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Blog Posts (44)

  • How to Find Candidates with Better Resumes

    Try these steps to find the best candidates for your job openings. No business owner wants to sift through job applications only to discover that the candidates lack necessary skills. It's a frustrating waste of time for both the employer and the applicant. Worse still, if you're searching for a specialist but keep coming up empty, you may settle for someone without the expertise to truly deliver. While you can't prevent unqualified candidates from applying, we want to ensure you're also getting those hidden gems. Let’s focus on filtering out the irrelevant resumes and attracting the ones that truly meet your needs. But first, are you new to BearPeak? -  You can watch a client testimonial here - Or you can learn more about  our software studio here TABLE OF CONTENTS Clarify Job Requirements with Expert Guidance Maximize Exposure Implement Proactive Sourcing Strategies Strengthen Your Brand Evaluate Candidate Skills 1. Clarify Job Requirements with Expert Guidance It may seem obvious, but it's essential to start your candidate search with a clear, well-crafted job application. Consider these important structural pieces: What will this employee be required to do? What would it be nice for the employee to do, but doesn't belong as a necessity in their job description? How would it be appropriate to list these tasks in the application? What skills do you need the employee to have? What software do they need to use? Does the position require a commute? What days and hours will you need them to be available to work? Additionally, what skills would it be preferred for the employee to have, but aren't absolutely necessary? How can those 'strongly preferred' traits be communicated in the job posting? Next, seek a second opinion. By collaborating with industry experts, you can refine your job descriptions to attract the best talent. Consultancy teams bring years of hiring experience and can ensure your job posting is perfectly aligned with your needs. 2. Maximize Exposure The wider you distribute your job posting, the more resumes you'll attract. Top-tier talent may only be active on a specific job platform. By casting a broad net and targeting the right platforms, you increase your chances of reaching high-quality candidates who might otherwise slip through the cracks. Leveraging a strategic mix of general job boards, industry-specific sites, and niche platforms ensures you're visible to the best talent, no matter where they’re searching. 3. Implement Proactive Sourcing Strategies What if your current employees could seamlessly connect you with skilled professionals in their network? By implementing internal referral programs, you can significantly enhance the quality of candidates. If the ideal tool isn't already out there fore you, we can help build and streamline a custom program. Targeted talent searches can give you an edge, but don't overlook a resource many forget: consultancies. When you're looking to fill just one or two roles, you might instinctively turn to freelancers. However, some of the best freelancers operate within teams . 4. Strengthen Your Brand We all still judge a book by its cover. To attract the right candidates, your brand needs to resonate with them. This could involve anything from refining your unique value proposition to offering additional perks, or even revamping your website—whatever it takes to present your company in its best light and connect with top candidates who are ready to meet you halfway. Let us help you craft a brand image that attracts high-quality candidates. 5. Evaluate Candidate Skills Platforms like LinkedIn offer assessments you can attach to job postings, which is a great way to evaluate critical skills before the interview stage. However, these platform tests often lack versatility or customization. If you’ve ever taken one yourself, you know they tend to be generic and may not focus on the specific skills you're seeking. For more precision, consider using tailored assessment tools. This ensures candidates meet both technical and soft skill requirements, saving time for both you and the applicants, while also giving them insight into the actual skills you'll need them to bring. These custom tools may be easily found with a quick Google search, while others might require tailored development. Ultimately, only you can determine the best fit for your needs. Securing those Better Resumes Still can't figure out why better resumes aren't coming your way? Or are you only receiving applications from candidates who don't match your needs at all? When you can't pinpoint the hiring issue, a fresh pair of eyes can get you out of the rut. BearPeak Technology has the renowned team that can get your hiring system back on track. It's important for us to disclose the multiple authors of this blog post: The original outline was written by chat.openai, an exciting new AI language model. The content was then edited and revised by Lindey Hoak. "OpenAI (2024). ChatGPT. Retrieved from https://openai.com/api-beta/gpt-3/ " BearPeak Technology Group is a software studio based in Boulder, CO, offering studio, strategy, and staffing services. The startup studio takes ideas from concept to reality. The strategy services range from Fractional CTO mentors to architecture and specialized skillset services. for startups, businesses, and entrepreneurs. The staffing services assist teams in connecting with high-quality software developers. If one of these sounds like the solution for you, get in touch with BearPeak for a free consultation at bearpeak.io/contact .

