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Monthly Archives: May 2015

The Most Important Part of your LinkedIn Profile When Searching for IT Jobs

When crafting your LinkedIn profile, one of the primary purposes will likely be to attract IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies.  There are a few ways to make your profile more interesting to IT recruiting agencies and IT staffing firms, but one of the best is to make sure you have a great headline.  Since technical recruiters are often sifting through a mass of profiles as they work to fill IT jobs, your best bet is to get their attention quickly, with a concise, powerful headline.

It’s important to note that your LinkedIn profile headline should mention some combination of your strengths, skills, achievements, and interests.  This means that even if you’re currently unemployed, don’t put this in your headline.  IT staffing companies will immediately want to move on to a different profile.  If they’re choosing between IT professionals who can confidently tout their abilities and ones who are unluckily (or worse– deservedly) out of work, it’s a simple decision.  If you want IT recruiting firms to contact you about jobs, make sure your headline emphasizes your strengths, not your current unemployment.

 

How To Tell Interviewers About a Time You Made a Mistake In a Previous IT Job

When you’re booking interviews with IT staffing companies and technical recruiters, there are certain questions you’re probably preparing for and practicing your answers.  If they’re supportive, you may even be working a bit with your IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies to get ready for these IT jobs interviews.  Here’s one question you should definitely prepare for: Tell me about a time you failed or made a mistake at work.

To answer this question in a way that’s advantageous to you and reflects well on you IT recruiting agencies and IT staffing firms, start by making sure you identify a few situations you can talk about.  Check with your IT recruiting companies to make sure these aren’t the kinds of mistakes that would be a big deal in the roles you’re interviewing for.  Particularly when it comes to IT, you don’t want to make yourself look like you’re missing a skill that is needed to support your users, clients, or company’s hardware.

Next, find a way to talk about the mistake in a concise, quick way.  This is the part you want to mention as briefly as possible.  Don’t stop at this point, though.  You want to have most of this answer be about what you learned from the mistake and, if you got to, how you fixed it.  IT recruiting firms place IT professionals who make mistakes all the time.  They’re employable because they learn from these mistakes and can fix them (or mitigate their damage).

 

What to Keep (and Delete) on Your IT Resume

If you’re working on your resume for IT staffing companies and IT recruiters, you may have a hard time deciding what information you should and shouldn’t include on your resume.  While your technical recruiters and IT staffing agencies will be checking over your final resume that they send out for IT jobs, it’s in your best interest to start by sending them your most polished version possible. This means knowing what things to delete and what things to keep.

Something a lot of IT professionals struggle with is whether they should keep or delete their college extracurricular activities—especially fraternities and sororities.  The rule of thumb that IT recruiting firms and IT staffing firms prefer you follow is to only keep things on if you’re a recent college graduate.  If you’ve been out in the IT field (or just the workforce) for more than few years and you’ve had at least one real, professional job, it’s time to take your college extracurriculars off.  Use the space on your resume for professional accomplishments or duties instead.

 

You Need to Prep an Answer to This IT Job Interview Question!

There are a fair amount of standard questions that you can expect to encounter at interviews for IT jobs.  Perhaps your technical recruiters and IT staffing firms will help prepare you for them, or perhaps they’ll simply assume you’re ready to answer them.  Your best bet is to prepare for all standard questions—whether your IT recruiters and IT staffing companies know if they’ll be asked or not.  Here’s one crucial question your IT recruiting agencies will appreciate you preparing for: Why would you succeed in this role?

This might seem like an easy question to answer: just say you have all the skills and experience they require, right?  Not quite.  To prep your answer for this question (or forms of it) start by asking your IT recruiting firms what qualities they think the hiring managers would value most in this position.  Take the time to figure out which ones you can genuinely say you have.  Then, think of stories or achievements that illustrate how you’ve used these qualities.

When you go to answer the question, start by outlining the qualities that will be imperative to success in this role.  Then highlight the qualities you feel you’re especially strong in and quickly provide anecdotes to demonstrate it.  Lastly, if the position covers any work or subject matter you’re particularly passionate about, consider mentioning it to your interviewer.  It will be especially helpful if you have proof of this—perhaps you have been blogging about the topic for a while or volunteer in a relevant capacity.  Combined, these steps will really impress your hiring managers.