In response to one of my posts about the Advanced Perl Users Group, @belden asked me how I find LinkedIn useful:

A better LinkedIn makes the world a slightly better place for me. Our ill-defined, disparate, and disperse community has many parts that can be improved and I spend a couple of minutes each morning moderating some LinkedIn stuff. Other people help out in other sites. There are a couple of things that I'd like to encourage.

I want to recruiters to see that CPAN Developer's Group badge and ask candidates why they don't have it. Even if that means the person only ever uploaded one module, that means they've gone through the process once, which I think is the biggest obstacle to sharing. Once they get over that hump, even if just to get the badge, they are a slightly better Perler. And, it's all about a long journey where each step makes them slightly better. If they are hiring better Perlers, I'm dealing with better Perlers when I show up.

I want to put it in the mind of Perlers that they can make a better labor market for themselves, now or later, by showing recruiters that there are many people who are part of the Perl world. Even if most of the Perlers aren't looking for situations, a situation might find them. There's very little that someone can do to verify what happened tat some job otehr than asking a someone else they don't know (and anyone can find three good references). However, there are thousands of people who can testify to someone's CPAN activity, module usefulness, and so on.

Even people not looking for a situation affect the job market by the skills and associations they present. Recruiters have wonderful tools to find people now. They aren't limited to the self-selected set of submitted résumés or the word of mouth of the small group of people they know. They see information for people who aren't looking for jobs. They see patterns in profiles, and each profile slightly changes their view. The way I present myself makes another person think a little bit differently about what they expect from other Perlers in the same way that the way you present yourself affects how people may think about me.

Marketers might call all of this "brand maintenance". It's just unorganized and volunteer driven, just like some other stuff we like. I don't have to do it all. I just have to do a little and trust that other people will do a little somewhere else.



