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AVID (Applications, Voice, Internet, Data) Technical Resources is a leading Information Technology recruiting company. Specializing in placing contract and permanent personnel in both Infrastructure Support and Applications Development positions, AVID has a national presence supporting clients ranging from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies. Headquartered in Boston, MA, AVID has achieved tremendous growth since the firm's inception in 2003. This has triggered numerous national awards and recognition, such as being named to Inc. 500 Magazine's list of 5,000 Fastest Growing Privately-held Companies in the US in 2010, 2011 and 2013. Additionally, the firm boasts of having more than 100 five-star reviews on Google from clients and candidates who rave about their experience and interaction with the firm's recruiters.

How to Keep your Tech Job Search Discreet

With such a hot IT job market right now, it’s a great time to be looking for a new one.  With so many open IT jobs, the hardest part may not be finding one.  The hardest part will be be conducting your job search without tipping off your boss.  Here are some tips from IT staffing companies for discreetly going about your next search. 

Location, Location, Location.  Utilize local coffee shops for calls with recruiters and phone screens when you have to take a call during work hours.  You can also take a call in your car during a break or while driving to or from work.  The key is to pick a quiet location where you have good service on your phone.  You don’t want to spend a call with a hiring manager fervently whispering or worrying a coworker will overhear you.  The most ideal circumstance, if you can achieve it, is to set up any calls before work or after and take them at your house, on a landline, in a room by yourself.

Keep your resume posted as confidential and don’t make your LinkedIn updates public.  Your job search will be conducted almost entirely online, but you don’t have to make it obvious.  IT recruiters suggest posting your resume as confidential on job boards and choosing the right settings on your LinkedIn.  (Obviously, you don’t want to make your tagline ‘Seeking new opportunities,’ either.)  Even if you think your boss would never look online or go on LinkedIn, you don’t know who else may see evidence of your job search.  People may gossip about your search or even tell your boss directly.

Don’t discuss your job search with coworkers.  While it can be tempting, this is a mistake that might really sink you.  As tempting as it is to talk about your search, it can be even more tempting for your coworker to talk about it with somebody else.  Even the coworker who’s your best friend might accidentally let news of your job search slip.  IT staffing agencies suggest you only talk about your search with people outside of work, like family and non-coworker friends.  It’s your safest bet.

Change for interviews outside of the office.  If you need to change into a suit for an interview (and IT staffing firms always suggest wearing a suit), don’t change in your office or come into work wearing a suit.  Stop off at a coffee shop, a local mall, etc.  Wearing a suit when you normally don’t will certainly spark curiosity.  Worse, you may have to answer questions about it and be forced to lie.  It’s worth it to just change elsewhere to avoid any of this!

Take enough PTO when you schedule an interview.  Technical recruiters suggest taking ample time for an interview.  You may have to do things like coding tests or whiteboarding sessions.  You might also get the chance to meet more team members, hiring managers, etc.  So take enough time off work to do whatever you need for your interview.  You don’t want to miss out on the job because you had to rush back to the office!

Want to see our open IT jobs?  Follow us on LinkedIn.  We post new jobs daily!

it job search discreet
Don’t discuss your search with your coworkers, no matter how much you want to! Photo credit: philm1310 via Pixabay.

 

 

Are You Losing Tech Talent with this Mistake?

It’s no secret that it’s a job seeker’s market out there.  The national unemployment rate is dropping to levels so low that we haven’t seen them since 1969!  Employers are getting so desperate to fill open roles they’re relaxing their standards.  Some employers are no longer requiring formal higher education like a Bachelor’s degree, no longer requiring certain drug testing, and considering candidates with a criminal record.  In a tight labor market like this, tech employers need to be especially effective at recruiting talent for their notoriously hard-to-fill roles.  There’s one mistake that IT staffing agencies find employers often make that loses them talent.  Worse, it’s a mistake they unwittingly make, so they don’t even know to correct it!  This hiring mistake that’s so easy to make?  Moving too slowly in the hiring process.

Why is moving too slowly (and honestly, from most companies’ perspectives, it’s not that slow) such a mistake?  The problem is that Tech field moves fast and so do its job candidates.  Expectations have changed with the advent of LinkedIn, Indeed, and online job searching.  With the technical tools to expedite the hiring process, IT recruiters find that candidates have no patience for companies that move at a slow (or even sometimes an average pace) in their hiring process.  Other companies will accommodate this need for a speedy transition—so don’t be the one they leave behind.

Another reason technical recruiters find that a slow hiring process is such a mistake is because most IT professionals are pretty sought-after.  They’re likely entertaining several interview processes, IT recruiters, or even offers!  Moving slowly, requiring multiple interviews and phone screens, and/or requiring a lot of deliberation time means that candidates will probably just go with one of the other options they have on the table.  Particularly in the tech field, where there’s already a dearth of talent, this tight labor market has increased the amount of activity a candidate can pursue in their job search. To compete with everything else your ideal candidate probably has on the table, you’ll have to move fast.

