project old tech new ideas Feb 02, 2016

Fixing Hiring through RSS

From: Victor Felder <me@example.com> To: <you@example.com>

I'm not looking for work, thanks for asking!

Really, I appreciate your attention. Both you and I know that sooner or later I'll be looking for a job again. I understand you might need to hire someone right now. In this case, and if you're not a recruiter, you could still find my email address on the web and take your chance if you really believe I would be a good fit. Otherwise, if you're not in a hurry and if you consider I would still be worth hiring in a few months/years/decades or if you think I'd be an awesome colleague, here's what you could do: Subscribe to this RSS feed (opens new window) to get notified as soon as I'm back on the job market.

Now, of course I might be stuck in an unsatisfying position and wouldn't like my boss to be aware that I'm looking for a way out, but I don't want to be pessimistic. I don't have the relevant data but I'm not sure most people in my industry switch jobs without spending a few (f)unemployed weeks looking for the best option in between.

Should you subscribe, here is my pledge to you:

  • I will not use this feed if I don't need to. A publication on this feed will be a definitive signal of my intention of finding a new job. (Or a short message containing a new address for this feed if for whatever reason I need to move it.)
  • I will publish something on this RSS feed as soon as I need to.
  • It will contain a very short bio and describe what I'm looking for (in terms of position, company type/size, technology, location, part/full-time, perhaps even remuneration).
  • It will inform you of my preferred method(s) of contact (to schedule a call, ask for a full CV, etc).  

This blog post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License by Victor Felder.

I'm @_vhf (opens new window) on Twitter, please feel free to follow me. I'll probably be blogging again about other RSS-related things because unlike a Norwegian Blue parrot, web feed are not dead1.


1 Although (according to Google Trends (opens new window)) interest for web feeds in the general public has been steadily declining since December 2005, more than a third of the top 1,000,000 most visited websites are providing an XML feed according to builtwith (opens new window). Please get in touch if you have relevant data, e.g. if you know whether this >33% statistic is in a down- or uptrend. We could even mine Common Crawl (opens new window) for XML feeds presence with subdomain granularity. Any help much appreciated. [March 21 2016 edit:] I did it! Read How Many Websites Provide RSS / Web Syndication Feeds (opens new window)

#rss #hiring

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