Podcast 2.0 - Recruitment For Women in IT
Our second Podcast is now available!
I had the pleasure of interviewing Jodie Miners, Alison Young & Markus Hafner for our latest Geek Girl Blogs Podcast - each offering tips & suggestions to anyone looking for work.
Jodie gives some great suggestions on what she did differently in her most recent quest for work - and Alison gives some excellent tips for those straight out of Uni. Markus gives the unique perspective of a recruiter - and also offers some fantastic ideas.
Thanks to everyone for their tips after listening to our first Podcast! I hope you all enjoy this months podcast as much as we enjoyed recording it! 
July 31st, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Thanks for the opportunity it was a great and fun experience doing that podcast…
Ali, I’m sorry I interrupted you at one point (sorry the enthusiasm took over…)
Also, I think I may have seemed to contradict myself on the CV / Linked in thing… I believe a good CV is very important and unfortunately you still have to have it in Word document format to deal with most companies and recruiters… that great content in that CV can also be in Linked In. And I would love to see that Linked In be the preferred place for recruiters and employers to look in the future. Progressive recruiters like Marcus are, which is great, but there are still many that require the (old fashioned) word format. So if you keep your Linked In profile up to date, then if you ever need to fashion a Word Format CV you can just cut and paste (or is that just a great new idea for a Linked In feature???)
August 1st, 2008 at 8:43 am
Thanks for the opportunity to be the first bloke on a Geek Girls Podcast, Catherine - it was good fun!
In hindsight, there’s one thing I can’t believe I didn’t mention - it makes sense to have one or two recruiters that you like and trust in your network. Sheez, fancy a recruiter neglecting that one, huh?!
Seriously though, most jobs don’t get advertised so one needs to rely on one’s network to hear about them. If you have a recruiter or two in your network, in all likelihood you’ll hear about more roles. And, if you know the recruiter, when they do bring roles to your attention (whether that be in 3 months or 24 months or whenever), they should be a great match.
Beyond that, your recruiter will be able to help you with a number of areas. In our chat, Jodie talked about writing a CV and Ali mentioned assistance in defining the types of suitable roles. Others include: developing an elevator pitch, interview techniques, career advice, salary negotiation, etc.
Another area that I think is worth emphasising is the importance of using the telephone. If you do happen to apply for an advertised job, don’t rely solely on email. You need to try and set yourself apart from other applicants. Conversation and engagement enable that and it’s something that is much harder to achieve via email. Various SNS can achieve it but IMHO the phone is best. One thing, if you do phone, be aware that most people are pretty busy and time deprived. Don’t try to tell your life story, try to get them excited by your elevator pitch so that they invite you in for a decent chat (when you can go into your life story).
I’m sure we’ve missed a bunch of things but hopefully someone (or two or more!) find a few useful snippets that help land a great gig.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:28 am
It’s great to hear how other women are succeeding in IT! I have to agree that I’ve never found my gender anything but an advantage to getting an IT job. I work in Unix system administration and have recently moved into consulting. I’ve had pretty good luck with recruiters finding me on job boards actually, at least after I got a few years of experience and moved to a good sized city. My advice to other IT women is, always be looking for for a better job. It seems getting a dream job is mostly a matter of luck and timing, so the more often you are fishing, the more often you’ll catch something good. Don’t be afraid to job hop a little bit so long as you are moving upward. Fortune favors the bold, so taking a few risks can be great for your career.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:35 pm
[...] absolute pleasure to join with @ceibner, @alegrya and @eskimo_sparky to record an episode of the Geek Girls Blogs Podcast. This one was on recruitment for Women in [...]
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:08 am
Jodie - not sure if you’re aware, but you can export your LinkedIn profile out to .pdf. This is something I only noticed because someone pointed it out - the icons to print/export/forward are not really obvious imo but they’re beneath the ‘Edit Profile’ tab when you go to view your profile while logged in to LinkedIn.
Thanks for the podcast all - was an enjoyable listen
August 20th, 2008 at 2:34 am
[...] create the next opportunity? I suppose I just have to take my own advice that I gave on the recent Geek Girls Blogs podcast and put myself out there for the opportunities to find [...]
March 16th, 2009 at 4:39 am
This post is fantastic. Wow…thank´s.