One of the things that the PyCon team struggles with each year is how to maximize the visibility of our sponsors - not only do they financially support PyCon, but many of them contribute back to our open source community, hire you - members of the community - and overall help lift all of us up. Maximizing visibility though, can be difficult. There are lines we should not cross due to the community and people focus of PyCon - it is a fine line to walk between maximizing sponsors' return on investment, and the needs and interests of attendees, and the community.
This is why I am happy to announce today, we, the PyCon team feel that we have found another great way to both showcase our sponsors, without whom the conference would not be possible, and also provide something of need and interest to the Python/PyCon community. Today, we're unveiling the "PyCon Jobs Fair" page. This is a new page on the PyCon website dedicated to job listings from our sponsors and will list open, active job openings from PyCon sponsors, in as much detail as the sponsors desire.
Starting today, all Silver (and above) sponsor packages include this benefit free of charge. (So if you aren't a sponsor yet - come join us!) All existing sponsors have already begun uploading jobs that they have open. We continue to encourage companies looking to hire Python talent to leverage the Python Jobs Board - but PyCon in and of itself represents a unique ability for those people looking for jobs to not just apply over the internet, but to also meet face to face with potential employers at the conference.
Time and time again, we hear stories of friends hiring, or being hired at PyCon, or due to work at PyCon (such as a giving a talk, or tutorial) - we hear from you, the community that you wish you had more visibility - in advance - to those companies who will be at PyCon, and actively hiring.
In the same breath, we have spoken to many sponsors and once again, we hear a common statement "We come to PyCon to pick up the best talent." - PyCon, with its potential 1500+ attendees represents a unique and special recruitment location for sponsors. A good recruiter could cost you tens of thousands of dollars to help you find, meet and woo potential candidates, while a PyCon sponsorship not only gets you that recruitment venue, but also provides to you community good will, name recognition and much more.
We feel that this makes an excellent addition to the set of community and sponsor features we offer - not to mention an amazing conference. Our sponsors are hiring - and we want you to know!
I'm very happy to be releasing this for both the sponsors and the community. Our goal as a team is to make sure that this is the best PyCon for both groups than ever before. We will continually strive to achieve this through increased involvement with our sponsors and increased, continual dialog with the community on what they want to see at the conference.
I encourage all of you to keep a close eye on the main sponsors page - new ones are popping up quickly, and now also on the new jobs page, I expect more positions to be added over the upcoming weeks and the entries to be changing with some frequency. Existing sponsors can log into their accounts on the site and upload descriptions immediately (we've put up help and guidelines here).
I'm also looking forward to carry this idea forward - and begin work on planning a "jobs fair" focused portion/session for the conference in addition to our existing Expo Hall.
Thank You.
Jesse Noller - Chair, Python 2012
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