  • Deep Reinforcement with TensorFlow & OpenAI Gym | Python

    Learn how robots learn. Deep reinforcement is a subfield of machine learning that focuses on how to make decisions through trial-and-error and reward-based feedback. New to BearPeak? - Watch a client testimonial . - Explore our software studio . - Learn more about us . Software Agents: Programs that perform actions to achieve a particular goal. All agents are programs, but not all programs are agents. Commonly-used agents include internet search systems, e-mail inboxes, shopping bots, form auto-fillers, and chatbots. In a game, an agent might use search algorithms to explore different moves and evaluate their outcomes. In a robotic application, an agent might use sensors and machine learning to figure out how to navigate the environment and perform tasks. Key qualities of agents include that they are: Reacting to their environment Autonomous Goal-Oriented Persistent An agent can be implemented using various approaches. These include rule-based systems, search algorithms, and the kind we'll be looking at today: machine learning techniques like reinforcement learning. With this technique, an agent is trained to perform a task by interacting with its environment and receiving feedback in the form of rewards. The agent then uses this feedback to learn a policy that maximizes its rewards over time. It's like the saying: Practice Makes Perfect The agent not only learns how to perform a task, but how to improve its performance for the best result. It practices different methods while searching for the best solution. A great visual example of this is learning how to walk. A teacher can only warn the student about so many variables in the terrain. The student must learn from its trips, fumbles, and falls to walk better next time. Meet Cassie, a bipedal robot at Berkley who taught herself  to walk utilizing machine reinforcement learning. In the video, Hybrid Robotics provides a useful chart for understanding the reinforcement learning cycle. Deep reinforcement learning has shown great promise in robotics, game playing, and autonomous driving. How does a Python programmer write code that teaches an agent to do something new? Two of the most popular Python libraries for this technique are OpenAI Gym and TensorFlow. OpenAI Gym is a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms, while TensorFlow is an open-source software library for machine learning and AI. Let's take a closer look at what that means and how these libraries can be used together to implement deep reinforcement learning: OpenAI Gym : The Practice Space OpenAI Gym  provides a wide range of environments for testing reinforcement learning algorithms. These environments simulate a variety of tasks, such as controlling a robot arm, playing a game of Atari, or navigating a maze. Each environment provides: An observation of the current state A set of possible actions A reward for each action A way to transition to the next state Again, the agent learns to perform the task by interacting with the environment and receiving feedback in the form of rewards. One environment is the The CartPole environment , which consists of a pole moving along a frictionless track. The system is controlled by applying a force of +1 or -1 to the cart. The pendulum starts upright, and the goal is to prevent it from falling over. Here is an example of how to use OpenAI Gym to simulate a CartPole environment: In this code snippet, we create an instance of the CartPole-v0 environment and reset it to the initial state. We then run a loop for 100 time steps, during which we choose a random action from the set of possible actions, perform the action in the environment, and render the result. We continue until the task is completed (done=True), or until the loop terminates. The challenge presented to the software agent is to keep the cart pole balanced, even as these random movements pull it towards the ground. TL/DR: OpenAi Gym provides a digital practice space (like a gym) to place a software agent and teach it to teach itself. Now, all we need is the class curriculum. TensorFlow: The Lesson TensorFlow  is a powerful library for building and training deep neural networks. In the context of reinforcement learning, TensorFlow can be used to implement the agent's policy, which maps observations to actions. This policy can be represented by a neural network that takes the current state as input and outputs a probability distribution over the possible actions. Here is an example of how to use TensorFlow to build a simple neural network for the CartPole environment: In this code snippet, we define a neural network with two hidden layers of size 32 and an output layer with   softmax activation  that outputs a probability distribution over the possible actions. We then create an instance of the CartPole-v0 environment and obtain an observation of the current state. We reshape the observation to match the input shape of the neural network and use it to obtain a probability distribution over the actions. We then choose an action randomly from this distribution. Combining OpenAI Gym and TensorFlow for Deep Reinforcement To combine OpenAI Gym and TensorFlow, we can use TensorFlow to implement the agent's policy and OpenAI Gym to provide the environment. To put a picture to it: We create a practice room, place our student in it, and tell it what the objective is. In the CartPole environment, we're challenging the software agent to balance the pole even when the cart is randomly moved back and forth on the track. The software agent tries again and again, learning what happens when it makes a wrong move, until it learns the best way to keep the pole balanced. Success! Looking to add a Python Programmer to your team? If this doesn't sound like your field of expertise, hire someone who can help! Software consultancies like BearPeak Technology Group have expert developers. Check us out! We're a Boulder, Colorado-based team of engineers who help you hire remote software developers efficiently and reliably. We offer free consultations and are dedicated to your startup's success. It's important for us to disclose the multiple authors of this blog post: The original outline was written by chat.openai, an exciting new AI language model. The content was then edited and revised by Lindey Hoak. "OpenAI (2023-2024). ChatGPT. Retrieved from https://openai.com/api-beta/gpt-3/ " BearPeak Technology Group is a software studio based in Boulder, CO, offering studio, strategy, and staffing services. The startup studio takes ideas from concept to reality. The strategy services range from Fractional CTO mentors to architecture and specialized skillset services. for startups, businesses, and entrepreneurs. The staffing services assist teams in connecting with high-quality software developers. If one of these sounds like the solution for you, get in touch with BearPeak for a free consultation at bearpeak.io/contact .

