Kevin M. Thomas's Posts - RecruitingBlogs2024-03-28T19:01:32ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalenthttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3548497161?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=1m5n3754jmuac&xn_auth=noWhy Cloud? Why Now?tag:recruitingblogs.com,2018-09-20:502551:BlogPost:20874622018-09-20T16:30:00.000ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalent
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnjR27zWsAI-sK3.jpg:large" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnjR27zWsAI-sK3.jpg:large"></img></a></p>
<p>I remember a few decades ago when we had dummy terminals and mainframes. If something were to happen to an individual node you had no issue as it was centrally stored.</p>
<p>The rise of personal computers led to a WAN and LAN based structure that dominated the commercial market until recently. Today it is all about cloud and migrating your environments to these respective…</p>
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnjR27zWsAI-sK3.jpg:large" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnjR27zWsAI-sK3.jpg:large" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>I remember a few decades ago when we had dummy terminals and mainframes. If something were to happen to an individual node you had no issue as it was centrally stored.</p>
<p>The rise of personal computers led to a WAN and LAN based structure that dominated the commercial market until recently. Today it is all about cloud and migrating your environments to these respective platforms.</p>
<p>Why cloud? Ask yourself a question. What do you use most on your phone? Is it a game or a browser or a series of applications? What if you were able to use those apps without any worry about patching or the overall environment underneath? What is another provider were to provide those services for you? That is the basis of cloud computing.</p>
<p>Currently, AWS and Azure tend to dominate the space and Kubernetes As A Service is on the rise which is a great Google product. </p>
<p>The need for centralization, consistent patching, cyber security and so much more are driving this trend into the Federal IT and commercial sectors in rapid fashion. The issue is there are not enough skilled professionals in this environment to properly staff for this emerging trend.</p>
<p>I appeal to the System Engineers of old who want to take the next step and learn AWS or Azure. Take the time to add to your virtualization toolbox and get trained and hands-on experience as I promise you it will pay off tenfold in your career.</p>
<p>Why now? There is no better time to join this growing profession as the world is simply your oyster and the opportunities are limitless!</p>Do You Get Git?tag:recruitingblogs.com,2018-09-13:502551:BlogPost:20868902018-09-13T17:30:00.000ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalent
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm_gKXCXsAAOwSZ.jpg:large" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm_gKXCXsAAOwSZ.jpg:large"></img></a></p>
<p>Are you struggling to find good developer talent? Have you tried GitHub? GitHub is one of the best networks of actual developers and their respective code bases in the world.</p>
<p>I am partially biased as I use GitHub to store all of my coding work and have made many great connections to some amazing talent.</p>
<p>I would start simple with a good title that you are sourcing…</p>
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm_gKXCXsAAOwSZ.jpg:large" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm_gKXCXsAAOwSZ.jpg:large" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Are you struggling to find good developer talent? Have you tried GitHub? GitHub is one of the best networks of actual developers and their respective code bases in the world.</p>
<p>I am partially biased as I use GitHub to store all of my coding work and have made many great connections to some amazing talent.</p>
<p>I would start simple with a good title that you are sourcing for. Let us, for example, choose Java Developer. Let's go to GitHub @ <a href="https://github.com/search/advanced" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://github.com/search/advanced</a> and in the Advanced Search box type Java Developer. Then scroll down to User Options and type in your city in the From This Location box.</p>
<p>Take some time and manipulate the title a bit in addition to the location and you will be surprised at what you may find! Happy hunting!</p>What Is A Neural Network And How Do I Engage Candidates That Are In This Realm?tag:recruitingblogs.com,2018-09-06:502551:BlogPost:20866142018-09-06T19:30:00.000ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalent
<p><a href="https://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/304fd83c-9a36-40ee-9eb9-b1ab1a778529-original.jpeg" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/304fd83c-9a36-40ee-9eb9-b1ab1a778529-original.jpeg"></img></a></p>
<p>Are you struggling to understand what machine learning is? One of the most popular forms of machine learning is centered around the neural network. A neural network is nothing more than an input layer a hidden layer and an output layer. You can also have a deep neural network which simply means that you have many hidden layers between the…</p>
