Jobs

Hi Aphra

Your newshounds don’t miss much, do they!

Yes, from today, I’m development director with CoCo Ventures, a start-up based on campus at DKIT. We’re seeking to put a team in place immediately. I’m hoping for some GD members to come on board and make me look good!!!

Seriously though, we’re looking at some excellent, experienced art and development talent as well as some more junior positions.

If you don’t see something there that suits you specifically or you feel you could contribute in part to more than one of the specs, don’t hesitate to apply.

Peter

CoCo Ventures, that the new guys I saw Michelle touring around the RDC?? I thought meedja had left the campus grounds haven’t seen you guys at any of the coffee mornings…not even the Irish coffee morning :D

CoCo have had offices in RDC since mid Dec. I started today. Call in and make yourself known! (unit 7).

Meedja came to the end of it’s tenure at the RDC and is now parked pending CoCo world domination!.

Peter

Good Luck Peter, strength to strength

Best of luck with the venture Peter!
Mal

Just in case you didn’t notice we posted a number of programming jobs are now available in Demonware. Training is provided so this is a good opportunity for people wanting to get into the industry and wanting to travel.

Aphra.[/quote:ec60804b0b]

Are these entry level positions? If they are to help with the activision take over might they been more experience required? just wondered?

Hi,

just to clear up any ambiguity regarding minimum qualifications/extent of training.
We mean the part about "blackbelt C and C++ programmer" in the job announcement. Successful candidates will not be trained in those languages, but are expected to already be very capable in their use.
Rather, the intent of the training is to prepare a blackbelt C/C++ programmer to be a blackbelt games netcode programmer.

Any extra relevant experience beyond C/C++ is a bonus, but we do not expect game programming experience from every candidate.

I hope that helps,
Sean Blanchfield (CTO, DemonWare).

nice.. should be plenty of good candidates out there.

All

Further to our posting of Job Ads for C++ programmers here and on various recruitment sites, we have found that there is a dearth of suitable candidates. Speaking with other companies and industry insiders, it appears that we are reaping the bad harvest resulting from the decline in interest in programming and computer science courses.

At CoCo, we’re looking for a couple of talented, intermediate level C++ programmers but are having difficulties finding them. We have LOTs of interest from very talented developers from abroad but we need people now and unfortunately don’t have the time to process visas etc.

Where are the programmers?

Do people have any thoughts on where would be the best places to advertise? Apart from the most excellent GD.ie, where would programmer types go looking for a job?

If you know C++ and are interested in getting in at ground level on a pretty fun project, give us a shout! (jobs@cocoventures.com)

Peter

All

Further to our posting of Job Ads for C++ programmers here and on various recruitment sites, we have found that there is a dearth of suitable candidates. Speaking with other companies and industry insiders, it appears that we are reaping the bad harvest resulting from the decline in interest in programming and computer science courses.

At CoCo, we’re looking for a couple of talented, intermediate level C++ programmers but are having difficulties finding them. We have LOTs of interest from very talented developers from abroad but we need people now and unfortunately don’t have the time to process visas etc.

Where are the programmers?

Do people have any thoughts on where would be the best places to advertise? Apart from the most excellent GD.ie, where would programmer types go looking for a job?

If you know C++ and are interested in getting in at ground level on a pretty fun project, give us a shout! (jobs@cocoventures.com)

Peter[/quote:7b0c788881]

I know a good few ppl, I’ll let them know about the opportunity. Although alot of them are in very good jobs (c++ is paying very good these days). But never know for the right price and job they may make a move. Also their local at home, so no visa hassle.

Also this is the problem you face when 90% of colleges teach Java throughout their courses. We’re seeing the problem now alright though.

Glad i moved to C++ when i joined Sega ;) Best of both worlds.

meedja what kind of stuff are ye planning on doing ie what games what platforms etc

Mr Magoo

Can’t publish a lot of details online but its a project in the area of a secure internet environment for kids evolving to a multi-user 3D online environment over time. Platform is Windows initially but looking at mobile/handheld and maybe console in the future.

Looking for general C++ talent. Experience in network applications and/or security a bonus. Ads in jobs section but would consider applicants on fringes of stated requirements.

Jobs located in Dundalk.

