The Atlanta PHP User Group has announced their January 2013 meeting, a loo at the "Current Trends of the PHP and Open Source Job Market" (from Ari Waller):

The presentation will be an overview of the current employment market and outlook specifically for PHP developers (as well as other Open Source related Open Source trends), based on the current supply and demands in the market place, as well as career oriented topics via Q&A (Resumes, Interviews, and overall job hunting tips and strategies). Ari will cover a year by year comparison from his previous talk and discuss changes and new trends going into 2013. He will also discuss how to work with recruiters as effectively as possible (if at all), as well as questions you have always wanted to ask regarding the the inner workings of IT Staffing.

Despite it being presented by a recruitment company, they have promised an open and honest conversation about the topic, not a sales pitch. If you'd like to attend, check out this page on the Atlanta PHP site for more information - including a new meeting location.

Have a user group meeting or event you'd like announced? let us know!

If you're a developer out there and are looking for that next job (contract or otherwise), you might check out this advice from Cal Evans as to what he, a hiring manager in the past, has looked for in a developer's resume.

am often asked to take a look at friends resume to give pointers on how that can make it more effective. Invariably, my advice is the same, so I'll share it here. When I was a manager and in charge of hiring, your resume had to get my attention for me to even consider it. If you got my attention, you had a much better chance at getting the job. That's the secret: get my attention, and get the job.

He points out that the usual situation is one manager to a large group of applicants. You may see the job post once, but so do 30 other people and you're all trying to grab attention. What's his recommendation? Brevity. Keep the first page short then dive deep behind that. There's more great tips in the rest of the post.

Dave Marshall has posted part three of his series looking at how to land that perfect PHP job. In this part he focuses on the resume/curriculum vitae - often times your first impression to a potential employer.

In part two of this series, I discussed the technical know how I think will help get you your next PHP job. This part will discuss writing your Curriculum Vitae(CV, resume, etc.). There are a lot of contrasting opinions on this subject, I’ll make a few points, give you some further reading and you can adapt the opinions in to a top notch CV of your own. I’m no major expert and most of the recruitment I have been involved in has been for trainee developers, but these positions attract a high number of CVs, so I’ve seen a fair few.

He includes a few helpful hints like "Your CV does not get you a job", "Don't stuff your CV with keywords/acronyms" and some tips on formatting and proofreading.

On his blog today, Markus Wolff has a few choice words about the current state of the Zend website - "Is it me or does the Zend website suck?"

I had this really bright idea - well, I thought it was bright - to not just wait until people come to us, but actively search for people on the web. So, where to look? Of course! It's so obvious - the Zend website has a job page where people can post their resumes. Great! Soo, let's search for some talent!

Unfortunately, all he seemed to find was trouble - trouble getting a simple list of developers for an area, trouble getting the actual user's information - even trouble working with his own account (updating a resume).

In summary, if you ever posted your resume at Zend.com, don't expect any potential employer to ever find you this way.

On his blog today, Markus Wolff has a few choice words about the current state of the Zend website - "Is it me or does the Zend website suck?"

I had this really bright idea - well, I thought it was bright - to not just wait until people come to us, but actively search for people on the web. So, where to look? Of course! It's so obvious - the Zend website has a job page where people can post their resumes. Great! Soo, let's search for some talent!

Unfortunately, all he seemed to find was trouble - trouble getting a simple list of developers for an area, trouble getting the actual user's information - even trouble working with his own account (updating a resume).

In summary, if you ever posted your resume at Zend.com, don't expect any potential employer to ever find you this way.