<p><a href="https://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/304fd83c-9a36-40ee-9eb9-b1ab1a778529-original.jpeg" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/304fd83c-9a36-40ee-9eb9-b1ab1a778529-original.jpeg" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Are you struggling to understand what machine learning is? One of the most popular forms of machine learning is centered around the neural network. A neural network is nothing more than an input layer a hidden layer and an output layer. You can also have a deep neural network which simply means that you have many hidden layers between the input layer and the output layers.</p>
<p>Each input is nothing more than a single piece of data that connects to a hidden layer node. Get a piece of paper and draw on the far left-hand side three values horizontally which would be v1, v2 and v3 and then draw 4 circles to the right of that and draw a line connecting each v to the circles and then to the right of the circles draw two values o1 and o2 and label them apple or pear.</p>
<p>You would then test or train those data points against the outputs to which you can then bring in new data and the computer will then learn or identify which of the new items might be an apple or pear.</p>
<p>This is oversimplified however I would take the time to learn a little Python utilizing the Tensorflow library as there are so many tutorials out there. When you engage your hiring managers, ask them what frameworks are they using - Python, R, etc... This will allow you to better search and engage candidates to sell them on your programs!</p>What Do I Look For When Recruiting Restful Web Services?tag:recruitingblogs.com,2018-08-30:502551:BlogPost:20857852018-08-30T12:30:00.000ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalent
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dl2R27QW4AA3oNP.jpg:large" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dl2R27QW4AA3oNP.jpg:large"></img></a></p>
<p>I often see recruiters struggling to understand and source for candidates with an understanding of Restful Web Services so I thought I would break it down to the core components.</p>
<p>You have a client that has to interface with a web server (you going to google.com on your browser) to which your client connects via HTTP or HTTPS to a URL resource which sits on the web…</p>
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dl2R27QW4AA3oNP.jpg:large" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dl2R27QW4AA3oNP.jpg:large" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>I often see recruiters struggling to understand and source for candidates with an understanding of Restful Web Services so I thought I would break it down to the core components.</p>
<p>You have a client that has to interface with a web server (you going to google.com on your browser) to which your client connects via HTTP or HTTPS to a URL resource which sits on the web server. REST stands for Representative State Transfer which means that the connections are stateless because a protocol like HTTP or HTTPS you do not want to store state (much like a cookie stores state) as the application will not scale easily.</p>
<p>Let's break it down with a simple example. I decide I want a new guitar and login to amazon.com to which I do a search for a Taylor Guitar. That action takes advantage of the GET HTTP method which searches for the item. If I place and order I take advantage of the POST HTTP method. If I want to change the order I would use a PUT HTTP method and if I wanted to cancel the order I would use a DELETE HTTP method.</p>
<p>Don't worry you will never actually do this manually this is all taken care of behind the scenes. I wanted to provide some basic understanding of REST so when you are searching for a Java or Cloud professional with REST try keywords such as "REST", "RESTful", "Representative State Transfer" and "Stateless" combined with your other skill-sets.</p>Have You Thought About Looking For Freelance Developers Who Might Be Interested In A Full-Time Gig?tag:recruitingblogs.com,2018-08-23:502551:BlogPost:20851062018-08-23T16:00:00.000ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalent
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlTEfBtXsAAXLWy.jpg:large" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlTEfBtXsAAXLWy.jpg:large"></img></a></p>
<p>Struggling to find new developer candidates? Like many of you, I think about all of the possible avenues where we might harvest great and new talent. </p>
<p>Being a contract developer in the digital solutions world I only did freelance work as I wanted to have a career outside of just developing. Don't get me wrong I LOVE to develop but my true passion is Talent Sourcing. …</p>
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlTEfBtXsAAXLWy.jpg:large" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlTEfBtXsAAXLWy.jpg:large" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Struggling to find new developer candidates? Like many of you, I think about all of the possible avenues where we might harvest great and new talent. </p>
