Mobile Developers: Pick Up This Language in 2018!
In 2018, Android mobile development will be experiencing tremendous growth. If you want to hop on that train, and search for new development jobs in that particular area, here’s one language you might want to pick up: Kotlin. Never heard of it? (Or haven’t heard much about it?) Here’s why IT staffing firms think Kotlin can expand your tech career!
What is Kotlin exactly? Kotlin is programming language that is completely compatible with Java. It’s also made to be a strong alternative to Java for a few reasons. Kotlin is less verbose than Java and doesn’t require NPE’s. This makes it cleaner, faster to use, and arguably less vulnerable to errors or memory leaks. It’s also easier to implement, troubleshoot, and faster to code in. Kotlin isn’t just some shiny new tool, though. It’s around 8 years old (though it only went open source in around 2012) and meant for enterprise projects. Like Java, it’s object-oriented and open source, which makes it ideal for budget-conscious companies. Plenty of IT jobs will be asking for Kotlin in 2018 and beyond.
Why do you want to learn Kotlin? For one thing, Kotlin will be easy to learn, especially if you already know Java. It’s built on Java and has a great deal of similarities. It’s also got some big fans. Google, Amazon, Netflix, Pinterest, Uber, and CapitalOne all use Kotlin. Considering these companies often light the way when it comes to tech trends, this speaks volumes about the future use you’ll get out of Kotlin. It’s also worth bringing up again the popularity of Android mobile app development. Considering the fact Android users seem to be about 85% of the market, with Apple taking up a bit less than the remaining 15%, Kotlin is a good bet. IT recruiters suggest that you hop on this language because it’s serving the future: a society that spends most of its time on its Android phones! One last reason learning Kotlin is likely to bring you more opportunity in 2018 and beyond: developers want to learn it. Several polls have placed Kotlin high on developers’ wish lists of hot new technologies to get their hands on. In such a job seeker’s market, IT staffing agencies find that what the developer wants to work with becomes just as important as what the employers want to work with. So follow your fellow developers and add Kotlin to your arsenal. It will pay off for years to come!
Want to see our open IT jobs? Follow us on LinkedIn. We post new jobs daily!
How Employers Can Compete in 2018’s Tech Job Seekers’ Market
If your company is looking to hire new tech talent in 2018, you’ll need to get even more competitive. Per the New York Times, the labor market has gotten tighter with our overall unemployment rate at a 17-year low of 4.1%. Tech has an even lower unemployment rate at 2.9%. Add to these numbers the usual dearth of tech talent in the US, and you’ve got a recipe for a very competitive hiring process. Don’t despair, though. If you want to hire great talent for your IT job openings, you can do it with a little elbow grease and these tips from IT staffing companies:
- Sell the company more, especially during phone interviews and in-person interviews. IT staffing firms may not have suggested this. Ideally, an interview is more of a 2-way street. It’s about finding the right fit—for both employer and employee. In a labor market so tight, even candidates with prison records are suddenly being considered more frequently, the game has changed a bit. You’ll want to dedicate more time to telling the candidate about your perks, your company culture if it’s fun and collaborative, and any hot technologies you can offer employees a chance to get experience with. It can also be a good idea to consider giving a tour of the company, introducing candidates to the team, and highlighting your Glassdoor reviews if you have a lot of good ones and a high overall score. Taking steps like this helps the candidate to picture themselves working for you—and enjoying it!
- Make your hiring process faster. IT recruiters find that one of the best ways to excite a candidate is to make them feel valued. Make a candidate feel like they’re your top choice, and your chances of having them join your team soar exponentially. There are a lot of ways to do this, but one especially effective method is to make your hiring process faster. The quicker you can get back to a candidate, the more confident they’ll feel in your interest and/or offers. No candidate wants to feel like a company spent days upon days, or worse, weeks, debating whether they were a good fit…it leads them to feel insecure! Even companies like Google and Amazon have been rumored to quicken their hiring processes lately to deal with a tighter tech labor market! This process has the added side benefits of helping you get better talent overall. IT recruiting companies have long bemoaned slow hiring processes. Even in the best of markets for employers, they’ll still lose you tech candidates, who are often juggling multiple interview processes and are frequently passive candidates. If you can quicken your hiring process, it will help you not only in this intensely competitive job seeker’s market. It will also help you later on if you can keep it up.
