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How to Call in Sick When You’re an IT Contractor

As the cold and flu season begins, more and more IT professionals will be calling their bosses to take a sick day.  Plenty of IT recruiters and IT staffing firms have experience with IT candidates abusing their sick days.  While it depends on the workplace culture, technical recruiters and IT staffing agencies want their candidates to operate via these rules of thumb:

  1. Make sure to notify the correct people that you’ll be out sick.  Your IT recruiting companies and IT staffing firms will probably tell you this before you start the job.  Sometimes you need to communicate with your IT recruiting agencies about sick days and sometimes the procedure requires you to tell a supervisor at the company you’re working at.  Make sure you know ahead of time so you aren’t caught unawares on a day when you are indeed too sick to come into work.
  2. If you’re required to tell your boss that you’ll be out, be honest, but don’t overshare.  If you have a personal matter you must be out to take care of, don’t lie.  Be honest with your manager without giving too much information. The aim is to be open with them, but not to make either of you uncomfortable.
  3. For a list of amusing examples of reasons you should not give your manager, check out the results from this survey.

 

 

Don’t Say This in IT Job Interviews!

Most IT recruiters and IT staffing firms would agree that it’s good to appear flexible in interviews for IT jobs.  If you’re too rigid on anything – timing, the kind of work culture you want, compensation, etc, it will pretty much guarantee that hiring managers will tell your technical recruiters and IT recruiting companies that you’re a bad fit.  You want to appear easy to work with and being too rigid definitely destroys that impression.  There is one thing you don’t want to be too flexible on either, though: the kind of work you’ll do.

It won’t reflect well on you (and thus frustrate your IT staffing agencies and IT recruiting firms) if you seem like you’re willing to do pretty much anything.  This makes you seem not only desperate, but probably not passionate or experienced enough as an IT professional.  The best IT professionals, the ones IT recruiting agencies have no problem placing, know what technologies they like to work with and don’t like to work with.  They have enough experience to know what they can do well—and what they can’t.  Good IT professionals also have a passion for the work they are really interested in.  They care about their work and the quality of it.  If you are too flexible, it will be hard for interviewers to assume any of this about you—never mind hire you!

IT Job Interviews: They’re All About Timing!

When you’re prepping for interviews with your IT recruiters and IT staffing firms, you probably focus on what you’ll want to highlight for your interviewer.  Maybe your technical recruiters and IT recruiting agencies have told you to emphasize your experience with certain technologies or experience serving particular kinds of clients.  However, the successful candidates don’t just get IT jobs based on what they say. It’s also how long they take to say it.

Most IT staffing companies and IT recruiting firms that help their candidates prepare for interviews might not think to mention that keeping your answers succinct is important.  However, if you don’t budget your time well, or your take far too long to answer questions, you’ll definitely make a poor impression on your interviewer (and IT recruiting companies by extension).  Check with your IT staffing agencies about how long the interview is likely to be before you go.  If you know the hiring manager budgeted about an hour to meet with you, pace yourself accordingly.  Taking their time into consideration will make a very good impression!

 

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Leave This Information Off Your IT Resume!

There are some countries where it’s normal to add personal information to IT resumes.  IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies want to know things like your birthday, marital status, religion, whether you have kids, etc.  Or sometimes IT professionals will list this kind of information not because it’s a cultural norm, but simply because IT recruiting companies have never told them not to.

It’s important for IT professionals seeking new jobs to know that in the US, technical recruiters and IT staffing firms are actually pretty uncomfortable getting personal information on a resume.  A hiring manager may actually find somebody to be unprofessional for including it.  It could cost you IT jobs to leave all this personal information on your resume.  While most IT recruiting firms and IT staffing companies might see past this mistake and help you clean up your resume, it’s best to leave it off in the first place.  You’ll save your IT recruiting agencies some time and solidify your impression on them as more professional.

Don’t Stall Your IT Job Search With This Mistake

Perfecting your IT resume to attract IT recruiting companies and IT staffing firms can be daunting.  You want to achieve the best balance of including experience and skills that IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies want to see, all while keep the resume clean and as brief as possible.  So if you’ve spent hours agonizing over polishing the perfect resume to attract IT staffing companies and IT recruiting agencies, don’t let it go to waste by making this little mistake: leaving off adequate contact info.

It’s easy to see why some people might think it’s best to avoid giving too much contact info on their resume. There are certainly reasons that people want to make it harder to contact them.  However, if you don’t give adequate contact information, technical recruiters will assume you’re not serious about looking for IT jobs.  It’s best to at least give your phone number and an email address.  Ideally, a link to your LinkedIn profile is helpful, too.  Once you are working with IT recruiting firms that you trust, you can take your resume down.  This will help you avoid unnecessary exposure.

Clean Up Your IT Resume ASAP!

