“Why don’t companies ever hire me?”

April 30 23 Comments latest by MJ

Because you’re no different than the other applicants.

Here’s how to stand out, from a recent post. Note: This doesn’t only apply to programmers. Everyone should have a portfolio.

I am in college, but have lots of free time, so I can work fulltime at a startup plus add in a lot of extra hours (I know how startups are) on site or by telecommuting.

I applied to a few, sent my resume, etc.. but the same thing always happens. They want a portfolio.. links to things I’ve worked on. I am a programmer, PHP/Rails/C/Ruby/etc.. but I don’t have a degree in anything related to CS, and no professional portfolio.

I’m thinking the only option I have is to get a regular $8/hr job, while working on more and more projects in my free time. Enough projects to get a startup interested in me.

My response:

You’re a programmer, so why don’t you create a portfolio for yourself? Find interesting things that you wish software did — and build it for yourself.

Maybe you want a new way to integrate your iPhone with Outlook, or you wish there was a way to scrape all the images off a web page with 1 click. Whatever. Then build it. There — you have a portfolio.

Do you contribute to open-source projects?

Have you started a blog?

Or have you found someone who has an idea and helped them to build it?

Without some/all of those things, you’re just another programmer. Ask yourself how you can stand out.

There are a couple books that had a huge impact on my career. Rather than the typical how-to-get-a-job books, they’re a little different:

Staying Street Smart in the Internet Age: What Hasn’t Changed About the Way We Do Business (it has nothing to do with the Internet age, and everything to do with a kickass mindset in your current job).

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. (It’s not just for businesses. I used the ideas in this book to convince Seth Godin to hire me as his first-ever intern and work on a bestselling book with him.)

For more book recommendations, see a list of 50 other books I recommend.

23 Comments latest by MJ

Why the lady sitting next to me should pay $2,000 for a computer class

April 22 25 Comments latest by The Best Way To Spend $20, Today at Paul Singh

I’m sitting at my neighborhood coffee shop listening to two women talk about their careers. Yes, I eavesdrop.

One of them is complaining about her job, but says that she can’t get another one because she’s uncomfortable with her computer skills. Which led me to this post.

If you take a $2,000 computer class and it lets you get a job with a $10,000 salary bump, you should do it. No question.

If you buy one book per week, for $20 each, that’s $1,000 per year. If you get one good idea per week, my friend Paul told me, it’s worth it. If you apply that idea, I can’t even guess how much it would be worth.

If you buy a new car for $8,000 more than a used car, it can sometimes be worth it.

Put the numbers in context and look at value, not just cost. A $2,000 conference sure sounds like a lot. But if you make $80,000 off it, it sure looks like an investment. (Which is exactly what another friend, Erica, just did.)

Of course, the excuses will come. I don’t have that kind of money. (Answer: Save up.) How do I know if the class will get me that better job? I could probably take the same class for $100 somewhere else. All this stuff is free online, anyway.

You don’t know. That’s part of deciding what’s valuable and what’s simply a cost. But remember, buying something is not just about a number. If the value exceeds the cost, do it.

25 Comments latest by The Best Way To Spend $20, Today at Paul Singh

2 startup jobs (engineer and product manager) + $2,000 in referral bonuses

April 1 21 Comments latest by Doug

My startup is hiring! If you’re interested in working at a Silicon Valley startup, read on…

Last week, I wrote about life at the startup I co-founded, PBwiki. We’re based in San Mateo, CA (near San Francisco) and offer free lunches, free espresso, 32895123 energy drinks, stock options, and more. See more about life at PBwiki.

We’re hiring two positions, with some special perks:

• $1,000 referral bonus. If you refer us someone that we eventually hire, we’ll pay you $1,000 in cash. Hell, if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll even deliver it myself. Refer yourself if you want! Or send this post to your friends. (The person has to stick around PBwiki for at least six months.)
• $1,000 for a K-12 classroom. If we hire someone from the iwillteachyoutoberich post, we’ll also donate $1,000 to a US-based classroom for supplies or a special project. And we’ll include your name in the press release/announcement.
• We’ll pay for your moving expenses. We’ll pay relocation expenses for extraordinary candidates (we once shipped 3 cats from the East coast). So if you’re not in the Bay Area, don’t worry.

I wrote earlier about how well things are going at PBwiki.

So, if you’re interested in working at a startup, read on…

Product Manager

Have you ever used a breathtakingly simple and clean web application, and immediately started wondering how it was built? Did you start calculating the tradeoffs in the product and guess at the future product roadmap?

If so, we’d like to talk to you.

The product manager is a senior part of the PBwiki team who works to define what the product should include. In other words, the product manager collects inputs from the executive team, marketing, sales, support, and engineering to define the scope of PBwiki. S/he will also be customer-focused, communicating and collecting user requests and understanding key customer pain points. And the product manager will understand the competitive landscape to build a better product.

The ideal Product Manager will be deeply familiar with SaaS environments and their unique properties, have a technical background, have experience in startup-style environments, understanding how to sketch out storyboards of feature implementations in conjunction with Engineering, and ideally even be able to bang out crude prototypes. Preference will be given to candidates with 3+ years experience in Product Management.

Send us your resume today. Include links to webapps you’ve helped build, including any screenshots and process documents you used.

Web Engineer

What makes us tick? We love building useful tools for the web. We develop new features on Monday, and deploy it to hundreds of thousands of real users by Friday.

What makes you tick? We want you to be energetic, full of ideas, know what a wiki is, and enjoy working with a small team of brilliant people. You should thoroughly understand web technologies. You know how to prototype things and quickly make them real with XHTML, Javascript/AJAX, CSS, and/or PHP.

Send us your resume today! Please use your cover letter to either provide a URL to a web app you’ve built ground-up, or describe a project of yours that would impress us.

To apply to this position, send your resume to jobs404@pbwiki.com. Be sure to replace the “404″ with the correct HTTP status code for “OK”.

If you have any questions about these positions, leave a comment here and I’ll reply ASAP.

21 Comments latest by Doug

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