A big challenge facing a career changer is how to get a hiring manager to take a chance on you. Let’s assume that you have already taken steps to become eligible for your new career, such as getting trained or certified. Now it’s about telling your story in such a way that the hiring manager […]

After more than two decades in the technical recruiting game, Stout Systems has learned a thing or two about how to help people find jobs. We are often invited to take our show on the road—presenting seminars at colleges, universities, user group meetings and the like. At just about every seminar we present, we meet […]

Back in the day, if you wanted to really prepare for your job interview, you’d have to go to the Public Library and do some research on the company you were interviewing with. There, you would find dusty old tomes in which you could look up information about the company, and you could learn even […]

It’s a fiercely competitive labor market right now, especially for technical talent. Many companies worry that because they cannot match the wages on offer from other firms, they won’t be able attract or retain the workforce they need. When companies have the mindset that it’s a SHOW ME THE MONEY market, they can feel like […]

I just read a Human Resource article that was alerting managers to the fact that they might be bad interviewers. And the fact is, many of them are. I don’t mean to criticize, but good interviewing techniques don’t always come naturally - they are often the result of reading lots of good articles on how […]

In the article "Progressive Web Applications, Part 1," I laid out what a progressive web application is, and how it can enhance a web application to look and function like a real, native mobile application. I also covered what is and isn’t supported by today’s major platforms, Android and IOS. In this article I’ll be […]

Recently, I saw some interesting statistics about the hiring process. Studies have shown that 30% of hiring decisions are made within the first five minutes of an interview, and 5% are made within the first 60 seconds. That puts a fair amount of pressure on a person to make a good first impression. Obviously, you’ll […]

“Progressive Web Application” is a popular new terminology that encompasses an up and coming standard for web applications. This standard gives web apps the ability to be installed to a device and to function like a normal, lightweight device application. Devices can be mobile phones, tablets, or even more recently desktops. The app can be […]

Who knew that 80% of money transfers and 95% of ATM swipes are still powered by programs written in COBOL? This is very good news for retired COBOL programmers who want to keep doing a bit of work. It is also good news for younger developers who learned to program in COBOL to take some […]

Node Package Manager (NPM) is a great tool that brings order to the world of open source JavaScript software, and its CLI is an excellent extension to our software development toolset. However, as a software solution ages it can be difficult to keep NPM dependencies up to date and consistent across all development and build […]