How the source code of our website affects recruiting
I was recently on an initial phone screen with a candidate for a developer position here at Dovetail, and towards the end of our conversation, I asked him if he had any questions. After a few standard ones, he asked me about our web development standards, especially in the area of HTML standards, use of CSS, etc. I answered, especially gearing my answer towards how we approach these topics in the current web application project that we’re working on, and explaining how we’ve worked especially hard over the last year or so at improving our development methodologies and work product. He noted that my answer didn’t jibe with the code on the dovetailsoftware.com website. He noted that the site makes heavy use of tables (for non-tabular data), lots of embedded styles (as opposed to CSS), bad class naming (class=”table3″, class=”style15″), and bad element naming (id=”ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder2_Currentnews1_HyperLinkA”). 
I explained to him that the corporate website was not a product of the development group, but of the marketing department. He was OK with the explanation, but it got me thinking.
Everything we do as an organization affects how we are perceived, and in ways we didn’t envision. As Kathy Sierra and Seth Godin commonly point out – we’re all marketers. We commonly talk about how activities such as customer support drive sales. In this case, marketing (website development) has a direct affect on recruiting. (I’ll leave for another day the discussion as to how website development became a marketing activity). There’s the potential that other developer candidates would have the same impression, and immediately decide not to work here, without me having the opportunity to explain.
Our products, website, blogs, voicemail messages, email auto-replies, business cards, literature, user manuals, email signatures – it all affects how we’re perceived, by current and future customers, partners, and employees. And you never know when and where that perception may matter.
