Looking for employment?
We don’t have full time staff, but we do farm out contract work regularly and like many in the IT community we’re always on the look out for good people as we often get asked to find good resources.
If you’re looking for some work then you should send a CV to jobs@yournet.co.nz
About Your CV
This section outlines what we like to see in a CV presentation to us and questions that we typically get asked.
How Many Pages Should I Present?
If you can get your CV in under 6 pages then it’s either in 2 point font or doesn’t contain the degree if information we would be interested to know about you. We do understand that many CV sites will tell you that recruiters like really short and simple CVs, we don’t.
Great English
Your CV, presented to us, will be in perfect English. That will mean that it is faultless with respect to spelling and grammar. We figure, that if you can’t take the small amount of time required to write a perfect document about yourself then how can we have any assurance that you’ll do anything for use with any degree of accuracy. In your world, you have to be the most important person, so treat yourself and put some real effort into creating the perfect presentation about yourself. Accurate presentation is also important if your CV has to be translated by tools like Google Translate. If you have errors then it won’t translate accurately.
Current Training
You’ll tell us what you’re currently doing to improve your learning. This doesn’t mean you have to be enrolled in a university for us to be interested in your talents, it means that you have to be focused on doing something academic for your own learning. It also doesn’t have to be something computer related. It’s important to us to see that you’re always thinking about education.
Current Volunteer Work
We like to reward people with our work who are giving something back to the community. We also look closely at projects that you have worked on. Frankly it doesn’t impress us as much to see you’ve worked for some amazing companies as it does to see what community projects you’ve given your time and resources to freely.
Projects You’ve Worked On
We do need to see things that you’ve worked on in the past, but we also need to properly understand what you did and how long it took you to do it. Telling us “I worked with the team on blar web site” isn’t useful to us. You need to tell us what you contributed and how much time it took for those contributions.
Coding Examples
We need to see examples of your coding and scripting. The key thing we look for in code is very clear plain English documentation and good use of variable naming. For example, writing ‘for x = 1 to y’ to make a loop to do something is very poor coding because we have no idea what y is. We also don’t understand why you’re doing this. You should have written ‘for nProcessOranges = 1 to nNumberOfOrangesInABox” and then included a comment that says #Process the oranges in a box within the following ‘for loop’. What we want to see is a demonstration that you include the business proportion with the actual code. That helps the next guy to quickly understand your code should they need to modify it to add more functionality.
Personal Web Site
We’re all about hosting web content and internet based applications. If you can’t demonstrate that you can present the simplest of web sites with information about yourself then you’re wasting your time making contact with us because that’s what we do for people every day, all day. We also expect that your sites address will be https… and not just http, with a current SSL certificate. Your site will also be ‘mobile friendly’, but don’t worry if you’re a graphic designer and wanted to show of your graphic skills, we will be checking the desktop version too, but remember that Google now loves mobile sites more than it does just plain desktop ones, so we’ll be wanting to know that you have mobile awareness.
Your Email Address
If your email address is ramdomversionofyourname@gmail.com then don’t even bother. We’re about hosting email accounts for our customers and you need to demonstrate that you can set up an email address for yourself to be useful in our business.
Your Domain Name and Whois Data
You should expect that we will check the whois data on your domain name, expect it to be completed correctly and reflect your presentation to us.
While your web site might not be .nz, you will have a .nz domain name. Most of our work at YourNet is from folk who have .nz domains, so that’s what you’ll most likely be working with when you work with us, so make sure you have a .nz domain, understand the rules and how they’re set up.
About Your Name
If your email address is joe@yournet.co.nz then we expect that we’ll call you ‘Joe’. We understand that people from different parts of the world present their names in different orders. In New Zealand ‘Joe Smith’ means that you would call this person “Joe” when drawing their attention or Mr Smith if you wanted to be more formal. We get CV’s from people all the time who use a range of different names and it is often not clear what they call them selves and how we should address them.
