Comment On Desperate Recruitment

Ooh - I'll work for... No I won't

That is possibly the most half cocked effort I've seen.

I like it...a company that thinks outside the box. Way outside.

Maybe this is a sneaky way of making it onto the Hidden Network without paying for it... :)

Well, it's right there on their front page: Stand out from the crowd. Not always good...

Oh wow. I used to work there... that's fairly special.

Is this actually geniune? Not some photochop job?

CAPTCHA: burned (I guess they are now)

Someone should photoshop that image to change the job description to "Sign Holder".

The page title "Untitled Page" for http://www.dip.co.uk/Careers/CareerDeveloper.aspx says it all.

It's the other way around over here :-)

£50k? Not bad!

Oh wait, it's in Peterborough...

Not as unfortunate as the commenter who used to work there, but I once went to meet them to discuss using their product. Its was good, but the management and whole ethos of the company was a little eccentric.

One quick question - the front page (http://www.dip.co.uk) has an image with the text 'Place Your Future in Our Hands' - would you really want to do that after seeing this?!?!

They should try to do recruitment in China!

check this pix out: http://www.pixnet.net/photo/freebsd/1084531

The sign reads:
---
Professional Web Service Programming
Java C++
5 lines of code = 1 RMB
---

lol

I like the idea, that maybe they could get somebody for only 40£!

Stephan:

I like the idea, that maybe they could get somebody for only 40£!

Depends what they're asking for, exactly. Someone to maintain their stock-control database's php front-end? Or someone to port undocumented COBOL into Haskell?

I think £40pcm is reasonable for the former, £50K an hour is reasonable for the latter...

Chris:

Maybe this is a sneaky way of making it onto the Hidden Network without paying for it... :)

That's actually pretty clever. :)

They probably think that all the hits they must be getting now are from people who drove past their sign, so they'll use the same method again.

This is as real as real gets, definitely no Photoshop effort! I have driven past this chap on the way into work on the last three mornings. I might just have to wander over the road to their offices and enquire...

In a sense that's true, if only in a second hand way. Some drove by, put it on the net, and now many more 'drive-by' in the cyber sense.

It's all exposure - the more the better!

I really don't see anything wrong with this... (In principle - I have no knowledge of the company involved or how good those salaries are for the location)

Agencies charge an absolute fortune for doing nothing, so anything to reduce their income is a good thing in my mind. It's a clear informative sign, almost everyone seeing it is, by definition, going to find it a suitable location to work.

I can't see why people are saying it's a bad idea! You might say it's "amateurish", but I see it as thinking differently.

More people should do it, then agencies will either go bust or start doing their job properly so they're worth using.

If I saw that I wouldn't be sure whether they're hiring software developers or actually selling them.

I can assure you it is real. My brother works for a company in that business area and has passed this guy daily. Glad I moved away from Peterborough area given such excellent prospects of employment there...

Here in the Third World, 40K pounds sounds like a dream, whatever the job description says.

Interesting look the company is going for! Who is behind the sign, thats what i would like to know!

Ligsey:

... Who is behind the sign, thats what i would like to know!

And how much is he getting paid?

Not a bad salary tho, here in the north of england many developer salaries are in the £8K-13K range, esp for new grads.

I used to work for a customer of DI about a decade ago. I even went to Peterborough once to meet them. The highlight of our visit was the tour of the manufacturing shop next to their offices.

The management didn't strike me as especially eccentric, as opposed to the management of the supplier we switched to next.

Nice idea but... Would a recuitment company or univertisy want to work with this organisation. Utterly embarrassing!

Dave:

Not a bad salary tho, here in the north of england many developer salaries are in the £8K-13K range, esp for new grads.

??? really

i did not realise it is so grim up north - havn't ventured beyond birmingham for a while now.

in leeds 30k is pretty common

Helix:

Dave:

Not a bad salary tho, here in the north of england many developer salaries are in the £8K-13K range, esp for new grads.

??? really

i did not realise it is so grim up north - havn't ventured beyond birmingham for a while now.

Salaries as low as £8K? They haven't heard of the minimum wage, then? (Minimum wage is ~10K pa)

The RealWTF is that Hidden Network based on supremacy and excellence uses JavaScript

Howdy indeed

It really says something about their efficiency and problem solving skills that they get a guy to hold a sign instead of just pushing the sign into the ground. That should be enough to scare away any developer worth his salt.

risk:

It really says something about their efficiency and problem solving skills that they get a guy to hold a sign instead of just pushing the sign into the ground. That should be enough to scare away any developer worth his salt.

They probably can't legally put it in the ground there.

DIP indeed...

Dave:

Not a bad salary tho, here in the north of england many developer salaries are in the £8K-13K range, esp for new grads.

Tripe. Did you screw up the conversion from Rupees or something?

