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Healthcare IT Recruitment & Staffing Services

Getting Interview Feedback—and What to Do With It

If you’re working with IT recruiting companies to find your next role, you’re giving yourself many advantages.  They’ll help prep you, advocate for you, and negotiate salary for you.  Probably one of the advantages that’s least discussed is that IT recruiters can get you feedback when you don’t land IT jobs.  As a candidate without an IT recruiter representing them, you can try to ask for feedback.  However, it’s never guaranteed.  Most employers actually prefer not to give feedback to rejected candidates for legal reasons.  They don’t want to say something that could be misconstrued or that they may be sued for.  Plenty of companies actually just have a blanket policy to never to give feedback to rejected candidates as a protective measure.  There’s also just the issue of time.  Most employers simply don’t have the time to give feedback to all rejected candidates.  Add to these two common obstacles the fact that you don’t have much of a relationship with the employer anyways, and this makes your chances of receiving feedback pretty low.  When you do have IT staffing companies representing you, they may be able to convince an employer to share some helpful feedback.

Why is getting negative feedback an advantage?  If you can get constructive feedback, sometimes it can help you learn how to interview better.  Or perhaps it can even help you make larger changes in your career.  Some common examples of useful interview feedback are when employers tell technical recruiters a candidate didn’t land the job because they brought up politics in an interview, didn’t wear appropriate clothes, or were late.  These are certainly reasons IT staffing firms find that candidates are rejected from jobs.  They’re also very easy things to fix so candidates can make sure they do nail an interview in the future.  Sometimes a candidate didn’t brush up enough on a technology before the interview or was unprepared to take a coding test.  If their recruiter can share this, the candidate will know to study and prepare more next time.

So if you’re working with IT recruiting firms, don’t forget to ask for feedback when you’re rejected from an employer.  Keep an open mind and really consider how you might use any feedback you receive.  While nobody loves being told they did something wrong, that’s only a minor part of this process. You can choose to turn your feedback into an opportunity to become even more employable.  You also have the benefit of your recruiter’s opinion.  Good IT recruiters will be happy to take a few minutes to discuss this feedback with you and help you understand what you can do better in your next interview, how you can build a more marketable skillset, etc.  Taking this time to learn lessons from interview feedback now means a better career in the future.

 

interview feedback for tech interviews
Getting constructive feedback can make you a better interviewer. Photo credit: Tumisu via Pixabay.

 

Why Consider Contracting Roles?

Many IT professionals are resistant to contracting.  However, when you’re looking for new roles, IT recruiters would strongly suggest that you consider contracting roles.  Especially in the tech field, contracting can have a lot of benefits that permanent roles don’t.  Here are 3 reasons why IT staffing firms suggest you seriously consider contracting in your next role.

1. You can expand your technical skills and experience. Contracting means moving around more, but it also means getting exposed to new technologies and skills as you move.  As opposed to a permanent job that you may spend years at, contacting lets you move on to work with new software, programming languages, etc, sooner.  This translates to faster growth in your career and a resume that is more enticing to employers and IT recruiting companies.

2. You might make more money. IT staffing companies often find their contractors have a higher income when they can go on their partners’ benefits. The biggest differences between contracting and permanent roles are usually the benefits (most contracting roles don’t provide benefits).  However, this isn’t actually much of a problem for some people.  If you have a spouse or long term domestic partner, you can often get benefits through their job.  (It’s worth noting that the cost per partner may actually be cheaper this way.)  Most contracting jobs pay more money to help you buy benefits completely on your own (often expensive).  You’ll be making more money, but spending less of it on healthcare, dental etc.  Thus you’ll find yourself with a fatter paycheck.

3. You can get hired faster. IT recruiting firms find that the hiring process for contractors is often less time-consuming and stringent.  If you need to move on from your current role quickly, contracting is a better way to do this.  Perhaps you need to move to a new area of the country, your current role is at a toxic workplace, or you need to make more money soon.  Being open to contracting will help you land IT jobs much faster to solve these problems.

 

Contracting for IT jobs
Contracting can have big benefits for IT professionals. Photo credit: qimono via Pixabay.

 

 

Why You Should Make Job Offers Faster

If you’re working with IT recruiting firms to fill open jobs on your team, you know it’s hard to find great talent.  The tech field has really been a job seeker’s market for a while now.  Recent unemployment rates for IT professionals illustrate this well.  As of last April, the unemployment rate in IT went as low as 2%.  This is less than half the national unemployment rate for all other fields combined (around 4.9%).  One thing IT staffing firms suggest to increase your chance of landing great tech talent is to make your job offers faster.