About Your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Profiles
You will include details of your personal Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts in your presentation. You should also expect that we will Google you. We expect you to be visible on social media. We also expect you to know how to use the privacy settings on accounts like Facebook to restricts access to your drunken party photos of you showing your mates “the bird” to you and your mates. You need to consider that in checking us out, your potential customers might be checking out our staff, so you should consider if your presentation meets the standards of folk who might be our and your customers.
Graphic Designers
We want to see your work product. We’re not interested in just seeing your finished art, we want to see the development process that you took to get to that art. So your presentation will detail your sketches and concept drawings right through to your finished art and will tell us how long tasks took you to complete.
Time Taken
Everything we do has to be billed and explained to our customers. Often we have to quote your work. We understand work takes time to do. When we’re asking how long a project took to do, we’re not out to judge you. We’re out to understand how long you take to do tasks so that we can present the customer with a budget that we then don’t have to go back on.
We find that many first timers get concerned that we’re just wanting to judge them and find the fastest, cheapest resource that we can. That’s simply not the case. We’re out to make sure that we sent reasonable expectations with customers, and to do that we have to have good information about you so that we can make a proper presentation.
What File Format Should My CV Be In?
Your CV should be presented to us as a print ready PDF. Don’t send us doc or docx files. We do expect that we’ll be able to download your CV from your web site.
Should My CV Have a Current Photo?
Yes, your CV should have a current ‘mid shot’ photo of you. We do understand that many people will tell you that you shouldn’t include a photo if you’re of ‘ethnic origins’ and only ever use an ‘English’ name if you want to get an interview. Trust us, if we were the sort of people that don’t interview based on the spelling of your name or the colour of your skin in your photo then we wouldn’t want to be a place that you want to work!
So please include a photo, it helps us to recall who you were and recognize you when you come to visit us. Do be aware that we do judge appearance though. We look at your ability to present yourself well, so you should have a nice top or shirt and be well groomed. Points are always given to folk who have gone to the trouble of having a professional photo taken. To us, this shows that you’re prepared to invest in first impressions and your presentation. We don’t expect you to be showing up to an interview with the make up you might have been wearing for a photo shoot. We do expect you to have some understanding about what is involved to make our clients look fantastic on a web site too.
Should My CV Be In Colour?
Yes, you should use colour in your CV. Everything we do is in colour, you see in colour and so do we! But you should also remember that we might print it on a black and white printer, so choose your colours with care!
I’m A Programmer And Don’t Have Good English Skills!
You don’t have to write your own CV. We welcome CV’s from people who have clearly invested in assistance of someone else to assist them with making a great personal presentation. We also don’t expect you to have taken your own photo. We like our customers to use our professional services and we do expect you to reach out to other professional to help tell us a great story about you if you don’t feel that is your best skill area.
What About A Cover Letter?
Yes, you should include a cover letter. It should be about making a connection between why you are approaching us, what you know about our company already, what value you see you’d be adding by being involved with us and what is written in your CV. It should be at least a full A4 page and not longer than a 1.5 pages. It should be included in the PDF with your CV, as the first page and it should include your signature (yes, that demonstrates that you know how to put graphics in to a PDF).
What Can I Expect To Be Paid?
What you expect to be paid is something that you should tell us. You should look at any opportunity and give us a budget that you might be expecting. If you’re working in New Zealand, we also expect that you’re GST registered. You should also be able to accept payment via Credit Card (ie Get yourself a PayPal account if you don’t already have one!)
About Our Technology
We use an extensive range of technology. Our web hosting platform is based on Linux but we also use Microsoft products extensively. Web hosting is controlled by DTC and DTC-XEN (originally developed by GPLHost). We also use Artisteer extensively for web development with WordPress and Cash Book Complete for accounting. We build systems that run on Android, Apple ‘I’ products, desktops, VPS’s and dedicated servers.
To be of any use to us, you should be familiar with all of these, especially the DTC and WordPress.
In our networks we use Mikrotik and Ubiquity equipment, while you might think your Cisco skills are 1337, they won’t impress us unless you are all over the gear we use too.