<p>Being a contract developer in the digital solutions world I only did freelance work as I wanted to have a career outside of just developing. Don't get me wrong I LOVE to develop but my true passion is Talent Sourcing. I finally finished my <span>Artificial Intelligence Recruiting Assistant software which I wrote in Python which is all open source on GitHub called RhondaAI (<a href="https://github.com/mytechnotalent/rhonda_ai">https://github.com/mytechnotalent/rhonda_ai</a>). What drives me like many other developers is to create something new that can benefit a cause that they love. My hope is that RhondaAI does just that.</span></p>
<p>I think about where others with similar situations may live on the web who might want to cross the bridge to a full-time gig rather than just develop on the side. Often times freelance developers will fall in love with the trade to which makes their journey focus on something more permanent.</p>
<p>I would encourage you all to reach out to some of these professionals and see if you might help them take that step to a full-time career. There are some great sites such as Toptal(<a href="https://toptal.com">https://toptal.com</a>), Upwork(<a href="https://upwork.com">https://upwork.com</a>), Freelancer(<a href="https://freelancer.com">https://freelancer.com</a>) and many more to which you can dive in and connect great talent to fill your developer roles.</p>
<p> </p>Are You A Talent Sourcer Or Recruiter Struggling To Source Or Recruit For Java Developers?tag:recruitingblogs.com,2018-08-16:502551:BlogPost:20840772018-08-16T10:30:00.000ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalent
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DktzjRvX4AAgl72.jpg:large" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DktzjRvX4AAgl72.jpg:large"></img></a></p>
<p>Are you struggling to find new Java Developers and it seems like everywhere you go you are coming up dry? The fact is Java is still the most popular programming language with over 9 million developers around the globe.</p>
<p>Java is made up of not only core Java but many very popular frameworks. It is possible that Java Developers could list out their frameworks rather than…</p>
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DktzjRvX4AAgl72.jpg:large" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DktzjRvX4AAgl72.jpg:large" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Are you struggling to find new Java Developers and it seems like everywhere you go you are coming up dry? The fact is Java is still the most popular programming language with over 9 million developers around the globe.</p>
<p>Java is made up of not only core Java but many very popular frameworks. It is possible that Java Developers could list out their frameworks rather than their Java experience. </p>
<p>Try working with a FREE tool like Hiretual (hiretual.com) and search for the following frameworks: (spring OR hibernate OR dropwizard OR blade OR gwt OR "google web toolkit" OR grails OR jsf OR "java server faces" OR mybatis OR jhipster OR primefaces OR play OR struts OR spark OR tapestry OR vaadin OR wicket).</p>
<p>I would also encourage you to seek out Java Blogs such as Top Java Blogs (topjavablogs.com) and do a little networking as well.</p>
<p>Happy hunting all!</p>Sometimes The Job Description Just Ain't Righttag:recruitingblogs.com,2018-08-15:502551:BlogPost:20841082018-08-15T11:30:00.000ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalent
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dko0anBWwAAcdWT.jpg:large" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dko0anBWwAAcdWT.jpg:large"></img></a></p>
<p>I remember years ago when I was recruiting on a Java role to which one of the requirements included 3+ years of solid COBOL development experience in addition to 5+ years of C++. Being a contract developer myself I began to think to myself and wonder what kind of an environment is this to which they have three very different code bases?</p>
<p>The program manager at the time…</p>
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dko0anBWwAAcdWT.jpg:large" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dko0anBWwAAcdWT.jpg:large" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>I remember years ago when I was recruiting on a Java role to which one of the requirements included 3+ years of solid COBOL development experience in addition to 5+ years of C++. Being a contract developer myself I began to think to myself and wonder what kind of an environment is this to which they have three very different code bases?</p>
<p>The program manager at the time was not strong on the technical capabilities of the program so I suggested that I speak directly to the lead and inquire about these requirements. Within 10 minutes of a conversation with one of the tech leads on the project it became clear that they only utilized Java as their core base to which C++ and Cobal did not exist on any platform of any kind within the lab.</p>
<p>If you are struggling with roles to which you simply can't get qualified candidates, try working with the hiring managers to speak to the tech leads to obtain a real day-to-day description of what it is they actually do and the environment to which they work. This goes a long way when engaging candidates as they can get a good idea of how they might be a good fit for your role.</p>Does YOUR Organization Have A Successful Talent Capture Strategy?tag:recruitingblogs.com,2018-08-14:502551:BlogPost:20840172018-08-14T12:00:00.000ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalent
