First signs of cracks in market…other shoe to drop? Hey, annoying people – leaving message is ok,

Halfway through September 08 and what is the landscape for software engineers in the Boston market looking like? On the fringes (great new show on FOX BTW) we’re seeing some cracks appearing – from Symantec closing all of their local development offices, to several high-flying startups laying off, or closing their doors recently, there are some signs of cautiousness entering into my mind.

That being said, we’ve still been contacted by 10 new ventures in September, who are all in high-growth mode — it seems, the two areas hardest hit right now — ‘weak’ aka ‘me too’ businesses — who needs another social networking, photosharing, e-marketing, product right now? Those guys are suffering, and closing. The “big guys” – public or large private firms, have a need to hold the line of profitability – the easiest way to do that – cut heads or freeze headcount.

What does this mean to you, and me? We’re seeing hiring decisions starting to take longer (“We’ll want to interviewing a few more candidates”) or jobs that are “open” not being recruited for. As a candidate – you need to be ready, more than ever to execute at peak performance. As a recruiter, if you’re not committed to your clients, and love this business – time to get out now, as things will only be getting more challenging. The “used car” sleazeballs who hang out on Monster.com looking for a fresh resume to spam around will be especially hard hit (that’s G-R-E-A-T).

Some of this makes for desperate candidates — don’t be one of them — if you’re one of those “annoying” people who calls 20x in a day, but never leaves a voicemail – please stop! I’ll review your resume and get back to you if there is a fit with a client now. If not, I’ll be in touch in the future if I have a good role for you — but please, stop calling ever 10 minutes and not leaving a voicemail!

Summer’s over, and Q4 recruiting is looking to be busy – looking for image processing & speech algorithms software engineers

The kids are back to school, the Red Sox are fighting for 1st place, and Summer’s officially over in a couple weeks. Even though summer was enjoyable — it’s time to shift attention to Fall recruiting — with time off, our 2008 summer was the busiest we’ve had since 1999! There seems be a real dichotomy in the market now — big companies are being very cautious and even laying their “average” performers off, and the smaller, entrepreneurial startups are aggressively fighting the talent war.

With the election looking in just 8 weeks, (and the baseball playoffs!) — people’s attention may be frayed — but those clients & candidate who keep their eyes on the prize, should be able to follow-through on executing.

On the recruiting front — two really interesting new positions I am recruiting for — both in the algorithms space — one in the Image Processing/PACS/DiCOM space and other in the Speech/Acoustic space — if you know anyone, or you, yourself are interested, please get in touch with Boston’s #1 software engineer recruiter – Scott Dunlop – scott@biviumgroup.com