“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
—Charles Darwin

“We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.”
—William James

“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.”
—John Berger
Read more

Call this the I.T. professional’s guide to getting hunted. I sat down with my good friend Myna Sabado, who works as a headhunter for various companies and I.T. professionals. We talked about various aspects of her job, and how people are going about finding jobs these days.

In what industry do you work?
For recruitment? Mainly I.T.

Is there a particular reason why you chose I.T.?
Because I was a former I.T. person. It’s easier for me to evaluate the candidates because they work in a field familiar to me. Also, the clients that I know are mainly in I.T., so more or less my network is in that industry.

But of course the companies that you hire for are from different industries. Because everyone needs I.T., right?
Yes, that’s it.

So how do you get to meet your clients?
With the companies, I do networking. It starts with the client of a friend that’s referred to me, and then it grows from there. The client in turn likes what I did and he will refer me to another company. I don’t usually do cold calls, because the success rate is less than if you work with people you know personally. I work through relationships.

With the candidates, it starts with friends too. Friends refer them to me. I join online groups, and become active in them.

What kind of groups?
They’re all I.T. groups. Like Java programmer groups, for instance. I befriend their moderators. If you post regularly, the members get to know you, and they give you their resumes. And the others I meet through friends. But 80% of them I meet through networking and friends, 20% from search engines like Jobstreet and JobsDB. I network with the candidates I meet through Jobstreet and JobsDB, too. One percent of my candidates come from social networking groups like Friendster, Multiply and Linkedin, which is where I primarily find my top companies and candidates. Candidates also post their CV in Linkedin.

So if someone gives you his or her resume and it looks good, would you accept it even if you didn’t know him or her personally?
Yes. I can use any resume so long as the candidate is in I.T. I put these resumes in an active file, so when a job opens up, I can find potential candidates from that pile.

In your opinion, what kind of companies would benefit from hiring a headhunter? Read more

In case you haven’t heard, internet giant and our future overlord Google is releasing its new open-source browser Chrome today.

Until then, there’s Google’s web comic explaining Chrome. Huh. Apparently, Skynet Google tested the thing with monkeys. Read more