Insights from the second year of running online C++ job fairs

published at 24.02.2023 16:32 by Jens Weller
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An overview on the second year of organizing online job fairs for the C++ community.

In 2022 Meeting C++ organized 5 online job fairs for C++. Originally 4 were planned, but in May only one company could attend and two other companies approached Meeting C++ after the event wondering if another fair in June was possible. With better planning this could have been one fair. The next job fair is on March 14th & 15th.

The graphs and most numbers in this post come from the CV sharing form, where candidates create a short profile by filling out this form. For interested employers its best to sign up early to the job fairs, if you have any questions about hiring with Meeting C++ you can reach me via LinkedIn or email (info@mee ... cpp.com). Next Tuesday I'll be speaking about Hiring for C++ with Meeting C++.

In total last years events have been a success and the knowledge about the format spreads slowly through the C++ community. Total submissions for 2022 were 298. For unique candidates this is 256 from 57 countries submitted their CV to employers, the post for 2021 shows this as 187 from 42 countries, but 2021 is missing the first event in data. The top 5 countries are India, USA, Germany, Iran and Turkey for 2022, in 2021 its been India, Germany, USA, France and Iran.

The biggest change in 2022 came with merging the employer listing with the job fair. Prior to this, signing up to the job fair was only listing you for the event, while signing up for the listing listed you for a year on the website and CV sharing form. During 2022 it became clear that I only want to offer one HR product, and not two. So the listing had to be merged with the job fair, also adding in this process more value for employers to joining the event. The 6 month in the listing starts with the day you sign up, and it ensures your visibility not only at the event but also in the CV Sharing form for 6 months. So this covers 1 or 2 other job fairs, where candidates will be able to share their resume with this employer. At the same time this allows me to contact all currently listed companies and as for feedback for the next event.

More insights about candidates from 2022

The CV sharing form asks for 4 things which are grouped into graphs below: C++ Skills, Field of Work, Country and Years of experience. The first one is the most interesting. It shows how common a skill is within the submitting group of candidates. The Top5 Skills most often chosen by candidates in 2022 are C++11, C++14, Linux, C++17 and OOP. For 2021 this was C++11, Linux, C++14, OOP and Modern C++. Mostly one can observe that more folks are getting to know the newer standards and are more comfortable with sharing this in a hiring process.

For field of work 2022 offered more selections then the prior events ever had. Most interesting change is Telecommunication now being on 3rd place, while being on 6th place in 2021 (not counting other). I'm not aware that we had an employer from this field attending, but the reach in various industries is often quite random, so that in this graph some fluctuation of various fields showing up is to be expected. Though having companies attend from a certain field will help attract that audience too, like we had various companies from the finance field, and King had brought in more game devs for the 3rd event for sure.

Plans for 2023

The last 6 months have seen lots of employers firing folks or stopping hiring. Though I'm not sure how much this is true for Europe, as often these headlines have been about US companies. But right now its clearly a time of opportunity if you are hiring. And I expect this to affect the job fair event, maybe in a good way with more candidates submitting, but maybe also with less companies joining the event in total. But these are things outside my own control.

For this year, I'd like to keep working with the companies that hire. As the online C++ job fair and Meeting C++ can give them great visibility in the C++ community. This then helps employers to find the right candidates for their open roles.

So 2023 will feature 4 job fairs in March, June, September and November. Like last year feedback from employers and attendees will guide the further direction for the hiring section at Meeting C++. One loss for 2023 is that Xing Groups does not any more exists, and with it the Modern C++ group I've managed there for over 15 years is gone. Though it did not have much activity in 2022...

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