- Provide flexible work schedules when possible. There are a few things that attract a candidate: the hottest technologies, high salaries, fun perks, and a good commute. Perks and salary are hard to change, since employers often have limited resources. The same is true of commute, of course (your office is located where it’s located, there’s not much that can be done about that, usually.) The technologies you give your employees access to is dependent on your own company goals. It’s not always feasible to change over to a new hot technology when you’re already busy working with another on important projects. This leaves flexible work schedules as your secret weapon in the war for winning top talent. Everyone loves a flexible work schedule. Recent grads, to working parents, to older workers who are possibly busy taking care of elderly parents all appreciate a little work-life balance. The best part about flexible work schedules is that it doesn’t often cost more than trust to implement. You simply have to trust your employees to do what they need to, when they say they will do it. There’s no need to move buildings, find extra money in the budget, or move all your existing code onto a hot new technology you’re not even sure you’ll use next year. Create the kind of environment that supports flexible work schedules– one where nobody ever feels nervous or uncomfortable asking to take a day to work remotely, move their hours, etc. Then sell it to your potential employees. Talk it up in interviews, on your website, on your social media, and make sure your IT recruiting agencies talk it up to candidates! Candidates will be flocking to you in no time!
Want to see our open IT jobs? Follow us on LinkedIn. We post new jobs daily!
How to Decline a Job Offer
When you’re in the tech field, job searching can be easier because you’re more in demand. You’ll often have IT staffing companies reaching out to you, even when you’re perfectly happy in your current job. If you are searching, you may be juggling multiple interview processes at a time and even multiple job offers. This means that at some point you’ll be put in the position of declining a job offer. This can be a delicate task with lasting effects. Here are some tips from IT recruiters on how to gracefully decline a job offer and avoid burning any bridges in the tech sphere.
- You must respond. Do not under any circumstances just ignore the offer. Reach out to the employer or technical recruiters and reject the offer if you don’t want it. You’ll definitely torpedo your reputation with employers and IT recruiting companies if you don’t give any response to a job offer. Putting out job offers is a labor-intensive process for employers that takes a lot of time. To not even give a rejection is unthinkably rude and makes you look incredibly unprofessional.
- Keep it quick. Don’t drag your feet on rejecting a job offer when you know it’s not right for you. The sooner you can tell the employer no, the better the whole interaction will go. It’s especially important not to do something like accepting a job offer, then waiting for something better. Or dragging your feet to respond to a job offer while waiting for something better. It can be tempting, or even feel completely logical to do this. You’ve got to look out for yourself, right? But pulling a move like this will likely hurt you in the future. If you deceive an employer or reject it in a way that obstructs their hiring process, you’ll definitely frustrate them. You’ll probably blackball yourself as an applicant at that company in the future. You’ll also likely hurt your reputation with the people who work there. Considering how small the tech sphere can be sometimes, that’s a big risk to take!
- Keep it respectful, gracious, and pleasant. It’s entirely possible to reject a job offer without offending or frustrating a company. If you adopt the right tone and thank the company warmly for their time and consideration, IT recruiting agencies find that you can still walk away with goodwill. Find specific things you genuinely liked about the job, company and/or team and mention them. Specifics will go a long way in proving that the company made a positive impression on you. If you’d like to be able to apply to this employer in the future, say so. It’s entirely possible that a job offer right now at company X isn’t a good fit, but 5 years from now, it will be! Companies understand this and will appreciate it if you’re clear about it. There are cases where this won’t work, of course, but that’s a red flag in itself. If a company responds to a gracious rejection of a job offer with hostility and animosity, then they may not be pleasant to work for anyways!
