Recruiting
Latest
Uber recruits engineers with coding puzzles during rides
Uber knows it has a captive audience during rides, and is trying to pick out the coders among them with a new app feature called "Code on the Road." It pops up in the main app and offers "hacker challenges" that are basically 60-second timed coding and debugging tests. Some riders offered the quizzes (like Twitter user Graham Gnall, below) actually work as engineers, but Uber assures Business Insider that it's not tapping any personal info. Rather, it's rolling out the feature in cities with large numbers of tech workers, so you might see it in places like Boston, Seattle and Portland.
LinkedIn's revamped job listings are all about you
LinkedIn is revamping its job listings pages with new sections geared towards giving you more information on whether a position is right for you. Rather than simply listing a job description and similar postings, the new pages are personalized based on your LinkedIn profile.
NASA wants to hire more astronauts
Have you dreamed of becoming a space explorer? You now have your chance to do something about it: after a four-year silence, NASA is once again hiring new astronauts. The recruiting drive will run between December 14th and mid-February, with the final selections made public in mid-2017. You'll need the right mix education, experience and stamina to even get your foot in the door (there's a long-term spaceflight physical, for example). However, it could easily be worth clearing that high bar.
The US Air Force hopes to recruit you with a virtual reality game
The US Air Force has an interesting dilemma: how do you convey the thrill of flying a fighter jet to potential recruits without taking them on a very expensive trip? Virtual reality, apparently. The military branch is teaming up with Reel FX on Air Force Performance Lab, a recruiting "experience" whose centerpiece is an Oculus Rift-based VR game that has you flying an F-35 through an obstacle course. It's more of an arcade game than a simulator, but the use of real throttle-and-stick controls and a rumbling seat could make it feel convincing enough.
Amazon is hiring to build a product that's 'bigger than Kindle'
Amazon sure knows how to pique our interest -- it recently posted an invitation to a Boston recruiting event that, until an edit, teased the possibility of working on something "even bigger than Kindle." The original pitch (preserved by Boston.com) is all too short on details, but it hints at a first-generation digital media product co-developed by the hardware-focused Lab126 team in Sunnyvale, California. It's not just a souped-up Kindle Fire, then. So, what is it? A smartphone? A wireless network? We don't know; all that's certain is that Jeff Bezos has more surprises up his sleeve than just delivery drones.
Officers' Quarters: Stop it with the invite addons
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. I have to admit it: as someone who has been guilded in WoW for nine+ years, and who plays on a decidedly Horde-light server, it hasn't been until the past few months that I realized what a damn nuisance these addons are. I've been playing alts lately, trying to decide what class and spec I want to raid with in Warlords of Draenor. (I'm currently a feral druid, which I may stick with.) Since I'm out of character slots on my home realm, and I've never really played Alliance, I decided to roll some Alliance characters on a realm with a healthy Alliance pop. I didn't know anyone on the realm. And I didn't really want to join a guild, since I wasn't sure how much I would play those toons yet. I had no idea what I was in for.
Blizzard updates World of Warcraft recruit-a-friend program
Blizzard Entertainment today unveiled a revamped recruit-a-friend system for World of Warcraft that enables you to choose your own recruit-a-friend reward from a list of exclusive mounts and pets, some previously unavailable in specific regions. The process for inviting friends has also been simplified; invitations can now be sent directly from the in-game social interface. If your friend accepts your invite and creates an account, you'll be officially linked in the RAF system. Linked players receive bonus experience when playing together and can instantly teleport to one another. Additionally, the recruited player can grant the veteran player extra levels. If the friend you recruit purchases WoW and pays for 30 days of game time, you get a month free. If the friend pays for two months of game time, you'll be granted your choice of one of the recruit-a-friend mounts or pets. All previous recruit-a-friend mounts are present, along with a brand-new emerald hippogryph. Check out the new RAF mount and a tutorial on how the system works after the break.
