Articles - Sourcing and Research

Programmers like to code, else they would not be programmers; however, nobody likes to spend their time doing the same thing, over and over and over again. So programmers help each other out on occasion by sharing the source code (the secret sauce) of their projects. If you are building an email application in C++, no need to start (totally) from scratch.

Simply borrow code from another programmer’s application and make the necessary tweaks. Likewise, if you are stuck on ideas on how to build something, look at how other engineers resolved their development issues and get some inspiration.

You want to know the cool thing about all of that? Software Developers are like artists and like all artists, they sign their work. And even more cooler than that? These artists often add their emails as well. Let me show you what I mean.

Koders is a search engine for source code (all that technical gobbledygook that makes software run). Here is a screenshot of the homepage:

Now imagine that you are seeking engineers skilled in C++. What you would do is select C++ from the pull-down menu of languages (as shown below).

After you have chosen your language (C++ in this case) add in the search box “@yahoo.com.”

And voila! In the search results are the email addresses (and names) of Programmers who have written C++ code. And in some cases (like the result cited below) savvy programmers may leave an invitation for you to contact them.

In this example, I used “@yahoo.com,” but other domains would work just as well. For example, all of these domains brought back interesting results.

@hotmail.com
@gmail.com
@email.com
@aol.com

I tried adding company names like “@companyname.com,” but did not get the results I wanted. Are you curious about how this strategy could help you fill your technical reqs? Try it out and let me know how it worked for you. Thanks!

-----------------------------------

Biography

Jim Stroud is a “Searchologist” with an expertise in the full life-cycle placement of Executive and Technical personnel, Recruitment Research and Competitive Intelligence. He has consulted for such companies as Google, Siemens, MCI and a host of start-up companies. During his 3-year tenure with Microsoft, he served as a Technical Sourcing Consultant and was a regular contributor to Microsoft’s Technical Careers Blog. He is presently a Social Media Development Manager for EnglishCafe – the premier English learning community for global professionals which has English quizzes, online classes and more.

Jim Stroud is also the Chief Blogger at  The Searchologist where he publishes a website, magazine and online video series dedicated to lead generation strategies for Recruiters.