Rob:

In a sense that's true, if only in a second hand way. Some drove by, put it on the net, and now many more 'drive-by' in the cyber sense.

It's all exposure - the more the better!

I spent a little time working for this company and you'd be right in saying the management thinks well outside the box and this wouldn’t be the first time they've done something off the wall.

At one stage their recruitment page said “we want people that live to work not work to live”. Gutsy move!

If I apply I wonder if I can keep the sign?

Loren Pechtel:

risk:

It really says something about their efficiency and problem solving skills that they get a guy to hold a sign instead of just pushing the sign into the ground. That should be enough to scare away any developer worth his salt.

They probably can't legally put it in the ground there.

Thats the point. Maybe can't legally [insert software problem] so will [absurd solution that need manual maintaining].

Hey, I plugged the numbers in a currency converter and 40K ukp = 82k USD... or 80k$CA.

Count me in! Can I telework? Can you set up direct deposits to foreign accounts? Do you pay the airfare for meetings?

Well maybe not "many", maybe just the place I used to work at lol. Maybe for 8k the hours were different? Not sure really, but they never got anyone for less than the 12k I was on. My hours were 8:30 to 17:00 plus loads of unpaid overtime and work from home.

I was just out of uni and everywhere else wanted several years commercial experience, so basically took it to get that. Experience was somewhat similar to the "It's How Everyone Builds It" post the other day. A few of the highlights from my time there include...

- Being asked to develop new software to replace sage payroll with a deadline of 2 weeks (and this is an international company).

- Being asked to reverse engineer and crack various pieces of software and told if I don't do it he'll find someone who will.

- Being asked to delete or corrupt certain records in the database without being given an explanation.

- Inheriting several hundred bug-ridden projects of VB spaghetti from the previous guy, full of "on error resume next" and "on error goto <bit of code that displays 'ACCESS DENIED!!!!' and exits>" statements.

I don't work there any more ;)

Correct, there are cases where you can't legally plant a sign but you can pay a guy to legally stand there holding the sign. And this is a fairly common way of bending the rules in the UK. Meh, at least it creates jobs, albeit really shitty ones.

And whether or not £40-50k is fair depends a lot on location. In some parts of London that would barely pay for a one-bedroom flat.

Hubert Farnsworth:

The page title "Untitled Page" for http://www.dip.co.uk/Careers/CareerDeveloper.aspx says it all.

It doesn't say "Untitled Page" now. Maybe someone from DIP reads WTF.

wouldnt it be interesting to see what he gets paid(or fed, depending on the agreement, lol)

Well I like the idea, different maybe but if it works then it works.

How many people would really spend £10,000+ with a recruitment agency if it were their own money? Would you really if you could avoid it?

Do the math:

Eastern European (it's a fair assumption) stick holder at £50 a day * 100 days (half a year) and it's still half the price, IF it works.

£8k-£12k a year? Hahaha ... you should move down south ... the starting salary for a grad is about £20k-£25k (computer science grad rather than an 'IT and media' grad).

Still, the cheapest house I can find is £180k ... so maybe you will have the last laugh after all ...

risk:

It really says something about their efficiency and problem solving skills that they get a guy to hold a sign instead of just pushing the sign into the ground. That should be enough to scare away any developer worth his salt.

Wrong. People are much more likely to look at a sign being held by a person than one just standing there. And not just because it's unusual, also because our brains are evolutionally conditioned to pay attention to people, not to signposts.

In Japan, it's quite common to see people on the street holding ad signs.

Is this really so stupid?

They're now listed here and who knows where else online - I'd say this site is their perfect target market and the salary and phone number is in full view...

I worked for this company as a holiday job back when I was a student. They weren't that bad; they had a couple of solid products and a good customer base, and their development process appeared to be fine.

The boss was a bit into micromanagement and liked to waste one morning a week on a big meeting, but that's hardly a road to ruin. I wonder what happened there?

I applied for a job with them when I left Uni, but they turned me down. That's a damn good salary for the area -- I don't know whether to dance on their grave or fill out an application form.


Their development process was


're really not that bad -- seemed to have a fairly solid product

Grr. Ignore the trailing fragments.

FredSaw:

Rob:

In a sense that's true, if only in a second hand way. Some drove by, put it on the net, and now many more 'drive-by' in the cyber sense.

It's all exposure - the more the better!

This man is a budding entrepreneur. Which would you rather have, HTML or food?

And more relevantly, we've had a couple of million years to recognise bad food, and only ten to recognise bad HTML. Not only is there far, far less of the former than there is of the latter: the guy will be turning up on your doorstep with a sick-bag every half an hour and demanding proper payment, and meanwhile it'll take you six months or so to find out that you're fucked.

He may very well be the poster boy for outsourcing.

Unfortunately, the human vomit reflex needs to be updated for the digital age.