Officers' Quarters: 6 tips for officers on soon-to-be-connected realms
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Blizzard began the process of connecting realms a few weeks ago. After two successful connections, Blizzard is finally picking up the pace. Last week, they announced six more pairs that will soon become one. For officers, the weeks before and after a realm connection will be a crucial time. Here are some tips to put your guild in the best possible position within your newly forged community. 1. Don't wait for the connection. If you intend to recruit from the new population, the time to do so is right after the connection is announced. Players who are looking for guilds on the combined realms will start shopping around immediately. The guilds who are proactive in this phase are more likely to land those players. Visit the other realm's forums and say hi. You can post a recruiting announcement there, certainly, but you can do more than that. Introduce yourself. Ask questions about the realm you'll be connecting to and get to know the players there. Strike up conversations and become someone that forum users not only recognize, but like and respect. They will be far more likely to consider joining your guild when the time comes if they already know that an officer in the guild is a decent human being. You can take that one step further and roll an alt on the other realm prior to the connection. There's no better way to get to know a new realm than to play on it and meet the players there "in person."
AllThingsD outs details of Apple's BlackBerry 'employee poaching party'
Yesterday, we briefly mentioned how Apple was trying to hire some of the more than 4,500 BlackBerry employees who recently lost their jobs thanks to continued bad earnings news at the Canadian company. Today, AllThingsD provided more details on what it called a "poaching party" held by Apple in Cambridge, Ontario. That "party" on September 26 -- actually a recruiting event -- was about a 15-minute drive from BlackBerry's headquarters in nearby Waterloo. A number of BlackBerry employees received invitations from Apple via LinkedIn, and AllThingsD's John Paczkowski got word that "it was well-attended." Here's a look at the wording of the invitation. It will be interesting to find out just how many BlackBerry employees end up getting offers from Apple and moving to Cupertino. If you are interested in working on the world's most advanced mobile devices and operating systems as well as alongside other amazing, talented and passionate engineers then Apple may have opportunities for you. Apple's Engineering and Operations Recruiting Team is hosting a career event in your town! We will have Hiring Managers and Recruiters present to talk about exciting opportunities throughout Apple. The career event will be on Thursday, September 26th from 10 am to 2 pm, and from 3 pm to 7 pm. ... Please bring multiple copies of your resume on the day of the event as there may be a chance to speak with multiple hiring managers. Most positions will be based in Cupertino, CA. Relocation and immigration assistance will be provided for candidates that are hired, as needed. You can check out all Apple career opportunities by visiting www.apple.com/jobs. Thank you and we hope to see you in person Thursday, September 26th. If you happen to know of others that might be interested in attending, please pass along this invite as we would love to meet them as well. Warm Regards, Apple's Recruiting Team
Apple looking to hire BlackBerry employees
On September 19, BlackBerry Ltd. announced that it was going to cut up to 40 percent of its workforce "across all departments." Now comes word via the Financial Post that Apple was quick to set up a recruitment drive about 12 miles away from the company's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. In the Cambridge Hotel and Conference Centre on Sept. 26, located in Cambridge, Ont. on the outskirts of the Kitchener-Waterloo region where BlackBerry was born, the iPhone maker invited local talent with the aim of luring them to their Silicon Valley operations. The report further relays that invitations sent out to prospective employees indicated that most positions will be based out of Cupertino, noting that "relocation and immigration assistance will be provided" as needed. For a fascinating, in-depth and behind-the-scenes look at the downfall of the once-mighty RIM, check out this extensive piece from The Globe and Mail published just two weeks ago. Suffice it to say, the iPhone completely turned the mobile space on its head and those that were unable to fully appreciate that a new era of mobile computing was upon us were left in the dust. As for BlackBerry itself, the company, plagued by plummeting revenues, entered into a letter of intent with Fairfax Financial to go private for US$9 a share.
