com/culture/090929-women-dating.html>

So that fair should be good for the job seekers.

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jf
The number of companies looking to hire at this event exceeds the number of
job seekers. If you are an unemployed HN reader in the Bay Area you _have_ to
attend this event.

~~~
tomsaffell
Or if you're an _employed_ HN reader looking for a new gig - it's on a
Saturday..

~~~
callmeed
But what if your currently employer goes and sees you at a table?

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ciscoriordan
Then you'll need the job fair even more!

~~~
cabalamat
Or you might be offered a raise.

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mahmud
This is must be a new trend of ego-stroking stories on HN: first there was the
"Interview your potential employer" story, then yesterdays "Ask them for code
samples", and now this.

Look, if you're unemployed in this market, you can play coy all you want and
"tease" would be employers, but that will not in anyway rewrite the power
inequality to your favor. If you want "power", start your own company,
freelance, or work for yourself in any other form. But right now, going
through these lengths to play "hard to get" just makes you look like one of
those unattractive people at night clubs who think being obnoxious to you
makes them sexy.

~~~
TimothyFitz
I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of the job fair. In my mind, most
programmers aren't great at walking up to 20 random new people; it's draining
for people who aren't naturally social (I know it's draining for me). Flipping
up the natural order aligns the social people (Recruiters) with the social
activities (Cold introduction, striking up a conversation).

For perspective, I'm going to the job fair looking for employees (IMVU Inc,
we're hiring, we're awesome).

~~~
mahmud
Logistically speaking, it's more efficient to have 20 tables, and 200 people
walking around, than to have 200 tables and 20 people walking around. There
will always be more candidates than jobs, usually 10x more. This is the
efficiency argument.

Saying programmers can't walk up to 20 random new people because it's
"draining" to them is both offensive and unfair. Remember, programmers are
grown men and women too. It's infantilizing. Capable professionals are more
than willing to talk to you, either because they like what your company is
doing, or because they have bills to pay.

If you think someone is too socially awkward to speak to random strangers,
wait until they have a desk all to themselves, and now the strangers are
coming to talk to them.

~~~
catch23
Who says employers will only bring a single recruiter per company? Most of the
companies listed are actually bringing 3-5 company people to help recruit, so
it will still be pretty efficient.

Also, I'm hoping that we have at least 50 candidates or so, it seems like the
job market here in the Valley is really strong so it might be hard to find
people looking to switch/find new jobs. So far we only have 30 candidates
confirmed...

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joshu
I wonder what the business model behind "myfreeimplants" is... oh.

~~~
gcheong
Which is why "myfreeenlargement" probably would not work.

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mattyb
I'd love to see one of these on the East Coast.

~~~
jf
Let's see how this one goes. If this event helps people find jobs, I have the
resources to help take this event to the East Coast.

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andreyf
But the final pairing between companies and seekers is still going to be
extremely asymmetrically one-to-many... aside from stroking developers' egos,
how is this model superior?

~~~
seiji
I think there will be more job seekers than employer representatives. Not
everybody wants to plaster their name on a webpage saying "I'm looking for a
job!"

It's also before (and close to) SHDH 36, so people will have reason to be in
the area.

We'll see how it goes next Saturday.

~~~
jf
I expected there to be more job seekers than employer representatives, but as
of now (time_t: 1262991491) there are more companies signed up for the
"recruiter" mailing list than there are on the "job seeker" mailing list.

As far as seeing "how it goes", the reason we are using mailing lists for
"signup" is so we can gauge the success of the event not just on Saturday, but
30, 60 and 90 days after the event.

