Hey Buddy, Want a Job?

Now that I'm playing manager, certain things occupy my thoughts more than they used to. One of them will be my ability to hire good Eclipse talent as opportunities open up for me to do so. Knowing who I know in the Eclipse community, there is a lot of good talent out there, just none of them really looking for new opportunities. And I'm not the only one who would be interested, I've talked to two other managers who also work for large vendors in the Eclipse community who are struggling finding Eclipse experts.

Now, I wonder if that's just a facet of the industry I am in, i.e., embedded development. The big issue we face is that most of the developers that work in our companies are C/C++ developers, not Java developers let alone Eclipse developers. Not only that, but there is a distinct bias against Java, especially from the guys who have been through the trenches with customers complaining about size/performance in resource critical devices. So needless to say, if we need tools developers, we can no longer really depend on growing them from inside the ranks like we have in the past.

So I wonder what solutions are available to help us poor souls looking for help. Certainly there are job sites out there where potential candidates can post resumes. But with those, I've found it difficult to weed through the masses looking for the right skills. Everyone seems to know enough Eclipse to put it on their listings, but how many know how to make Eclipse plug-ins.

One interesting idea I came up with this weekend is whether having such a job listing site as a part of eclipse.org would be useful. It could be something similar to Plug-in Central that vendors use to advertise their wares. We do have the helpwanted newsgroup, but I'd like to see one where it's more a two way street. Obviously we would need some sort of optional discretion to allow vendors or candidates to be quiet about their searches. But it could make it easier for Eclipse experts and Eclipse managers to find each other.