def self.included(base)
        base.send(:include, InstanceMethods)
        base.class_eval do 
            alias_method_chain :update, :alert_pmxbot 
            alias_method_chain :create, :alert_pmxbot
        end
    end

This will do the following:

• Create an “update_without_alert_pmxbot” method, which points to the original update method
• Put an “update_with_alert_pmxbot” method in the “update” method chain (so we must create update_with_alert_pmxbot)

This is the method I created

    def update_with_alert_pmxbot
        begin
            logger.info "In update_with_alert_pmxbot"
            # Do greatness
        rescue Exception => e
            logger.info e
        ensure
            update_without_alert_pmxbot
        end
    end

In other news, the first beta of the website is online at http://novapython.org. There are some graphs of comparing RSVPs to attended statistics, as well as member joins over time. There is some more work to be done, but I figured I’d post it anyway. The code is online on GitHub, so fork it! 

1. recess/lang/Library.class.php
2. recess/database/pdo/PdoDataSource.class.php
3. bootstrap.php

The third Thursday is going well but perhaps it would be wise to expand to multiple meetings a month? I would hate to over expand, however this particular meeting generated a lot of traffic. Perhaps pyBrew would still work. The Lost Dog Cafe was mentioned more then once tonight and came runner up in our poll…. it is looking good…

So on to new business. NOVA Python is now its own group! We have split off of the DC parent and have all manner of new domains and color schemes and… well, thats about it really. So, the new Meetup Group location is http://meetup.novapython.org and the website is http://www.novapython.org. There is a Twitter … thing?… to follow as well, https://twitter.com/#!/NOVAPython (or @NOVAPython). I’m sure I’ll send an email to the list shortly, once I make sure everything is working correctly. 

We discussed Python 3k and its unicode problems, and possibly convinced Ed to back port his language processor to use 2.7 instead of 3k. I learned about gUnicorn, which I intend on using for a work in progress.

It was a good time, and I anxiously await next month when Jim Fulton gives his talk!

We’ve just recently completed our first full time development hire for Cirrusworks! This increases our stateside My experience was not entirely what I expected so I wanted to share my notes about the process. I used two types of job ads, and posted to three different boards. I’m interested to hear other’s experiences in today’s hiring process as well. I want to know if the hiring process has changed from just a few years ago.

TL;DR
I received significantly less resumes than I expected. However I still had several great candidates that I had to make hard decisions about. This leads me to believe that the more specialized job boards are successfully reducing the clutter. I feel that, given this elite group, the company is the one who only has 30 seconds to pique the interest of candidate instead of the other way around(which is what I tend to see in hiring blog posts and books).

Search Locations
I used Craigslist, Careers 2.0 and Authentic Jobs for my search. I tested out both ads on Craigslist first. This let me keep costs down while I made sure my ads would get some sort of attention. I only posted the most successful ad on Careers and Authentic Jobs.

Types of Job Descriptions
I used two types of ads; a standard job description with the “Required” and “Additional” skill set, and a colorful request for those that love writing code and seeing their work make the lives thousands of people better everyday. The standard description attracted some people, however the second ad received the most response by far. The responses to the second ad were much more more personal as well. I’m not sure how to measure people’s responses to the ad, so I can only assume that the second ad attracted better candidates that were looking for more interesting work while the first ad seemed like a typical bland job.

Results

In total I received 32 unique responses by principles to my ads. The two Craigslist ads yielded a couple duplicates, and there were several companies offering me services(I don’t count those).

Here are my results for the job boards I used: 

• Careers 2.0: 3
• Authentic Jobs: 3
• Craigslist (paid, not Etc) (first job): 6
• Craigslist (paid, not Etc) (second job): 26

Careers 2.0

One of our finalists was from this site. I was expecting more resumes, but then again that isn’t what they try to do. The three responses I had were serious applicants, and I didn’t have to spend time sorting through any resumes that were obviously not what I wanted.

Authentic Jobs
I feel we were mismatched for this site. The three responses I got were very good, but we were looking for back end developers and these responses had a history of design work. Most of the positions on Authentic Jobs are front end and design related, and I will certainly return for that kind of hire. I was quite happy with the process and Cameron is great to work with. I can’t wait for Authentic Crew to go live.

Craigslist
As expected, this is where most of my resumes came from. I didn’t get hundreds of resumes however. It was also fairly simple to tell the auto responses from the real responses, and the people representing companies were upfront in the response.

Commentary
Only receiving 32 responses was a little shocking because I had expected hundreds of responses. Everything I’ve read in books(here and here) and blogs talked about hundreds of responses to job posts. I’ve got this idea in my head that job applicants only have 30 seconds to attract the attention of the resume screener due to the vast amounts of responses to each job post. I found this not to be the case.

I was able to read each resume I received. It only took about an hour total spread over, roughly, a month. Of course, the next steps of finding that perfect candidate was pretty close to what I thought and what I had read about. I was able to work the 32 responses down to five phone calls without too much trouble. The five phone calls became three interviews, which were all excellent fits. It took a much longer time to make a decision at that point because I was hoping for one single, obvious, match. Instead I was given two perfect matches. We met a few times, with all the other members of the company, and went through some internal procedures to determine who we would make the offer to.

I don’t know what this says, if anything, about the job market in DC. Maybe my postings were no good, and that caused the low response rate. It’s possible everyone already has a great job and they’re not interested in joining an early stage company. I’ve noticed that DC has a lot of consultants as well. Consultants that actually make a lot of money and don’t seem too interested on being locked into one company. This may be because the government is a big business here and consulting fits that contract by contract model pretty well.

I think the most likely explanation is because we are a smaller company and don’t have a continuous hiring process. We haven’t had the resources to establish our name in the community. Therefore when we put up our “Now Hiring” sign, there isn’t a large flock of people just waiting to respond.