I always look forward to going to the various campuses around the area for recruiting. We usually visit UW Madison, UW Milwaukee, UW Whitewater and Marquette University. Generally, we have a good student and employer turnout on these campuses. I was expecting to see a lot more students looking for a position given the economy. It felt like both on the employer and student sides the attendance was very thin. Generally, Fall career fairs are not as well attended as the once in winter because there is fewer December than May graduates. So I am comparing this October to last October. If the labor market is not tight and companies are not hiring then where are the students and why are they not aggressively looking? Do you know?!

It is always surprising to me that almost everyone I bring to the office for an interview never takes notes.  Here are some thoughts on note taking.  First the motivation for note taking in a meeting followed by some tips.

Six Good Reasons Why to Take Notes in Meetings:

1. Improves listening skills:  When a person is taking notes (s)he is actively listening and trying to recognize main points and important things to record. (more…)

I am very interested in knowing how outsourcing helped companies save money.  Furthermore, I would like to know how much of that saving was passed on to consumers;  If there was saving did it happen at the cost of software quality and customer loyalty?  My company has an offshore office in Palestine that is meant to serve the Middle East.  The question is: should we offer offshore development services to our clients in the US?  Our industry has been notorious for under delivering.  I can’t help but being very skeptical when I hear positive examples of outsourced projects, and yes there are few of them.  Adding social, political and physical barriers to the development of software is not going to help the industry as a whole to produce software on time and on budget.
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