No -- you might as well drop off a ream of paper at the recycler's, as that would cut out the middleman.
It isn't difficult to meet people who have authority to hire people. Go to meetups/tech events/conferences in your area. Demonstrate value; ask people if they/their firms are hiring or if they know anyone who is. Some people who go to meetups/etc do not have hiring authority, but they often know who in their organization does -- ask them for a warm introduction.
There exists a series of tubes between every engineering candidate and every firm which hires engineers. It isn't like there is a Super Secret Hacker News For People Who Actually Hire People. Same HN. Same Twitter. Same email (probably your best bet for a cold contact). Same phone system. Same Github.
(Passively adding stuff to your Github is a low ROI way to get offers. Find a project managed by your target company, fix a bug or send them a pull request, then try to escalate to a discussion with a decisionmaker in engineering -- coffee or a Skype chat or whatever.)
This is excellent advice. Any thoughts on perhaps doing a tutorial series on how to better connect yourself with hiring decision makers? Similar to your web app training.
Disclaimer: I'm a subscriber on your mailing list, watch your videos, etc.
That's more of Ramit Sethi's beat than mine. FWIW, I think he has really good advice on it.
In terms of why that doesn't make a huge amount of business sense for me:
1) I'm pretty busy (and behind on current commitments due to illness), so adding a new product line seems like a poor decision at the moment.
2) In general I would prefer to go up the value/sophistication chain rather than going down it. No offense to people looking for their first job or a career upgrade, but the amount you're willing to pay for that is not nearly the amount of money a software company CEO will pay for a $X million bump in sales, and I know I can successfully deliver that in at least some form factors. It's also likely worth less than nailing my response to this RFQ from a hospital chain for telephony services. (I write for non-monetary reasons, too, but things have to catch my fancy for that and job searches mostly don't.)
3) I'd generally prefer to talk about things I have experience in doing rather than things I don't. While I can do some extrapolations from experience, first principles of marketing, and things I know from industry participation, when it comes down to it I have a lot more experience selling software than I do on either hiring or getting hired as a FTE at (American) software companies.
That's actually a pretty good idea (and I am being serious). These firms are always looking for good engineers (I didn't say "experienced") and have a hard time finding ones. This is especially true for smaller companies that don't have very strict hiring process.
If a guy walks in my company's lobby to ask if we are looking for engineers, I'll certainly give him an interview.
It isn't difficult to meet people who have authority to hire people. Go to meetups/tech events/conferences in your area. Demonstrate value; ask people if they/their firms are hiring or if they know anyone who is. Some people who go to meetups/etc do not have hiring authority, but they often know who in their organization does -- ask them for a warm introduction.
There exists a series of tubes between every engineering candidate and every firm which hires engineers. It isn't like there is a Super Secret Hacker News For People Who Actually Hire People. Same HN. Same Twitter. Same email (probably your best bet for a cold contact). Same phone system. Same Github.
(Passively adding stuff to your Github is a low ROI way to get offers. Find a project managed by your target company, fix a bug or send them a pull request, then try to escalate to a discussion with a decisionmaker in engineering -- coffee or a Skype chat or whatever.)