If you need a computer scientist to help your organization on a long term basis, whether that means having them volunteer, intern, or work for you full-time, we can use our network and our jobs posting list to help you get the word out.
Write us an email, and we'll forward it to our lists. Below, we have some guidelines on writing an effective pitch for your organization.
- The subject line is the most important part of the email. Treat it as such.
- The goal of this email is not to provide all of the information about the opportunity or to get someone to sign up immediately. The goal is to get a reply from someone who is generally interested. Once you start a conversation, you can make your full pitch, and the interested programmer will have a much higher chance of reading through it and considering the opportunity.
- Consider what you list as a requirement. Programmers are good at learning new languages, frameworks, and skills. If you only want someone that already has a BS in computer science and 4 years of experience in Python, then that's perfectly fine. If you are fine taking on someone who is inexperienced, but smart and eager to learn more, then make sure that you don't turn those people away.
- Make sure that the reader is aware of the impact that programming will have on your organization and the world. Programmers have a lot of opportunities to make money and to work on technically interesting projects. The way that you will compete for their interest is with your impact.
- If you can pay, let them know. Keep in mind, though, that they probably have other job offers that pay. You are advertising a service opportunity that happens to have pay, not a paying opportunity that has a service component.
- Consider what they need to do and what you can help them with. A lot of making a web site is more design than programming. Do you need a programmer or a designer? If you have a good idea of the design and just need someone to implement it, then let them know (but allow them them creative license as long as that's fine withy our organization). If you need them to take care of the design elements too, let them know.
- Avoid attachments, links, or anything that requires someone to click on anything to learn more.
- Shorter is better.