The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast, hosted by Cal Evans, has posted their latest interview with a member of the PHP community. In this latest show Cal talks with Chris Rowe, Director of Business Development at Yochana IT Solutions.

In this episode Cal and Chris talk about recruiting firms and how conferences (and the community) look from their perspective. They also talk about some of the "bad recruiters" out there that can make it harder for good, quality recruiting firms to attract good talent. They also talk about the job/tech scene there in Detroit and

You can listen to this latest episode either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 of the show directly. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter for updates when new shows are released.

On the SitePoint PHP blog editor Bruno Skvorc has a new tutorial posted showing a possible way to "fight recruiting spam" in your inbox with the help of a little bit of PHP.

The biggest concern I have with modern email providers, is the fact that they are all quite bad at spam control. [...] I don’t mean the “Nigerian prince” type of spam, which is mostly blocked successfully (unless you’re using FastMail – they can’t even recognize those) but stuff that I’m really, really not interested in getting. Case in point, recruiter spam.

In this tutorial, we’ll get started with building a custom email processor which can read individual emails, run them through some predefined rules, and act on them. The end result will be very similar to what many providers offer out of the box, but it’ll lay the groundwork for more advanced aspects in future posts.

His example application will do things like: do keyword matching for recruiter-ish things and auto-reply (then delete the original) and purge emails sent after unsubscribing from the service. He builds out the example application on a Homestead Improved VM, coming pre-installed with the IMAP extension for PHP (used to access the user's inbox). He then installs the tedivm/fetch package for the PHP code and shows how to read the emails from your inbox. He uses the FastMail service so he walks through how to hook the script into that service using an "application password".

From there he develops the functionality of the application including:

• pattern matching on the body contents for "recruiter-ish" terms
• setting a "points" threshold for the number of matches
• sending replies with Swiftmailer
• whitelisting certain terms
• moving the messages into an "auto-replied" folder so we know who the script talked to

All of the code you'll need is included in the post along with several screenshots that help to ensure you're on the right path.

Cal Evans asked a question on Twitter the other day of his followers for advice, from developers, to share with recruiters and how they can do their job better when it comes to recruiting talent.

I post this not to belittle or ridicule recruiters. I think that good recruiters are a valuable part of the tech ecosystem. I post this to hopefully help more recruiter become good recruiters.

He's listed all of the responses he's gotten in the post (via Storify) as individual tweets. There's a few recurring themes happening and lots of good advice including:

• "treat developers as human beings"
• "We're smart people, we can see an email isn't personal. Treat us like the individuals we are."
• "Read the profile before sending out CV, I am not a Ruby developer."
• "Googlebing someone before emailing them. Know who they are."
• "don't try to sound like you know what you're talking about if you don't. You just lose respect."
• "build a relationship with me, not a one night stand"
• " Have the decency to at least get back to devs if the end client hasn't chosen them"

If you are or know of a recruiter, please share this post with them. The unfortunate fact is that there's a lot of recruiters out there that don't realize that this is how to talk to developers (and sadly, some don't event care).

Cal Evans has posted the next in his series offering advice to companies (and recruiters) out there looking to hire good, qualified and technically competent candidates. In this new post he suggests that these organizations learn something from when they get a "no" from the candidate.

Most companies have some variation of [the same] process for interviewing developers. [...] Between each bullet point is a decision point on the part of both your company and the candidate whether to move to the next step. Don’t assume that just because you have a job, the candidate will be willing to move forward at each step. Some candidates will excuse themselves from the process for a variety of reasons.

He suggests that it's important to learn from the "no" and change things up accordingly. If you can find out the "why" behind the "no", you can make a change for the better. He reminds companies that "no" could also mean "not right now" or "not without extra information I don't have".

Set aside some time in your schedule soon after the break, but not immediately after – to contemplate why [the candidate said no]. Yes, this is largely navel gazing but it is important navel gazing. Did they see something in your team that you can correct? Is there a problem you can work on? Not every NO will be something you can fix, or even your fault, but make sure you spend a little time thinking about it.

On the 7PHP.com site today there's a different sort of community interview, this time with Lonnie Brown, a recruiter that's been focusing in on PHP development jobs for the last few years and helping people find that right fit.

You have all heard of recruitment; we have it in all sphere and The PHP Sphere is no exception to that. Have you ever had an talk with a recruiter? [...] Look no further, I bring you The Guy for all these questions and curiosity that you may have! [...] There are some that are making a difference and may be today this interview can show some lights down that tunnel. I would love to hear your comments and feedbacks after your reading + any questions to Lonnie Brown – I’m sure he will happily respond.

In the interview they talk some about Lonnie and his background in recruiting in general and more specific to the PHP community. They focus in on the PHP-related aspects of recruiting and some of the common challenges he deals with. Lonnie shares some of his thoughts for those looking for positions and dealing with recruiters in general.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted its latest episode, an interview with Lonnie Brown, a recruiter that's known within the PHP community.

Cal talks to Lonnie about:

• His first impressions of the PHP community
• What the current PHP job market looks like
• His thoughts on why some companies "get" telecommuting

You can listen to this latest episode either through the downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

In a new episode of the Voices of the ElePHPant podcast, Cal Evans has taken a break from the normal "Three Questions" format of the podcast so far and has instead posted an discussion about recruiters. Brandon Savage and Scott Gordon talk about the pros and cons of working with recruiters.

Once I read [Brandon's post on why recruiters are bad for your career], I knew that I needed to get Brandon, and another friend of mine, Scott Gordon – a recruiter for Vaco and serious social media bad-ass – together to discuss some of the points Brandon brought out. I shuld probably point out that while Scott is a recruiter, he is not your typical recruiter. He regularly talks about the shortcomings of his industry and he works to make things better.

As always, you can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

Those developers out there currently looking for a job (you shouldn't have to look too far) might want to read Michelangelo van Dam's take on job hunting 101 for of his experiences when recruiters contacting him.

In this day and age, everyone uses the internet for finding new jobs or to find a new employee, but more and more I sense that it's all turning into one big mess. This blog post is devoted to all those people contacting me because they have the best job position. [...] I know it's a tough market out there, lot's of competition and so many technologies and skills to keep track off. I know, but it is [you, the recruiter's] business! You decided to dive right into the job chaos, so don't cry if you have to do a bit of work. Do you think we just turn on the computer and it writes code itself ? You do your job, I do mine.

He points out a few specific times a recruiter has sent emails about a "direct hire position" that needs filling immediately or a Java developer (when, clearly, Michelangelo is a PHP developer). He also points out to recruiters that, despite what they may think, they're almost never the only one getting in contact about the same job.

if you're out looking for a new PHP job, go check out the community itself. Most of us have a list of companies with PHP job vacancies or we have a shortlist of trustworthy, understanding recruiters that have touched base with the PHP community and won't let you down once you sign up.

The latest episode of the php|architect OddWeek podcast series has been released today - Talking with a recruiter.

Cal Evans spends some time talking with Scott Gordon (the anti-pimp) about things to look out for and what you need to bring to the conversation. He also references a recent post from Scott with five stupid and five real interview questions

You can listen to this latest episode either by using the in-page player or by just downloading the mp3 directly to listen offline whenever you'd like. You can also subscribe to the show notes mailing list to get even more info about this and future episodes.