The CV side of careers.stackoverflow.com has been reasonably complete, ever since we added free public CVs.
Well, I'm proud to announce that we've begun serious beta testing of the other half of the equation -- the part of careers.stackoverflow.com for employers and hiring managers.
We've been trickling in "friends of Stack Overflow" who happen to be employers (including Joel) over the last week and a half. If you're familiar with our sloppyiterative development style, here's what we like to do:
- build out some more features
- let a few people experience those features
- gather detailed feedback
- GOTO 1
This way we know whether we're on track, and how far we have to go -- while (hopefully) avoiding building The Wrong Thing.
We're pretty deep into this cycle now, so I have reasonable confidence that what we've built for employers doesn't suck too much. The basic process is not complicated: hiring managers have a flexible ajax-y search form, and the ability to save and email candidates they're interested in.
While the primary form of communication in the system is email, we realize email is a fallible system, so we also have web-based notifications alongside email. You may also notice a new "messages" tab in the careers UI. Here, you can view the status of any pending communication between hiring managers and candidates from either side.
We've also turned on many of the statistics in the system, like how many searches have been performed, how many times your CV has been viewed by the public (if published) and potential employers (if filed), and so forth. We plan to keep a ridiculous number of live stats, so you can see how well that CV filing fee is actively working for you (or not).
I should also point out that the $29 / 3 years special introductory filing rate for your CV is conclusively over. That was our way of thanking the truly early adopters, who went out of their way to trust in this careers thing we're doing, even before it was fully built. We won't let you down! That said, we're still sort of in the beginning, as you can see from the employer beta, so we've extended a new introductory CV filing rate until the end of 2009:
$29 for 1 year
Fair warning, the price absolutely will go up in 2010. So if you think you might need to file your CV -- that is, make it searchable by hiring managers -- any time in the next year, consider jumping on this offer before January 1.
(as a reminder: as always, publishing a public CV on careers.stackoverflow.com is and always will be totally 100% free, forever! There's a modest filing fee only for those who wish to be searchable by hiring managers.)
To everyone who has signed up for careers, thank you. We won't let you down. Our goal is to take your job situation from this …
… to this!
Well, metaphorically speaking.
Keep an eye on those email boxes, messages tabs, and stats over the next two weeks. We're going to do everything we can to make the magic happen. If you'd like to be a part of that magic, file your CV at Stack Overflow Careers.
Oh, and if you happen to have awesome programming jobs that are worthy of the Stack Overflow Careers community -- email us at careers@stackoverflow.com and we'll see what we can do.