Peter

Well I could write an essay on this subject but I guess the bottom line is students/undergrads have no idea where to look for jobs. They try the usual newspapers and such and a few may sign up to the likes of Monster.ie but the issue of "where can I find a job?" is one I hear most days in college.

From an employer perspective the best things they can do are…

– Get involved in placement programs. Here in DCU alot of students are going back to where they did placement either because they’ve been offered jobs by them or because the students themselves actually know they exist.

– Getting in touch with the Careers Department in the college. Every week I get an email from the careers service here and 99.8% of the jobs being advertised are from business orientated companies whereas the only tech companies that approach them are the really bigger ones such as Microsoft, Google, Intel and Cisco.

– Contact the head of the Schools themselves. They will (or at least should) be happy to forward any details to the students themselves.

– Finally, as Aphra said, get in touch with the Networking Societies in the colleges. In most cases you’ll find the best programmers will be members but at the very least most computing students in the college will be. In our case (Redbrick) many, be it committee or general membership, have found jobs via our forums system due to former members posting job adverts on the site and even former members recruiting themselves for their own companies.

Of course you’ll always have the few students who will cop on and go out and actively search for the information but a lot of the time these are few and far between. You also have the rather surprising situation that a lot of students aren’t willing to leave Dublin in order to get a job, something I find rather ridiculous.

Basically there’s a balance, once the students being to get a sniff of jobs via the measures taken by the employers above then they’ll go for it. I guess some just need more of a push than others. I’ll expand on this later, but right now I have a bus to catch.

…oh and thinking of a return to DCU Aphra? ;)

sometimes I wish I had taken a liking to curly brackets and coding..sigh..

Aphra.[/quote:1a43650260]

I can’t remember there being any curly brackets in assembler!! :lol:

But sounds like Meedja arent looking for students, if they want intermediate to advanced C++ coders? Most colleges are producing java coders to a lower standard than intermediate coder.

My defination of intermediate would be that the person has 1 year full time project experience. Advanced would be 2-4 years and prob 1/2 development cycle. Would that be right Peter?

At CoCo, we’re looking for a couple of talented, intermediate level C++ programmers but are having difficulties finding them. We have LOTs of interest from very talented developers from abroad but we need people now and unfortunately don’t have the time to process visas etc.[/quote:d1050e7577]

Peter,

How many sites have you posted on, and which ones were they? We’ve just taken on 3 folks, 1 pure C person and 2 hybrid C/php people, and found the overall level of applications to be quite high (we got 2-3 times more interviewable CVs than we actually interviewed). To do that though we posted on a lot of different places, most notably:

– Monster.ie
– gd.ie
– jobs.ie
– ILUG (mailing list)
– boards.ie
– professionals.ie
– irishdev.com

We have in the past also used other sources, all of which have netted cvs of varying quality:
– computerjobs.ie
– gradireland.com
– recruitireland.com
– various college recruitment facilities

Overall, the best responses have in general come from jobs.ie and monster.ie in that order.

In addition to that, word of mouth is obviously another key area for getting people – I’ve seen people mail their entire E-Mail list advertising the positions and getting their technical staff to do the same. As mentioned previously, getting people from college technical societies tends to be pretty good too as they tend to be the right people, though I would be wary of people straight out of college as they tend to move on often reasonably soon.

Another area to look at is the content of the actual job description: make sure you are offering people what they actually want. There are a few folks whose goal is to make games at all costs, but given the job market right now, you have got to sell your job to people: don’t tell them what they are going to be doing – tell them what they are going to get in return for taking the time to send in their cv to you. Leave the larger details of the job to the interview stage.

Finally, building a team of good people cant be rushed, I’ve found tight deadlines on recruitment to be far more detrimental than beneficial. We had ads up for 4 months before interviewing last time, and while we desperately needed to have people start all that time, I’m confident that the team we have now going forward is better as a result.

Dave

Cheers Dave

Thoughtful post. Yes, we’ve hit quite a few of those sites. I’m wondering if our location has anything to do with it the

@Peter_b, you are correct, we need someone with 1-2 years actual industrial programming under their belt.

Peter

good luck in finding the programmers Peter .

and all best wishes for CoCos new ventures . sounds like you’re in for a fantastic time

:D