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Infrastructure Support - IT Staffing Services

Help IT Recruiters Find You

Are you looking to connect with some IT recruiters and IT staffing firms to get started on a job search? Are you having a tough time creating good relationships with technical recruiters and IT recruiting companies?  It might have to do with your online presence.  Here are some ways to make sure you’re more visible to IT staffing agencies and IT recruiting firms online—and in most flattering way possible.

Firstly, you’ll want to clean up your online presence.  If you have a Facebook page or are on any other social media, try to take down any inappropriate, unprofessional, or embarrassing pictures or posts.  You don’t want IT recruiting agencies to come across these, nor do you want a hiring manager to see them!

After making your unprofessional aspects of your life invisible, it’s time to make sure your professional achievements are visible.  IT staffing companies will be more likely to contact you if you make sure to have a great profile on LinkedIn and post your resume on major websites for job seekers.  Once you’re on LinkedIn, it’s important to start using your profile to make connections.  It will be even easier for recruiters to find you if you wind up being connected to people already in their network.

 

 

Are Tests Necessary in IT Job Interviews?

Sometimes your IT recruiters and IT staffing firms will tell you to prepare to take a test at your interview.  An employer may want to test your abilities with particular technologies or methodologies, even if your resume and IT staffing companies and IT recruiting firms already suggest you’re good at something.  Sometimes this can frustrate job candidates—they don’t want to have to take a test because it’s stressful or time-consuming.  However, your technical recruiters and IT recruiting agencies can tell you that there are reasons why these tests are helpful to you and the potential employer.

The main reason these tests are worth taking, is that they will likely show you whether you’d be able to succeed in a job.  You don’t want to take a job that you’ll flounder in, and neither does the interviewing company or your IT recruiting companies.  The best IT jobs for you are the ones that you already have the skills to succeed in—and a test can help determine this.

Perhaps the other main reason these tests are worth taking is that putting in the time and effort just to take the test distinguishes you as a candidate.  There are plenty of other candidates who won’t want to take the test.  This will weed them out as competition for you.  So bit the bullet and take the test—even if you don’t get 100%, you may still get the job!

 

Tips for Long IT Job Interviews

If your IT recruiters and IT staffing companies are booking you for long job interviews (ie half a day or longer) then congratulations.  You’re probably very close to a job offer, since IT recruiting agencies, technical recruiters, and interviewers often don’t want to waste their time or a candidate’s time if they don’t have some real interest.  If your IT staffing firms and IT recruiting companies have set you up for a long interview, here are two tips to help you nail it.

Firstly, dress comfortably and professionally.  While this may seem obvious, sometimes your interview clothes aren’t your most comfortable.  It’s really important to wear something that will give off a good impression but won’t leave you feeling too hot, your feet hurting, etc.  You won’t be able to give a good impression to your interviewers if your clothes that normally work for a 1 hour interview start bothering you—with 4 or 5 or 6 hours left to go.

Secondly, try to think about ways you can use the same stories or answers to questions in different ways.  If you’re going on a long interview, you’re likely to have several mini-interviews with a few people.  You may have to answer a few questions twice.  Or you may run out of answers to questions.  Think about how to re-use answers and stories in advantageous ways.  Sometimes, a story about the way you handled a disgruntled customer can also demonstrate your attention to detail.  Or a story about the way you fixed a bug in some code can demonstrate both your ability to be a team player and your excellent coding skills.  Come to the interview with a few anecdotes like this in mind.  It will help and might just win you the IT jobs of your dreams!

 

A Quick Way to Dramatically Improve Your IT Job Interviews

Most IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies will tell you to make sure you do research on the companies that you’re interviewing with.  Your technical recruiters and IT staffing companies may even give you a bit of background information on the companies.  But having a familiarity with the company won’t impress your interviewers and win you IT jobs.  If you want to really stand out and impress your IT recruiting firms with your interview performance, you should try to find one or two things that you really like or admire about the IT companies you’re interviewing for.

The key to doing this is two-pronged.  Firstly, try to make sure you can speak about these items that you really like about the company for at least a few minutes.  If you merely state that you like that the company is doing things to be more environmentally friendly, that’s not enough.  Be able give a few examples and/or to tie this to your own career trajectory.  Secondly, it will really impress your interviewer and IT recruiting companies if you can talk about these one or two things in an authentic way.  To return to the environmentalism example, don’t mention it if you aren’t actually interested in this topic.  If you try to fake an interest, it will likely show through to your interviewer.

 

Why You Should Be Open and Honest With Your Technical Recruiter

If you’re working with IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies for your IT job search, you’ve probably talked to them at least once on the phone or in person.  Sometimes, IT candidates are concerned about what they tell IT staffing firms and technical recruiters.  They apply the same polite, guarded etiquette you’d use with a hiring manager or interviewer.  However, it’s actually in your best interest to be as open and honest with your IT recruiting companies as possible.

Why should you be an open book with IT staffing companies and not with hiring managers? Because you want your IT recruiting firms to know everything you can relay about your ideal next IT jobs.  If you hide your preferences for particular work environments or embellish your actual certifications, skills, or experience, it will only hurt you.  You want your IT recruiting agencies to know what kind of job you can be successful and happy in.  If you hide any of this information or omit it, you’ll be preventing IT recruiting firms from getting you that kind of job.  You may even be guiding them to place you in a job that makes you unhappy, stressed, or potentially a job you even fired from.  Nobody wins in this scenario– not you, your IT recruiting companies, or the employer.  So don’t hold back.  Tell your recruiter everything that you think will help them find your dream job.

