Define "half decent at advertising their abilities". I am going on 12 years hardware and software experience, and aside from shitty spam recruiters I have never had anyone beatig down my door.
Make sure your summary is well written and keyworded with words that recruiters are looking for (and that apply to you) - Rails, C++, graphics, what have you.
Flesh out your past jobs section. Keyword these descriptions too as relevant (technologies used, major popular frameworks, libraries, etc).
Basically reverse engineer the recruiter's practices - they're using a search tool, searching for keywords relevant to the position they're fielding. This is not very different from SEO. Increase the likelihood of being in a search result and watch the recruiters pile in.
While you're at it, make sure your resume is always up to date and available on your own website (if you don't have a website, get one). Make sure you are high up in Google results for your own name. Keyword your resume the same way you'd do your LinkedIn profile - maybe ~5% of the recruiters that show up end up coming directly via my website through some kind of search.
Well, that goes much further than I would go in defining "half decent". To me, that comes off as a real Type A, game the system type approach. If the market was really as hot as is often claimed, that would not be remotely necessary in order to be noticed.
What I think is going on, having observed from outside for many years, is that a certain subset of companies are fighting over the same small subset of engineers (self confident, type A shameless marketeers who happen to already be located in SV, NYC, or Seattle) and complaining that they can't find people because this subset is too small to satisfy them all.
I have had a LinkedIn profile for almost as long as LinkedIn has been around. I have had a website with my own domain name since 1999. I do not have personal or professional experience in $FLAVOR_OF_THE_WEEK. Despite all the talk here and elsewhere about how its fundamentals that matter and anyone competent can pick up $LANGUAGE or $FRAMEWORK in the time it takes to become familiar with the codebase, everyone still seems to hire based on the buzzwords.
No one ever taught me that I should be treating my resume like an SEO problem. In fact, I have received so much contradictory advice about how to structure my resume over the years that I am almost ready to throw up my hands in disgust. Plus, the idea of keyword-loading my resume and LinkedIn profile makes me feel dirty; hell, SEO in general makes me feel dirty.
You're not using the technologies that are in demand, you're not writing detailed work histories, and you're not putting key words into your resume, please tell me you do not wonder why you're not being head hunted.
You belittle developers who are trying to advance themselves, their knowledge and make a good living with your Type A thing.
Everything starts off as a flavor of the week, Ruby on Rails was just a flavor of the week type deal and then it became huge. Same with Node now and with other stacks before that.
I've done recruiting, and am just finishing up a round for my company and lazy developers who half ass their resumes are frustrating. Trying to search for someone is a pain in the ass and not everyone is a professional developer, some of us are just developers at small companies trying to expand. If more people had well written LinkedIn profiles it would make our lives easier. If not a LinkedIn than you need to find some way to make yourself visible if you want to be headhunted.
That's not to say it's a bad thing, you can be a very well paid very comfortable developer without ever being head hunted, but having a well made portfolio will make your life easier certainly.
First off, I apologize for my tone. I was tired and cranky last night when I wrote that and should not have posted it. I did not intend to belittle anyone, though it came out that way.
> You're not using the technologies that are in demand, you're not writing detailed work histories, and you're not putting key words into your resume, please tell me you do not wonder why you're not being head hunted.
I'm not sure if you are saying this with or without having looked at my information, so I will write the response assuming you have not.
I use what my employers require me to use, plus whatever else I can get away with that is appropriate for the task at hand. I also experiment with new languages in my free time, though I stopped listing those on my resume and LinkedIn profile on the advice that I should only be listing items I was willing to be tested on. If I find something that is better for a task that needs doing, I use it. As for my work history, I have a detailed history, but I tried to control the amount of detail in each entry to avoid making it too long.
> Everything starts off as a flavor of the week, Ruby on Rails was just a flavor of the week type deal and then it became huge. Same with Node now and with other stacks before that.
Absolutely, though most fade away into relative obscurity at some point. The point I was trying to make there is that I frequently see statements about fundamentals being important and specific technologies not being important because technologies can be learned quickly by a competent developer. Yet the laundry lists of technology requirements seems to grow monthly. I'm going to learn new stacks because they are interesting and potentially useful to me, not to pad my resume.
Overall, maybe it was a good thing I shoved my foot in my mouth above. It drove me to think critically about my overall presentation to the outside world. I usually approach it with too much emotional attachment.
> "though I stopped listing those on my resume and LinkedIn profile on the advice that I should only be listing items I was willing to be tested on."
I'd recommend listing them, especially if you are interested in jobs that use them. If you are suffering from a deluge of recruiters, by all means, do what you need to do to slow down the flow - but it doesn't seem like that's your problem.
Here's the thing - the people who are going to be interviewing you and ascertaining your technical capabilities are not the same ones looking for you on the internet (LinkedIn and beyond). Don't let a non-technical person say no to you (or worse, never see your profile to begin with).
Put the keyword up, there's no need to be deceptive about it. "Hi, you look like a good fit at our company because of X" "I've used X in my spare time but never professionally, if that's alright with you let's continue the conversation" - you'd be surprised at how many companies are willing to keep talking. The demand is intense.
There's nothing untoward or dishonest happening here. You're listing out the things that you know, you're not lying about anything, you're being entirely upfront - the only extra consideration is writing in such a way that someone searching for you would see you in a search result. Name-drop languages, frameworks, libraries, as appropriate, because those are the primary levers recruiters know to pull when searching.
> "I have a detailed history, but I tried to control the amount of detail in each entry to avoid making it too long."
I'd suggest expanding. We're way past the days where recruiting happened via a pile of resumes on someone's desk, and a long one would make it straight into the rubbish bin without a glance. By the time human eyes hits your profile page it's already gone through a search filter and likely other recruitment filters - it's okay to be a bit verbose since interest is already there. Especially if this verbosity increases your odds of making it past a search filter.
> "I'm going to learn new stacks because they are interesting and potentially useful to me, not to pad my resume."
Right, and my suggestion isn't to pad your resume with useless filler. That does nobody any good - recruiters end up looking at profiles that have nothing to do with the jobs they're looking to fill. The idea is to think about the jobs you want (and are qualified for), think about what their recruiters are searching for, and making sure your profile gets hit when they search for said things.
The goal isn't to appear in more search results in general, it's to appear in more search results relevant to the jobs you're looking to find.
Exactly this. Listing things you've done as a hobby that you aren't comfortable saying you can work with is a bonus. It shows you are committed to being a passionate developer, which is of course a very very good thing.