- Give a reason if you have one that is temporary and palatable to an employer. In some cases, it can help to give employers a straightforward, honest reason why you’re rejecting their job offer. It can be completely acceptable to say you’ve received an alternate job offer with a higher salary, better commute, or more flexible schedule. It’s also fine to tell an employer if your personal circumstances have changed and you’re not ready to make start a new job. Maybe you have a sick relative, you need to move, etc. As mentioned before, your aim should be to keep the whole conversation positive. There are definitely reasons that you should NOT give to an employer for rejecting their job offer. The most obvious is if you’re taking a counter-offer from your current employer. While this is usually a bad move to make for yourself (check out this blog post here), it also looks terrible to employers. It can make them feel like you’ve used their (extensive) time and effort just to get yourself a raise from your boss. At the very least, it looks like you have bad judgement, which makes you seem pretty unhirable.
Want to see our open IT jobs? Follow us on LinkedIn. We post new jobs daily!
Tips for Tech Professionals on Writing Killer Interview Thank You Notes
Late winter and early spring are a great time to search for IT jobs. Budgets have recently been approved to hire more people, and the tech economy is booming. Addtionally, new development life cycles are often scheduled to start about now, and it’s the time of year when companies are often revisiting their products, services, and technologies, working on adding new features to applications and general improvements to keep competitive. If you’re ready to job search, or perhaps you’ve already started, here’s one skill you can sharpen to really enhance your tech job search: writing thank you notes. Here are some tips from IT recruiters on how to write the kind of thank you note that impresses tech hiring managers.
- Take notes in your interview. This tactic isn’t just about looking and being more engaged in the interview (though that certainly wins you points). It’s also about writing a better thank you note later. Mark down important points you discuss in the interview. What are imperative job functions do they bring up? Are there any problems they’re facing as a company that you could help with? Do they pose any questions that you might be more able to answer after a bit more thought? These are the kinds of things to add into your thank you note later. Time and again, IT staffing companies find that a generic thank you note (one that feels like it’s all from a template) will never impress hiring managers like a thank you note that makes reference to specifics from the interview. In fact, some IT recruiters believe that a generic thank you note will hurt your candidacy more than help it!
- Be prompt. A thorough, detailed thank you note that’s beautifully-written will never make much of a splash if it’s too late. Especially in the fast-paced tech industry, IT recruiting firms find that time is of the essence. When you finish your interview, head home as soon as you can to write your thank you note. Sending it the day of the interview (if possible) or within 24 hours is ideal. Sending the note 48 hours later can be acceptable if you get really tied up. If you send the note late, you might even find that the hiring manager has already assumed you’re not sending it and thus dinged your candidacy—or even rejected you for it.
- Send individual thank you notes. If you interview with multiple people, try to get their individual contact info from your technical recruiters. Writing each of them a note will show a level of care that goes above and beyond what most candidates demonstrate. If you can add a detail into each note that really personalizes it, that’s even better. Especially today, where best practices for innovation involve so much teamwork, and Scrum and Agile have replaced the need for heads-down Waterfall-type tech professionals, showing off extra effort in your interpersonal skills can be key. Individual, personalized thank you notes could make you seem like the kind of team player that hiring managers will love working with.
- Use your thank you note to address your weaknesses or concerns with your candidacy. This may not always be necessary, but if you felt there were concerns or weaknesses brought up in your interview, a thank you note can be a great place to address that. The key is to keep things positive and, if possible, focus on how you’re already working to remedy these potential issues. IT staffing agencies find that if you can handle this right, your thank you note can certainly strengthen your candidacy, as it’s your last impression on a hiring manager before they make their decision!
Want to see our open IT jobs? Follow us on LinkedIn. We post new jobs daily!