The last reason it’s imperative to move quickly when hiring for IT jobs is because it helps the candidate to feel valued.  As discussed above, candidates are used to companies hiring quickly.  When a company asks them to come back in for interview after interview, or takes weeks to deliberate, candidates assume the company has a lot of hesitations about them.  Since it’s such a job seeker’s market, tech candidates have the option to go with companies that try to snap them up quickly and make them feel like a precious commodity.  Don’t move too slowly, or you’ll wind up losing out on your top choices– because they feel like your last choices!

 

Want to see our open IT jobs?  Follow us on LinkedIn.  We post new jobs daily!

IT hiring mistakes
Don’t make a 404 in your hiring process! Photo credit: aitoff via Pixabay.

 

Do You Really Need to Wear a Suit for Tech Interviews?

Dress codes have been moving towards a more relaxed feel in all industries, but especially in IT, for a long time.  IT recruiters have been working with employers who have a jeans and t-shirt dress codes for years.  There’s just one problem with this trend:  Technical recruiters find that often, candidates will assume they can come to interviews in jeans.   Even for the most casual of workplaces, 99% of IT staffing firms agree: It’s important to go to your job interview in a suit.

Why do you need to wear a suit when everyone around you will be wearing jeans?  There are a few reasons.  Firstly, wearing a suit indicates that you understand basic professional norms.  Interviewing has required a suit for decades and it will likely continue that way.  When IT staffing agencies tell you to wear a suit to your interview, they’re helping you send a message about more than just your closet.  They want you to show employers that you know how to be a professional—right as you walk in the door.  If you show up wearing jeans and t-shirt, employers have a moment to wonder what else you’ll do in a job.  Do you come in late?  Do you leave early?  Do you swear or tell inappropriate jokes?  So wear that suit and iron it.  Have a strong handshake, and set the stage for employers to assume you’re a seasoned professional who knows how to act in an office.

The second reason IT recruiting firms tell you that you need to wear a suit to a job interview is because it helps you demonstrate a level of respect for the employer.  As a candidate, you’re coming into the employer’s office and you’re doing it at their invitation.  They’re taking time out of their busy schedules to interview you.  Show that you’re grateful and you know you’re on their turf by wearing a suit.  If you get the job, you can wear jeans and t-shirts with the other employees.  However, as a candidate, the balance of power is different.  Wearing a suit shows that you understand this.

The last reason you should wear a suit to interview for IT jobs is that it gives you an advantage.  A suit makes anybody look a little better, a little more polished.  It helps interviewers envision you as a capable, accomplished professional.  Why eschew this advantage?  Your technical skills will speak for themselves, but there’s no harm in adding that extra oomph to your candidacy with your suit.  It’s one easy way that IT staffing firms suggest you can help yourself land the job!

Want to see our open IT jobs?  Follow us on LinkedIn.  We post new jobs daily!

 

tech interviews
You might not wear a suit to work, but you still need one for the interview. Photo credit; RoyalAnwar via Pixabay.

 

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!

 

IT job search
Mobile app development is only getting bigger. Make sure you get a piece of the pie. Photo credit: Geralt via Pixabay.

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:

  1. 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!
  2. 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.
  3. 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!

 

tech talent
The labor market is even tighter in 2018 than 2017. But you can still win great tech talent. Photo credit: FotografieLink via Pixabay.

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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!
  3. 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!
  4. 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.
tech job offers
Rejecting a job offer isn’t as easy as saying ‘no.’ Photo credit: TayebMEZAHDIA via Pixabay.

 

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.

  1. 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!
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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!

 

Interview thank you notes
Great thank you notes don’t feel like templates. Photo credit: 6689062 via Pixabay.

Want to see our open IT jobs?  Follow us on LinkedIn.  We post new jobs daily!

Graduating in May? Jump Start Your Tech Job Search Now!

It’s only late February, but if you’re a college senior or finishing up your grad school program, you can get going on your search for your first (or next) IT jobs right now.  If you take the right steps, you can land yourself a job to start after graduation.  Here’s what IT recruiters would suggest you do now.

1. Create (or polish, if you’ve already started) your resume.  This is the first and most important step.  You can’t do anything else until you have a resume to give to hiring managers and technical recruiters.  IT staffing firms suggest you do 2 things in particular to create a strong resume for a recent grad.  Firstly, you typically want to put your education section at the top.  You can keep your GPA in there if it’s high enough for up to 3 years past graduation. (How do you know your GPA is high enough?  Put it on there if it’s anywhere between 2.8 and 4.0.  However, it’s worth noting that anything lower than 3.0 may put off companies that are particularly picky).