What Is Working With an IT Recruiter Like?

Why do so many IT candidates work with technical recruiters to help them find their next IT jobs?  It makes their search faster, easier, and more effective.  Good IT recruiters and IT staffing firms will work with you to make sure they understand exactly what you’re looking for in your next role.  This doesn’t just include the work, but also the kind of work environment, team, and bosses you thrive with.  If you’re honest with your IT recruiting companies and give them a full picture of the kind of jobs you really succeed in, they will present these kinds of opportunities to you.

Once IT staffing agencies find opportunities that match what you’ve described, they’ll start setting you up for interviews.  These will differ a little from job interviews you’ve done without IT recruiting agencies for a few reasons.  Firstly, your IT recruiting companies will really be the ones to handle compensation negotiations for you.  You’ll communicate with them about your preferred rates, benefits, etc, and they’ll go to bat for you.  Secondly, your IT recruiting firms may even walk you into the interview and make sure you have a good start to the experience.  This leads to the last difference.  Your IT staffing companies will be advocating for you as well.  Since they probably have a good relationship with the hiring company, their word will be trusted and add an extra oomph to your candidacy.  If all of these differences sound good to you, think about contacting an IT staffing firm like AVID Technical Resources.  You have nothing to lose.

 

Don’t Make This Mistake When Going to IT Job Interviews

You’ve probably spent quite a bit of time prepping for IT job interviews—both on your own and with your IT staffing companies and IT recruiters.  Maybe you’ve laid out your suit and mapped out how to get to the interview.  Here’s one last tip: don’t bring more than a single, small bag with you.  Why?

It’s not something your technical recruiters are likely to discuss with you (mostly because they’re probably assuming you already know about it). However, your IT staffing firms and IT recruiting agencies want you to make sure you edit what you take with you to a job interview because it reflects poorly on you and on them if you bring too much with you.

If you bring much more with you to a job interview than a small bag, you’re likely saying one of two things.  Firstly, you could be suggesting that the interview isn’t that important to you—it’s just one thing in a long list of errands.  You give off this impression in particular if you come in with things like shopping bags.  Secondly, you’ll make a bad impression for yourself and your IT staffing agencies if you bring a lot of stuff with you because it looks disorganized.  Fair or not, your interviewer may assume that you’re not organized if you need to bring a ton of stuff with you to an interview. They have very little to go on (besides what your IT recruiting firms tell them) and they may just go off of gut feelings from your brief meeting with them.  Having to shuffle around a couple bags or jackets won’t give them the impression that you’re cool, calm, collected, and in control.  So leave everything home but a small bag when you go to your next IT job interview.  It may be the difference between losing and winning your dream IT jobs.

 

Write Better Emails in Your IT Jobs

Perhaps you already have your dream job.  You’ve worked with IT recruiters and IT staffing firms to find a position that’s a perfect fit for your skills and interests.  Now it’s time to go into the office and kill it.  How can you really knock the socks off your new boss (and of course the technical recruiters and IT recruiting companies that helped you get the job)?  How do you make your mark so you get excellent references for the next time you have to go searching for IT jobs? We’ll examine a few things you can do to really excel at work.  Today we’ll focus on a few ways you can write excellent emails.

In most IT jobs, you’re likely to be moving at a fast pace.  So the best employees are the ones who can write brief, effective emails.  Your bosses and IT recruiting firms will rave about you if your emails at work are short, to the point, and informative or easy to respond to.  To get your emails to this point, start by exercising a little restraint.  Email only when you can explain things succinctly.  If you can’t, it’s time for a phone call.  Next, try to bundle your emails.  If you have a few questions for a boss or colleague over the course of the workday, do your best to compile them into one email.  This will save the recipient time.

Next, go through your emails once before sending and try to cut out anything unnecessary.  In person, a little small talk is nice.  In email, it’s a pain.

Lastly, you may also want to try to break your email out into bullets with calls to action or questions.  Paragraphs are nice for a novel, but not for email.  It’s easier when things are in an outlined format or something close to that. Take these steps and you’ll be wowing your employers and IT recruiting

What to Cut from your IT Resume

If your resume hasn’t been attracting much attention from IT recruiting companies and IT recruiters, you may want to consider shortening it.  Sometimes, if your resume is too long, it obscures all the important experience and skills you have. Technical recruiters literally get lost in the maze of your resume– and usually IT recruiting firms will move on quickly if they can’t find what they want in a resume.  How can you make it easier for IT staffing agencies to see how great a candidate you are?  Here are two tips that are guaranteed to make your resume much easier for IT recruiting companies to navigate—and love.

Firstly, drop the objective and hobbies section.  Both of these sections focus on you and what you want.  While ideally a manager cares about this, they care much more about what the company needs.  IT staffing companies want to send hiring mangers resumes that focus more on what you can bring to a potential employer.  Take out everything else.  This means your objective and your hobbies.  You can make sure the position is what you want if or when you get to the interview stage.

Secondly, take out any extra awards or extracurricular activities from your school days that aren’t obviously relevant to the jobs you’re applying for.  If you’re listing activities or awards from school at all and you graduated more than a few years ago, consider removing these things altogether.  It’s more likely a hiring manager will be irritated you wasted her time making her read about your merit scholarship than it is that she’ll be impressed.  This is especially true if you graduated a few years ago.  Save the space on your resume for achievements at your past or present jobs.