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dkj3TXpW4AAtcQ1.jpg:large" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dkj3TXpW4AAtcQ1.jpg:large"></img></a></p>
<p>Sourcing and recruiting effective talent is only a small part of the Talent Capture equation. In today's feverishly competitive market we simply do not have enough skilled professionals for a host of Cyber, Cloud and Developer roles, particularly in the Federal IT space.</p>
<p>In your organization how long does it take when you send a successfully screened candidate to a…</p>
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dkj3TXpW4AAtcQ1.jpg:large" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dkj3TXpW4AAtcQ1.jpg:large" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>Sourcing and recruiting effective talent is only a small part of the Talent Capture equation. In today's feverishly competitive market we simply do not have enough skilled professionals for a host of Cyber, Cloud and Developer roles, particularly in the Federal IT space.</p>
<p>In your organization how long does it take when you send a successfully screened candidate to a hiring manager before they interview? In addition, how long after that do you extend an offer to a qualified candidate?</p>
<p>Years ago when I managed a small team we had a situation where candidates were sitting for an average of a week before a hiring manager would engage back. More than 80% of the passive talent decided to either accept another offer or stay where they are.</p>
<p>To remedy this situation, I created what I refer to as Project 24/24/24. The methodology is simple. When a successfully screened candidate was presented to a hiring manager they had 24 business hours to review and if the candidate was an 80% solution (they had 80% of the required skills), the hiring manager would respond back to the recruiter that they would be interested in an interview. The second stage of the framework requires an interview to be set up within 24 business hours of the successful hiring manager review based on the candidate's availability. The recruiter would have a firm series of timeslots to which once they re-engage the candidate they would attempt to set up such an interview within the 24 business hours. The final stage of the framework requires a successful interview to move to offer within 24 business hours of the interview.</p>
<p>This strategy took an average of 2-3 starts per recruiter to 7-8 starts per recruiter within 6 months. The pushback from the respective programs was severe until they saw the results. </p>
<p>Change is never easy and implementing such takes a true collaboration and diversity of thought. Taking time to sell the vision to the programs and the executive team took time but was well worth it.</p>
<p>Have you engaged your leadership with such a strategy? Every situation and culture is different however it first takes a conversation to build an effective empire. </p>
<p></p>Understanding Your Client Space When Engaging Candidatestag:recruitingblogs.com,2018-08-07:502551:BlogPost:20830592018-08-07T20:00:00.000ZKevin M. Thomashttps://recruitingblogs.com/profile/mytechnotalent
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkgsDFSWwAMBsS2.jpg:large" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkgsDFSWwAMBsS2.jpg:large"></img></a></p>
<p>I have found it very useful in the past when I managed a small team of Recruiters to which they did their own sourcing to take them directly to client-site and have them understand the dynamic of the lab or space to which they were recruiting so that they understood for example it may be a 1,000,000 line Java code base to which they utilize the Eclipse IDE to which the…</p>
<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkgsDFSWwAMBsS2.jpg:large" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkgsDFSWwAMBsS2.jpg:large" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>I have found it very useful in the past when I managed a small team of Recruiters to which they did their own sourcing to take them directly to client-site and have them understand the dynamic of the lab or space to which they were recruiting so that they understood for example it may be a 1,000,000 line Java code base to which they utilize the Eclipse IDE to which the majority of new employees would be modding this existing code rather than developing from scratch.</p>
<p>This simple example is something that I think that many of us take for granted. If you are struggling to get your hiring managers the candidates they believe are the perfect fit, I would suggest this remedy if you are local to the client-site.</p>
<p>In cases where you are not local I would suggest a good Skype or Facetime meeting to achieve this or in the case of a highly cleared facility obtain the best information you can share as this goes a long way when you are engaging candidates as you can better tell the story of the environment they will be potentially working in which has always worked wonders for me.</p>
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