The second thing to make sure you do on a recent grad resume is to create a strong, thorough ‘Technical Proficiencies’ section.  Then detail out in the bullets under your experience how you used the technologies you gave in that Technical Proficiencies section.  If you don’t have much professional experience yet, detail out how you’ve used the technologies in your Technical Proficiencies section in bullets under projects or internships you’ve done for school.  Employers need to be able to see how you’ve used a technology, not just that you claim you’ve learned it.

2. Build your LinkedIn profile.  If you don’t have one yet, you need one now.  Most recent grads don’t think they need a LinkedIn profile until after they land their first job, but this is a rookie mistake.  Take the time to build yourself a profile, because especially in the tech field, there are plenty of hiring managers that won’t hire a candidate who doesn’t have one.  IT recruiting agencies suggest that you build a profile that isn’t too long or detailed.  Your resume should be elaborate and give deep technical detail on your experience.  Your LinkedIn profile should give a rough outline of your experience and skills.  That’s it!

3. Reach out to your local IT recruiting firms.  The time to build relationships with recruiters is now.  Plenty of companies are already working with IT staffing agencies to start the process of hiring May graduates.  In fact, some of the best jobs are going to be less available as the Spring goes on.  You’ll actually give yourself an advantage to land some of the best-paying IT jobs at the coolest employers if you start searching now (rather than after graduation).

4. Start networking.  Go to networking events in the cities you’d like to live in.  Start reaching out to people you have connections to in the tech field.  Let your family and friends know that you’re ready to start your job hunt.  You never know who might have great connections and the ability to open the right doors.  Now is the time to let everyone know you’d accept help in your job search!

IT job search
It’s time to start your tech job search, even if you’re graduating months from now! Photo credit: geralt via Pixabay.

What’s the Difference between Your Resume, LinkedIn Profile, and Job Application?

Hunting for new IT jobs means you’ll find yourself submitting some of the same information over and over again. Between interactions with hiring managers, IT recruiters, and interviewers, you may be answering the same question repeatedly. Some of this repetition is necessary, though. This is particularly true within your job search materials. Below are the similarities and differences between these three items. Knowing them can help you create better job search materials—and will probably help you land the tech jobs you want.  Here are some tips from IT staffing agencies for your resume, your LinkedIn profile and your job application.

Your LinkedIn Profile – This is the most recent addition to the job search process, but it doesn’t mean it’s optional.  Especially in the tech field, not having a LinkedIn profile will be deeply detrimental to your job search.  Technical recruiters find that some hiring managers will even automatically reject a candidate for having no LinkedIn profile.  As you write your LinkedIn profile, keep a few things in mind. Firstly, condense your profile.  Your LinkedIn profile is meant to be an abbreviated version of your resume.  Since most tech resumes can be a few pages (or more) it’s all the more important for IT professionals to abide by this rule.  Secondly, your LinkedIn profile should include 2 or 3 bullets (more if you have fewer jobs to list) that discuss what you did at each job.  Some recruiters find that candidates will simply give a job title or a description of what the company does.  This is not enough.  Leave the description of the company off your profile (hiring managers can look up what the company does).  Give enough information for a hiring manager or recruiter to understand your technical experience on a basic level.

Your Resume – Your resume is arguably the most important part of your IT job search, so don’t be haphazard about it.  The best case scenario is that you constantly update your resume, even when you’re not job searching.  If you pick up a new technology or language, add it.  If you achieve something important at your current job, add it to your resume.  Then, when you’re ready to search for a new job, all you’ll need to do is polish it up.

When you are ready to polish up your resume, there are 2 important things to pay attention to.  First, the length.  Resumes are different from LinkedIn profiles because they’re usually much longer.  Tech professionals are not held to the 1 page (or 2 pages for more experienced professionals) resume rule that most fields are.  Brevity takes a back seat to making sure you give adequate descriptions of how you used the technologies you specialize in.  It’s not enough to list the technologies in your ‘Technical Proficiencies’ section at the top of your resume.  You need to include demonstrations of the work you used these technologies for within the bullet points.  While you only give 2 or 3 bullets in your LinkedIn profile under each job, you want to give at least double that on your resume.  (And don’t waste these bullets with descriptions of what the company does because again, hiring managers can look this up themselves).

The second thing to pay attention to when building your resume is to make sure it is similar to your LinkedIn profile when it comes to dates and employers.  There should be no discrepancies on the basic history of your career.  If there are, hiring managers will likely reject you immediately.  Being trustworthy is imperative, no matter how many advanced programming languages you’re an expert at.