  • A Day in the Life of a Graphic Designer

    What exactly does a graphic designer do every day? The daily schedule of an online employee can seem like a mystery; When you only see their occasional notifications and meet for video calls every couple of days, the other details of their work go unknown. Most of our team no longer works in an office, so let's take this opportunity to share what the BearPeak team members do in a day. Follow along with our Graphic Designer Lindey through her typical work day. New to BearPeak? - Watch a client testimonial. - Explore our software studio. - Learn more about us. 8:00am - Wake Up & Planning Working from home, I have the luxury of a calm morning routine. I roll out of bed and prepare a cup of hot chai. While eating breakfast, I usually scroll through Notion on my phone, adding and rearranging my to-do list of tasks for the day. My BearPeak role consists of both graphic design and social media management, so I'll be spending my day making art and social posts. 10:00am - Video Call Meetings Depending on the workday, I attend meetings to discuss our current email campaigns, advertising, and the upcoming social media posts we have scheduled for LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. 11:00am - Graphic Design Work I prefer to dive right into my biggest projects right away; My ideas are fresh from the meetings, and I have a clear set of objectives from my morning to-do list. It's important to note that not all of my tasks will be completed in one day: Any artist knows that a quick sketch or minor vector adjustment often turns into something much longer. Artwork takes multiple days, returning to the project with new perspectives and ideas. One of the nicest perks about doing art for a living is the ability to listen to something as I work. From dozens of Spotify playlists to audiobooks, I often have something going in the background. I also have the strange ability to look at any art I've completed and remember what I was listening to as I created it, like a visual time capsule. I'm also a big fan of pomodoro videos, which help me power through work in 25-minute increments and remind me to take 5-minute breaks in between. BearPeak's graphic design work consists of edits, rearrangements, and new designs. We purchase artwork on Vecteezy, which I download and open in Adobe Illustrator. Then, I edit the artwork to fit our style, adjusting anchor points and handles, replacing colors and patterns, sometimes completely redrawing. However, only having to modify artwork saves hours of time that would have gone into rough sketches, movement & flow, aka lots of trial and error. 12:00pm - Lunch What's for lunch? Likely leftovers: Falafels and stir-fried vegetables are two of my favorites. Otherwise, I'll cook a pot of rice with chicken curry and naan. Whatever I eat, I aim for all my food groups and a lot of water to help me focus when I get back into my work. For the remainder of my lunch break, I stay away from computer screens because I know the juxtaposition will freshen my ideas (and help avoid eye strain). I like to watercolor, read books, and take walks outside. 1:00pm - Work I do well with challenges and time pressure, so I like to pick one project and aim to complete it within the hour. Most often, that challenge is in Buffer, our choice for social media planning software. I'll aim to finish organizing and writing a week's worth of posts before the hour's up. Since we love Boulder, Colorado so much and appreciate the hometown that has helped us grow , we like to share current local events. I take time every week to catch up on what's happening in Boulder and add the best highlights to our upcoming post calendar. 