If you’re trying to attract IT recruiting firms and IT staffing agencies with your resume, you’re probably busy trying to stuff it with your experience, technical skills, and achievements.  These are definitely important—if you can’t show the right array of skills, IT recruiters and IT staffing companies won’t even give you a cursory phone call.  However, you could be shooting yourself in the foot if your resume layout is messy and inconsistent.

Why do IT recruiting companies and IT staffing firms care if your resume is formatted nicely? While managers want to see that you have the relevant skills and experience to do IT jobs they’re hiring for, it also needs to be obvious.  If your resume is confusing or difficult to read, technical recruiters and IT recruiting agencies won’t want to give it to a busy hiring manager.  Instead, they’ll pick a resume that’s much easier to read.  This is because the manager will find it easier to picture hiring this person!  So don’t let your resume’s format be what holds you back—clean it up today!

Are You Wasting Space on Your IT Resume?

Does your IT resume say that you’re a fast learner, a great team player, or that you have an exemplary work ethic?  You may think you’re attracting IT recruiters and IT staffing firms, but you’re really just wasting space on your resume. Why?

Particularly when it comes to attracting IT recruiting agencies and IT staffing companies, you want to make sure everything you list on your resume is strong evidence of your value as an employee.  When you list soft skills or call yourself something subjective like “creative” or a “perfectionist”, you’re not giving concrete evidence of your candidacy.  You’re just listing how you perceive yourself, which is pretty irrelevant to hiring managers and technical recruiters trying to fill IT jobs. Focus on listing your technical skills and your accomplishments.  These are what IT recruiting firms and IT staffing agencies love to see.  You can elaborate on more subjective traits once you get your new IT recruiting companies on the phone!

 

Don’t Make these Mistakes on Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is an inevitable part of searching for IT jobs these days.  While you’ll still need copies of your resume to send to IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies, you’ll also need a great LinkedIn profile to attract those technical recruiters and IT staffing companies.  Here are some LinkedIn profile mistakes that will drive IT recruiting agencies and IT staffing firms away.

1. Giving too much irrelevant info: As on your resume, don’t list your college courses, IT jobs from 20 years ago, or give staggering details in descriptions of your past jobs.   A LinkedIn profile isn’t necessarily limited to one page, but it should still be as brief and concise as you can make it.

2. Unprofessional pictures: It may seem tempting to just add any picture into your LinkedIn  profile.   Your picture doesn’t have to be stiff and boring, but a bad picture (or one depicting you doing something, well, bad) will really damage your reputation with IT recruiting firms and hiring managers.

3. Unnecessary endorsements: People may endorse you for a lot of silly or irrelevant skills.  Take these out of your profile.  They take up too much of the brief time IT recruiting companies will look at your profile.  Don’t waste their time or yours—make sure every part of your profile strengthens your candidacy.

Highlight This Quality in Your Next IT Job Interview

In interviews for IT jobs, it’s obvious that you need to demonstrate your skills and accomplishments with technical tools.  If a job requires Java, you won’t impress your interviewer or IT recruiters and IT staffing firms if you can’t speak to your comfort with Java.  But there is one skill that is very important to demonstrate in interviews and phone calls with IT staffing companies and IT recruiting agencies: empathy.

Technical recruiters and IT recruiting firms love to work with IT professionals who are well versed in a lot of technologies, but these people are hard to place if they don’t have empathy.  Why?  Because empathy is a quality that make somebody easy to work with.  In a field like IT, being easy to work with is of the utmost importance.  IT staffing agencies need people who are great at customer service, working with teams, and taking feedback on their coding, troubleshooting, etc.  So in your next conversation with IT recruiting companies or in IT job interviews, try to demonstrate that you’ve got empathy—for your teammates, clients, customers, and superiors.  (But make sure you demonstrate it—not just say you are empathetic!  This won’t play well.) It may just win you the job!

 

 

Be Stronger in Your IT Job Interviews

On your resume and in interviews for IT jobs, you’ll have to sell yourself to hiring managers, IT recruiters, and IT staffing companies.  There are certain qualities and phrases that hiring managers, IT recruiting firms and technical recruiters all agree are desirable.  However, you need to demonstrate to interviewers and IT staffing firms that you have these qualities, not just say you have them.  Here’s how to do this.

Firstly, stay away from just using adjectives.  Calling yourself “dedicated”, “motivated”, or “diligent” for example, won’t do you much good.  An interviewer can’t go on your own assessment of yourself.  What will work is if you can tell stories that show that other people see you as having the kinds of qualities that make a strong, effective team member.  For instance, talking about the time you spent hours de-bugging code until it was perfect will make a big impact on an interviewer and the IT recruiting agencies and IT staffing agencies you’re working with.  Simply saying that you’re “detail-oriented” and “tenacious” will not impress your interviewers.  Try thinking about this as you prep for your next IT job interview.  It will probably make all the difference.