DISQUS

What would be good is to break the TechCrunch hold on the minds of the start up interested public. Silicon Valley Bigots promote their companies and don't acknowledge the contributions of other markets.

You could help by backing a media site that highlights the contributions and innovations from other geographies. Here in Boston Xconomycom is doing a good job, and is run by quality writers with a journalistic bent.

Here is a Boston Angel you can add to your list
http://blog.payne.org/

Or maybe the NYC investors aren't supporting the local scene and the Sox lovers are making up the slack. ;-)

the Ladders misleads their users. period. they are representing jobs that are less than 100k. This is well documented.
LinkedIn is a great resource for recruiters. Their brilliance is that they lead their users to think they are the customers when in fact they are the product. The general job search sites like SimplyHired and Indeed have way to high noise to signal ratio. You can go four sites deep and still not know what company has the job listing.
Yes the current offerings are inefficient at best. The trends point to personalized search and pay for performance. I think you are on the right track looking at optimizing search results. It will be important for both individuals and companies going forward.

That is why I love start-ups, everyone is already striving for or doing each of your list items.
#5 Hit home for me. I once asked Charlie Polachi a Founder of a top tier search firm, "why would you take that CEO search, that company is having problems and not a good sell?" His reply was "you make your reputation doing the hard searches". That always stuck with me.

Your post reminded me of an interview I read with Brewster Kale ,the Cambridge ex pat, X Thinking Machiner, and founder of WAIS and Alexa, in ‘Founders at Work’. . He mentioned that one of the reasons he moved to the west coast was that there were more dreamers there. Boston had an environment that was too conservative and prone to thinking why things were not possible instead of anything is possible.

Hi Rob,

There are plenty but a hot area is SEM, or Inbound Marketing.
www.hubspot.com www.wordstream.com www.jazdmarkets.com

Or use the Boston VC directory to find most VC and funded companies in Boston. http://www.genotrope.com/genotrope/VCDirectory....

Seems like this might be a sensationalized headline. Your facts and point about top quartile funds having problems in fundraising are well taken. But Crash might be an exageration. Barry Fidelman is on Forbes Midas list for 2008, so he might not have been "let go". They also just invested in Cloudswitch which seems like a pretty good bet for 2009.

What's next? Now that Matrix is adding to their team on the West Coast, "Matrix blows up on the West Coast"? ;-)

Oh yeah, and I am assuming you like the look of the Jeff Bridges character. ;-)

Charlie,

I have had people suggest such a service to me in the past. How about theRecruited in the same vein as www.theFunded.com One issue that might come up as a Catch 22, is that if you are cold contacting a recruiter, they might be less interested than if you are a referral from a trusted high quality source. So if you could work a referral angle into the service, it might be more effective.

Good Job! It seems asking great questions at industry panels can pay dividends.

Charlie,

makes sense to me. Another promoter of this radical idea is DHH at 37Signals. His Startup School video is entertaining ,perceptive and very relevant to your point.

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/981-the-secr...

The advice you are dishing is reasonably good, but relevant to your audience and not $15/hr administrative assistants.
I think your point #5 is the best advice. People don't go to work at jobs, so they shouldn't search for jobs. Find the best company for you first, then the job will present itself.

I agree with Luke G, just looking through job postings is pretty lame. Particularly when you are in a high demand profession/skill set, where a keyword search will return thousands of almost random results.

Hi Charlie,

yes it is hard to beat the PayPal, Google mafias. Here in Boston we have a similar problem which I blogged about http://blog.bos.genotrope.com/2008/05/02/boston... .
I have also commented about the fact that some of the largest Boston VCs don't invest much in Boston.

Maybe someday you will have the Etsy, Indeed mafia and we will have the Tripadvisor, Vistaprint mafia to fill in the gaps.

Fred-
A sign of being "old" is becoming set in your ways and not wanting to learn and discover new things. By this definition, you have a while to go before you succumb to senility. I believe that there are VCs out there much younger than you that have become set in their ways and inflexible. Your approach and energy should be a model for the "younger" VCs.

sorry didn't proofread. ways to match people and companies is what I was going for.

I like the analytics, however the trend in on-line recruitment is toward more personalization. Keyword search and job postings may be replaced with more efficient was to match peopel and companies.

http://jobhacks.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/job-po...

Dean,

You might be interested in http://bokardo.com/archives/designing-for-the-s... written by local North Shore based social design consultant, Joshua Porter.

Agree, When he was here, I asked Mike why he didn't have someone here to cover the Boston market. He said, Nothing innovative comes from here. We may see more coverage of Boston companies now that he is taken with Y Combinator and YC News.
http://blog.bos.genotrope.com/2008/03/16/michae...

Great post.

I hope to see you put these into action at our next North Shore Geek Meetup in march.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8254935722

Seems you are assuming the recession 3- 6 months prior to having the data.
In any case, companies are still hiring right now.
Your tips regarding being laid off are good ones especially #1 get out there now.

Additional tips; Find the right company for you first and then the job. Don't assume there is no job just because there is not one posted on the web site.
And next time, have a plan B in place by cultivating relationships with other opportunities prior to needing to move.

Coming from the recruiting viewpoint, Mr. Vick is right on. It is about being found. Pundits aside, for most people it is still all about accomplishments. So when one is googled and there are thousands of citations but they are all the candidate talking, it is not as powerful as quantifiable accomplishments.
For example, if I was interviewing an engineer for my startup and I found that he had done 10,000 twits ;) I might be concerned that he is not focused on building product. On the other hand if I found one press release where he was mentioned as a developer that shipped a successful product, that would count for more.
I spoke with Bryper about video resumes and unfortunately there is a problem with issues regarding discrimination etc.. let alone favoring certain people that are "camera ready"
Bottom line to paraphrase Tom Brady "its about what you do rather than what you say" so what you have done and where you have worked are still the most important factors effecting career equity.

I agree with you. It seems most of the voters are frustrated founders seeking money. One thing I do know from experience is that the VC's now monitor their profiles and comments. So at minimum it has made them aware of what their perception is in the market place and may influence how they interact with the community.