2:00pm - Exercise To keep my brain focused (and my body from morphing into the shape of my desk chair), I make sure to get in some exercise every day. I prefer yoga or a mat workout, both of which take about an hour. 3:00pm - Work The remainder of the workday is devoted to any outstanding projects. I turn on a Deep Focus playlist on Spotify and knock out a blog article or two. 6:00pm - Dinner Prep & Chores I enjoy the simple prep of measuring out the ingredients, throwing them all in an Instant Pot, setting the timer, and forgetting about dinner until it's ready. I take this time to clean up the apartment, take out the trash, finish folding and putting away the laundry, or do the dishes. Once it's ready, I like to watch TV while eating: Anything from Bob's Burgers to Grey's Anatomy, or sometimes a Studio Ghibli movie. 8:00pm - Winding Down The events of this time of day vary, but I often scroll TikTok, read, or play my newest video game obsession. This alternates between Rune Factory, The Sims, and Fallout 76. I also like writing my own novels, so late-night hours with a cup of chamomile are the perfect time to explore another passion. I make sure to be in bed before 10pm; I LOVE sleep, and I want to be freshly alert in the morning to have another excellent day of work. BearPeak Technology Group is a software studio based in Boulder, CO, offering studio, strategy, and staffing services. The startup studio takes ideas from concept to reality. The strategy services range from Fractional CTO mentors to architecture and specialized skillset services. for startups, businesses, and entrepreneurs. The staffing services assist teams in connecting with high-quality software developers. If one of these sounds like the solution for you, get in touch with BearPeak for a free consultation at bearpeak.io/contact.

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  • 404 Error Page | BearPeak Technology

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  • About Us | BearPeak Technology Group

    BY ENGINEERS, FOR ENGINEERS. Meet your strategic advantage in technology. Work at BearPeak → Meet Our Founder & CEO John Eckhardt has been part of 4 startups, all of them successful. Excelling at multiple roles as product, software, and site reliability engineer, John gained a 360° view of the development process. Now, he manages a team of hand-selected professionals with one goal in mind: Helping startups start up. Talk with John "BearPeak is determined to help teams achieve internal & external success. We bring startups to their peak by providing extraordinary design, leadership, and development services." Connect with our software studio → What Could You Accomplish? We helped Ad Fontes Media build front- and back-end applications, move systems from legacy hosting to GCP, and drove the development of a brand new Media Bias Chart 2.0!. As they work with more predictive tools based on human-truthed datasets, we're also helping Ad Fontes Media advance their AI story. Our Partnerships Careers Want to Join the Team? Join our mission to help startups start up! - Work remotely - Choose your hours - Connect with excellent software developers, dedicated and supportive teammates, and leaders with top-tier resources and guidance. We're a team that likes to get outdoors, sport BearPeak merch, and solve problems with purpose and drive. If you think you'd be a good fit, let's talk! Check Open Positions

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