 Your Job Application – This is the part of the job search process that candidates find the most repetitive.  You can often skip it when you’re applying with IT staffing companies for contracting positions.  When you’re applying for direct hire and permanent jobs, though, you’ll often have to complete a job application in addition to submitting a resume.  This is usually necessary for HR departments and their own hiring processes.  The good news is, more and more frequently, you’re allowed to parse your resume into job applications.  The most important thing to note with job applications is that your dates and employment history must line up with your LinkedIn profile and resume.  As noted above, a discrepancy will make you look untrustworthy to employers and potentially result in rejection.  Be patient, fill out the job application accurately, and check it over before you submit it.  Landing a job you love in the end will be worth it.

 

Job applications may seem repetitive and unnecessary but don’t rush through them! Photo credit: Free-Photos via Pixabay.

 

What’s Big in Tech Hiring Right Now?

The goal of the hiring process is timeless, but there are definitely trends that come and go for interviewing and evaluating applicants.  One of the more recent trends was the creative, Google-style question which seemed to cross between whimsy and the hardest brain teaser you’ve ever heard.  Another trend (that should certainly die, but hasn’t yet) is the ‘Stress Interview’, in which an interviewer deliberately upsets a candidate to see their true colors.   Right now, IT staffing firms see a big trend in the tech field: a huge boom in contract – to permanent job openings.  Why is contract-to-perm so popular in tech, especially now?  Here are 3 reasons.

  1. Firstly, contract-to perm allows employers to staff quickly for projects so nothing gets slowed down. Permanent hiring is a much more complicated process for employers because of legal requirements as well as the cost and labor for onboarding new employees.  It’s much easier for employers to get funding approved to hiring a contractor for the duration of a project than funding for a perm employee that will be with the company for the forseeable future. When employers have an urgent tech project that they need to staff for and get moving, contract-to-perm hiring is a good option.
  2. Another reason technical recruiters are seeing a lot more contract-to-perm roles is that these roles let a company see how well a candidate can perform. Because technical skills are so specialized and rare in the US, this is an especially important concern for employers.  Even with coding tests and references, it’s hard for a company to know with 100% certainty if a candidate has the technical skills and experience to handle the work they’re being hired for.  A contract-to-perm stint allows an employee to really demonstrate this, and then be taken on permanently once the employer sees they can be successful in the role.
  3. The last reason employers might be hiring on a contract-to-permanent basis more frequently these days is because of the profusion of Scrum, Agile, and their hybrids. Since companies are now using development methodologies, which require much more teamwork than the old Waterfall and similar models, how the candidate fits into the team is paramount.  Hiring a candidate contract-to-perm allows employers to see firsthand how well they mesh with the team.  If it’s not a fit, it’s easier for candidate and employer to part ways when it’s a contractor relationship. (This is a benefit for the contractor, too.  Nobody wants to work on a team they’re ostracized from or have tension with!)  If it is a fit, it’s easier for a company to take the candidate on permanently now, since they’re already working there as a contractor.

So it’s easy to see why employers like hiring contract-to-perm, but why would you, as the job seeker, want to be hired this way?   Here are a few reasons IT recruiters see that candidates benefit from this kind of hiring.

  1. You get more opportunities when you’re open to this style of hiring. Plenty of companies don’t post all of their jobs online.  The jobs they don’t post are the contract-to-perm jobs.  This is for a variety of reasons, but mostly it’s because companies don’t have the time or manpower to post jobs that aren’t guaranteed to be long term.  Work with IT recruiting companies you trust and let them know you’re open to contract-to-perm jobs.  You’ll find that suddenly there are plenty more IT jobs you can be submitted to—jobs you didn’t even know existed before.
  2. You’ll get hired faster. As mentioned earlier, the permanent hiring process is much more complicated.  There are many legal concerns, financial concerns, and the time and money needed to onboard a permanent employee.  Perhaps you want to jump ship from a bad employer now (or yesterday), perhaps you need a new job that makes money faster, or perhaps you’ve been unemployed for a while and need a job period.  Letting your IT staffing agencies submit you for contract-to-perm jobs increases your chances of getting hired somewhere new quickly.
  3. You get in the door places where you couldn’t before. As discussed earlier, companies are taking less risk in hiring somebody contract-to-perm. This emboldens them to try hiring candidates who may not fit every bullet of a job description perfectly.   As a permanent candidate, you might be an automatic no for a company.  Maybe you don’t have the Ivy League degree they want or are short a few years of experience in a certain programming language.  However, as a contract-to-permanent candidate, you might be a yes.   Having most of the requirements for the job can be enough for an employer to take a chance on you (because they know that if the arrangement doesn’t work out for one or both of you, it’s easy to end it).  If you’ve wanted to work somewhere prestigious like a Google or Facebook, or simply want to try to take the next step up in your career, contract-to-perm hiring is a great way to do that.

 

Tech hiring
Contract-to-perm is a great way to get your foot in the door of a prestigious company. Photo credit: geralt via pixabay.

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