Why would making a job offer quicker help you hire more and better IT professionals?  There are two main reasons. Firstly, making a quicker job offer, especially one in the first 24-48 hours since an interview, makes a candidate feel really valued.  Especially in this field, IT recruiting agencies find that candidates are expecting quicker responses from potential employers.  To ensure the candidate feels desired, you need to extend job offers faster than in other industries.  The more interest a candidate perceives from an employer, the more likely they are to take your offer.  IT staffing companies see that candidates often respond well to job offers where they feel like the employer is excited about their skills and experience.  Never underestimate the power of making a candidate feel valued.

The second reason IT recruiting firms suggest you make your job offers faster is to make sure you don’t miss out on your second or third choice candidates.  If your first choice candidate declines, making a slower job offer to them means you’ll make an even slower offer to your second or third choice candidates.  As mentioned above, it’s definitely more of a job seeker’s market.  Technical recruiters usually find that their candidates are often high in demand and receive more job offers than candidates do in other fields.  So losing out on your first choice candidate after a slow job offer could also mean losing out on your second and third choice candidates!

 

IT jobs hiring
Faster job offers will help you land the tech talent you need. Photo credit: tookapic via Pixabay.

 

Do You Need to Move to Get a New IT Job?

IT recruiting firms find that IT professionals often wonder if they need to move to get new or better IT jobs.  The answer to this question may leave you happily surprised.

As is probably obvious, technology has become widely accepted as one of the most powerful tools for businesses and organizations.  This means that most, if not all businesses and organizations around the US use IT staffing companies to find tech professionals.  There are plenty of companies or organizations that you may not associate with technology, but these companies do use it quite a bit.  They use various technologies to interact with and attract consumers, streamline their business operations, connect their employees, and so much more. Some industries that you might not expect to use IT recruiting agencies to employ a lot of IT professionals include retail, healthcare, and education.

Taking all of this into account, you probably don’t have to move to find a new IT job with your technical recruiters.  Particularly if you’re near a big city, you’ll be near businesses or organizations that need Programmers, Systems Engineers, Business Analysts, and a wide variety of other IT professionals.   If you’re not close to a bigger metro area, your IT recruiting companies may suggest that you simply need to consider a slightly longer commute. All of this doesn’t even include remote options, which are certainly growing.

So before you resign yourself to moving, call your IT staffing firms.  You never know what jobs may be in your own backyard– literally.

 

moving-it-jobs
Will you need to move to get a new IT job? Probably not! Photo credit: MikeBird via Pixabay.

 

Using IT Recruiters Helps Employers with Healthcare Costs

Employers often work with IT recruiting firms to help fill their open positions for one main reason: because of how challenging it is to find the right candidates.  The tech field is absolutely a job seeker’s market, with the tech unemployment rate in 2016 being only around 2%.  Studies also show that tech professionals are voluntarily quitting jobs at a relatively high rate.  This usually means that either they’ve been presented with better options from other IT recruiters or employers, or that they’re confident they will find a better option easily.  But finding candidates in a tough hiring market isn’t the only advantage to working with IT staffing agencies.  Many employers also work with technical recruiters to fill their IT jobs because they can help employers save money on rising healthcare and insurance costs.

It’s no secret that healthcare costs for employers have been rising since at least 2011 and will continue to in 2017.  Costs will increase for employers by 6.5% over 2016.  They’ll likely continue to increase by 5% next year.  These increases are huge, but working with IT recruiting companies is one way to avoid them.  IT recruiting agencies can help you do more than just hire the best person for the job—they’ll also take over costs like payroll and healthcare for these new hires.  This kind of investment will continue to pay off for employers in the years to come, as the drivers of higher healthcare costs aren’t going away any time soon.  A higher aging population is one factor here.  Longer life expectancy is another.  In addition to these factors, the nation-wide obesity epidemic has been pushing increased healthcare costs.  All of these factors will continue to be prevalent for the foreseeable future.

So taking all of these factors into account, working with IT staffing companies to fill IT jobs is a way for employers to save money.  Even if it were easy to find the right candidate for open IT jobs (which it most certainly isn’t), it will cost far less to hire and employ them long term if a company uses IT staffing firms.

 

healthcare-costs-it-recruiting-firms
Healthcare costs are rising for employers, but IT recruiters can help mitigate that. Photo credit: DarkoStojanovic via Pixabay.