Officers' Quarters: A runaway success
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Many guilds struggle to find recruits. The guild in the email below is not one of them. In fact, if you're looking for someone to blame about your recruiting difficulties, you might want to look at these guys. With seven raid teams and chapters across multiple games, this guild leader's problem isn't too few players, but too many. Dear Scott! I am longtime WoW-player (since patch 2.4) and reader of WoW Insider. This site is my favorite place to read news and articles about a game. Most important is that audience of readers is quite nice and constructive. It is always nice to read. This is one of the reason, why I ask for advice here. Currently I am leader of WoW-wing in middle size MMO-community, there are 250+ members. Half of our members play Guild Wars 2, another half plays WoW. Now we experience some growth problem... Initially it was planned to create PvE-oriented guild with at two raid teams at the best. We were recruiting mostly via our blogs. First raid team managed to clear MSV in three weeks in February and started to progress further. More progress, more people came to us. We were not hardcore or even semi hardcore raiders. We raid two nights a week, six hours in total. It is quite casual from my point of view, but seemed like we attracted an attention. Number of members started to increase pretty fast. Before the end of the April we had four raid teams and plenty of socials, who did want to raid, but anyway had a good time in game.
Officers' Quarters: Revisiting my Mists wish list
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. In January 2012, I wrote up a wish list of improvements to the guild experience that I wanted in Mists of Pandaria. We're at the point now in the expansion's life cycle where all major features have been revealed. The next big additions to WoW will come in patch 6.0. So let's look back at what we got in Mists and what we're still waiting for. Wish 1: Treat legendary items as guild rewards, not player rewards. Status: Granted, in a way In my original list, I wrote about the drama that legendaries created in guilds and wished for a way to reduce that drama. I suggested that a legendary item should be bound to the guild that helped a player to earn it, rather than the player. Instead, Blizzard took legendaries in a direction that no one expected: they created a quest line that anyone could complete. In doing so, they took away the drama factor. They released officers from the burden of deciding who would receive a legendary and who wouldn't. For most guilds, this has been a welcome change.
The Daily Grind: Do you try to recruit your friends to play MMOs?
Try as I might, I can't get many of my meatspace friends interested in MMOs. I've corrupted a couple, mind you, but most simply don't get it. Well, let me rephrase. They get what MMOs are, who doesn't, really, but they don't get the appeal. To be fair, there are days when I don't either, but I still enjoy the genre more often than not, and therefore I'm prone to try impromptu recruiting pitches to random family members, friends, and acquaintances. What about you, Massively readers? Do you try to recruit your friends to play MMOs? How successful have you been? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Officers' Quarters: Creating a raid team in a PvP guild
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. The last two weeks we've talking about second raid teams and what to do when that second team blows up. This week, it's time to get back to basics. One officer wants to know how to create a brand new raid team in a PvP guild. Dear Scott, Could use some help with building a new raid group. Let me start off with some history. For the last year I have been in a pretty much PVP only guild. Being an avid raider, my taste buds were tingling for some boss kills. I have been in the guild for about a year and I am a core officer. So my dilemma... I am trying to start recruiting from within the guild so far I have about 7 people who are interested. But I know I am going to need to reach outside the guild for people who want to raid. I have never personally recruited for raiding only led raids.
Officers' Quarters: One realm's solution to low population
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Low population realms have been a problem in WoW as far back as 2007 and they continue to be. Blizzard has opted not to merge realms like other aging MMO's have done. For a long time, players asked for these mergers. They've watched their already low-pop realms bleed more players because of the population problem, making the issue worse and worse. Recently, Blizzard unveiled their solution this ongoing issue: virtual realms. Potentially slated to arrive in patch 5.4, virtual realms could be the answer that we've been waiting for. In the meantime, however, one low-pop realm has taken matters into their own hands by organizing their guilds and creating a better experience. They call it the Kargath Guild Council on Kargath-US. I had the pleasure of interviewing two of the minds behind the KGC -- Battlevixen, officer of Bloodsworn, and Merciful, guild leader of The Iron Fist -- about why they founded the council and the challenges they've faced along the way. What was your realm like prior to the formation of the KGC? Battlevixen: Prior to KGC, Kargath suffered from attendance issues that did not allow a lot of guilds and groups to raid. We had a lot of smaller guilds/groups that could not fill a 10man roster. Very few players were able to even pug because of this. There was also almost no communication between all the various guilds. Each guild kept to themselves for the most part. Merciful: In addition to people who just stopped playing WoW, we were losing good players to other realms. The notion is that Kargath is a dying realm, and once that takes root in people's minds, they self-select themselves off the realm.
