Thursday 30 August 2012

NerdScore!? NerdAbility Updates - August 2012

NerdScore is Live!


So far this month we have launched the "NerdScore" on NerdAbility.com! This gives your profile a score based on the connections and details you have added to NerdAbility. To work out your score we use the super secret "NerdOrithm"!

You can now show off your high score via http://nerdability.com/user/yourprofile, and increase it by connecting and using sites like GitHubBitbucketStackOverflowGo check it out :)

Profile NerdScore!

Enhanced StackOverflow Integration


We have tapped up the StackOverflow API to add further integration to your NerdAbility profile, now showing a summary of your SO "Badges" and your answer "Accept Rate". Check it out on your profile now, and if you havn't integrated with StackOverflow give it a try :).

NerdAbility StackOverflow with Badges
Now with Badges & Accept Rate

What's Coming Up?


Over the next few weeks we will be pushing out some more new features to the NerdAbility site. These are focused around improving the user experience and giving you more control of the privacy and contact preferences for your profile.

We are also working hard on allowing you to integrate even more of the cool stuff you do on-line in to your  NerdAbility dynamic resume / CV. This includes the tech meetups and events you go to, the coding / software engineering books you have been reading and the presentations you have published on-line. So keep your eyes peel for update emails and blog updates to be the first to hear when these features go live.

Also ... Hot Skills & How To's


We want to show you some of the technologies that we have been using (and we think are quite cool). So expect to see some how-to blogs, which will get you up and running. These will include the extending the Spring Social framework and integrating with Java / Spring app MailChimp (the email campaign app). All of these examples will come with sample projects on GitHub!

Once you have had a play and could tell someone else how to do it why not add it as a skill on your NerdAbility profile? Its easy - see how below:

1. Sign Up or Sign In 

NerdAbility Login Example
NerdAbility Login
2. Add the Skill to your profile - click "Want To Add A Skill", then add the details and click "Add Skill". Done :) 

Add NerdAbility Skill
Add a Skill to NerdAbility
3. Or even better why not share the code you are working on on GitHub or BitbucketYou can then link your account to your NerdAbility profile and we will automatically add the skill to your page, sweet right? Just click the connect GitHub or Bitbucket on the right hand side of your profile.

Connect GitHub to your NerdAbility profile
Connect your GitHub or BitBucket to NerdAbility
That's all for the August updates from the NerdAbility team!

Please get in touch with us on Twitter - @Nerd_Ability or comment below with any idea, feedback or questions.

Friday 17 August 2012

6 Steps to Getting an Awesome Tech Job

So everyone wants an awesome coding job using the ’latest technologies’ at a amazing company right? And the competition for these jobs is tough! People from big corporations want in on the exciting world of start-ups, and well-seasoned start-up coders want to work on the next big thing. Previously you needed a great hand crafted CV and 100 years of experience building monolithic Java EE / C++ apps to get noticed. Now companies want to see you are up to speed with new school technologies like Node.js, Groovy & Grails, Ruby, Scala, Clojure and that you also actively contribute via Blogs, GitHub, BitBucket, StackOverflow etc.

How do you get one of these awesome jobs you ask? Follow NerdAbility’s fool proof 6 point plan!.....

    Blogger LogoTumblr. Logo
  1.  Create a tech blog! – Have you been trying to learn a new technology but found the documentation is a bit shady? Did you spend hours on forums and post multiple StackOverflow questions to finally get to a solution? Then write a blog about it! Document the problem, the steps you took to solve it and give some sample code or even put the project on online. Next make sure to share it back with the people and forums that helped along the way. This is a great way to get your solution out there and people checking out your blog (maybe even the CTO of your next employer). Sites like Blogger and Tumblr make it super easy to get started, so go make one today!

Sunday 12 August 2012

On Privacy

Online privacy is a serious thing. People take how much they reveal of themselves online very seriously, and quite rightly too.

Privacy is important to us at NerdAbility as well. From the start, we have been upfront with where we stand - your NerdAbility profile is a public profile to the world of just how awesome you are, its not somewhere where people will upload photos of compromising situations, or share trade secrets, its a place where people say, hey, I have my blog, and my StackOverflow profile, and my GitHub profile.. why can't i just bring them to one place, so rather than hoping a potential employer googles me, I can just say, check me out!

After all, NerdAbility doesn't expose anything that is already private on the web to anyone - it only shows already publicly accessible data (GitHub, StackOverflow, BitBucket, Blogs - all public data only).  When we recently rolled out the BitBucket integration, on first launch, we were alerted that private repositories were being displayed - this wasn't something we had done intentionally, it was actually because making anonymous, unauthenticated calls to the BB API returns private data too (we know, crazy right?) - but this is important to us, as well as to you guys, so as soon as we were alerted, we put in an emergency fix it and released within an hour.

So, why are we going on about all this stuff? The reason is, pretty soon we will be rolling out user search, making it much easier for people to discover just how awesome you are (searching by name or by skills) - so we just wanted to make sure we are all on the same page.

If you still have concerns, fear not, we know this is a hugely important and sensitive subject, so despite NerdAbility only showing publicly available data, we will also be adding a privacy option, allowing you to opt-out of the search results!

Why We're Not Worried About Facebook's Job Board

Not long after NerdAbility was released in to the wild in beta, Facebook announced that they were going to be creating a job board.

Hmm, Facebook seems like tough competition, after all, they already have millions of users, about whom they know pretty much everything, but, to be honest, we're really not that concerned.

Here's why..

  1. We're techies, looking to deliver a service for techies - even if the Facebook job board becomes a massive success, how worthwhile will it be for them to build up the service to cater for tech folk, integrating GitHub commits and stuff like StackOverflow? I cannot see it being worthwhile for FB to do so.  NerdAbility is focusing entirely on tech recruitment, and all our efforts are in enhancing the site to make tech recruitment a wonderful thing!....