 

Go Beyond Just Polishing your IT Resume for your IT Job Hunt

When you’re searching for new IT jobs, you already know to do the basics: polish your resume, update your LinkedIn profile, and get back in touch with your technical recruiters and IT staffing agencies.  There are a few more steps your IT recruiters and IT staffing companies would recommend you do, though.  The most important is to clean up your social media accounts.

Why do IT recruiting companies recommend you clean up your social media trail?  While it’s still important not to do things like bashing your boss, team, or employers on your Facebook account or Twitter, this all becomes magnified when you’re working with IT recruiting firms to get a new job.  You want to sanitize any social media accounts you have so they are free from excessive party and alcohol-centered pictures, jokes in poor taste, and anything that indicates extreme religious or political beliefs.

The last one might seem less intuitive, but it’s basically meant to protect you from the chance that you could inadvertently offend a potential employer or hiring manager.  While IT recruiting agencies might know that you are more than your political or religious beliefs, your potential employers don’t know much about you at all.  They’re forced to draw quick conclusions from anything they learn about you.  So play it very safe until you land an IT job: delete any posts that could offend on your social media accounts.

 

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!

 

A ‘Hook’ for Your IT Job Interviews

If you’ve got interviews for IT jobs coming up soon, you’re probably preparing the usual things with your IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies.  These things are important, and you should certainly focus on them.  But once you’ve covered all the bases your IT staffing firms and technical recruiters tell you too, you may want to consider developing a “hook” that will make you stand out.  What exactly would that be?

A good hook is something that will make you stand out to your interviewers in a good way.  They’ll remember you for more than just the skills your IT recruiting companies have vetted you for—something quirky like an unconventional hobby or an interesting story you can tell about yourself (that’s still relevant to the topics discussed in the interview).  For instance, if you have done some IT- centered volunteer work for an interesting nonprofit, this is a good hook that your interviewer can remember you by.  If you’re unsure if your hook is appropriate or just a good idea, you can always run it by your IT recruiting agencies. Even if you don’t get this particular job, your hook might impress your IT staffing companies and they might make sure they can place you at another job!

 

 

Don’t Say This in IT Job Interviews

For most interviewees for IT jobs, no matter how much you prepare with your IT staffing firms and technical recruiters, questions about your greatest weakness are still intimidating.  The most common answer that hiring managers and IT recruiting agencies tend to hear seems like a good idea: “my weakness is that I’m a perfectionist.” Don’t be tempted to actually give this answer, though!

Because it’s such a cliché answer, telling your interviewer that you’re a perfectionist will mean that you’ve totally wasted that moment in your interview.  Even if you are indeed a perfectionist, you won’t impress your interviewer or your IT recruiting firms by saying it’s your biggest weakness.  Since it’s heard so often, it’s hard for anybody to take that answer seriously.  In fact, you may be letting your IT staffing agencies down by giving such an unimpressive answer.  Your interviewer may ding you a few points for giving such a meaningless response to their question.

So what should you say?  Work on a real, honest answer with your IT recruiters. Name a skill that’s not essential to the jobs you’re interviewing for and give an action plan for how you’re addressing it.  Something like this will actually impress an interviewer, especially if your action plan is thorough.

Unexpected Questions in IT Job Interviews

IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies can often provide you with an idea of questions you should be prepared to answer in interviews for IT jobs.  You may not even need IT recruiting firms to help you anticipate these questions—they could already be on your radar.  Sometimes, though, hiring managers will ask questions you or your IT staffing companies and technical recruiters didn’t anticipate.  Here are some ways you can respond to these questions gracefully and with the maximum positive impact to your candidacy.

Firstly, take a breath.  Don’t rush in to answer—it’s ok to pause and think for a second about your response.  Interviewers won’t mind that, particularly if you can give a great answer to their question.

Secondly, try to think about what the interviewer is looking for. Even if the question seems straightforward, it’s worth just considering that the interviewer is seeking a little more information.  For instance, one company asks how its candidates picture their retirement.  What they’re really seeking is the candidate’s interests and whether they align with the job in question. Good candidates will pick up on this kind of thing.

Lastly, don’t hesitate to ask a question in response.  If you give your answer but are unsure you’ve satisfied the interviewer, it’s ok to ask ‘was that what you wanted to know?’  Perhaps you think a question is meant to reveal certain qualities about you as a candidate.  Go ahead and ask.  You may even drive the conversation in a direction the interviewer appreciates, but didn’t even expect.  If you show that you’re thinking about the interviewer and hiring company’s perspective, then you’ll make a good impression on them and the IT recruiting companies they’re working with.