Call your buddies: Defiance launches recruit-a-friend
Are you tired of bombing around the post-apocalyptic wastelands of the Bay Area, shooting hellbugs in the face and popping wheelies on your four-wheeler, with none of your friends around to watch/high-five? Trion Worlds feels your pain. The studio has just announced a recruit-a-friend system for its video game/television experiment, Defiance. If you have a copy of the game on any platform and a valid Trion Worlds account, you can hop over to the Defiance Ark Hunter recruitment site and shoot your besties some email invitations. Also available: a recruitment link for social media. As is customary, bringing friends to Defiance comes with special rewards. Your first friend lands you a Tier I lock box, your first five get you a unique title, and your first ten give you two additional inventory slots. If one of those friends actually buys the game, you'll get a new outfit. Five purchases gets you a flame-emblazoned truck, and every purchase after that results in a Tier III lock box.
Apple hires former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to boost environmental efforts
We're used to Apple's CEO teasing product strategies at D Conferences, but not staffing changes. And yet, here we are: Tim Cook has revealed at D11 that former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is joining Apple to coordinate the firm's drive toward eco-friendliness. While there are few specifics at this stage, including Jackson's title, we know that she'll report directly to Cook. There's certainly no shortage of tasks for her to handle: along with Apple's shift toward renewable energy sources, she also has to worry about the environmental impact of the products themselves.
Officers' Quarters: Reworking a guild concept
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Ideas for unique guild concepts are hard to come by. This week, a guild leader who thought she had a winning formula finds out that no one is interested. Let's look at what she came up with and how we can rework her ideas to entice more recruits. I have recently transferred from Nazgrel to the RP server of Moon Guard. I did this with a certain goal in mind, to establish an all Goblin Trade Guild. I have hit a crucial snag however and can't seem to generate any interest in my Guild idea. One major selling point of my Trade Guild would be that we would hold a monthly [Bazaar] in which other Guilds would be encouraged to join in and sell their wares along with us. Using [Gryphonheart Items] we would create an item catalog and haggle over prices. I was hoping that this would help revitalize the role play community. Nothing I have tried has worked to recruit Any suggestions?
Poll: Do you use the in-game Guild Finder?
Joining a guild has always been a core aspect of World of Warcraft. How to choose the right style of guild can be an especially large hurdle to overcome for new players, but it's something we learn along the way. Players currently have a few resources at their disposal, whether it be the Blizzard Guild Recruitment forums, GuildOx, WoWProgress, or other tools. But there's an oft-forgotten in-game tool that was released back in patch 4.1. What about the in-game Guild Finder? The options are a bit limited, and the listings depend on the effort put in by guild masters. Let's just say it's a neglected feature on a few fronts. I've used the Guild Finder before, when searching for a casual leveling guild on a new server. Outside of that, I stick to other tools when recruiting or looking for a new guild. What about you -- do you ever use the in-game Guild Finder? What's your preferred resource for guild recruitment and discovery? %Poll-81566%
Officers' Quarters: Casual raiding's demise?
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Cataclysm's introduction of the Raid Finder, or LFR, has certainly affected all levels of raiding. But will it eventually bring about the end of small, casual raiding guilds, as one officer fears? Or does it mean that he needs to change his approach? Hey Scott, I'm an officer in a small, casual raiding guild. By "casual" I mean we only raid two nights a week from 9-12, and typically we run a 10% nerf behind when it comes to clearing content. Our niche has always been as a "friendly community that offers members the chance to experience content in a laid-back atmosphere." Here's my question . . . what do you see as the impact of LFR (and to a lesser extent, LFG) on casual raiding guilds such as ours? Personally, I've always viewed it as a negative. LFR erodes the need for community in the game. Meanwhile, for the casual raiding guild, the biggest draw we can offer to players on our realms is our sense of "community".
