IT recruiting

Are You Using This Bad IT Job Interview Advice?

Recently, technical recruiters and IT staffing agencies have come across candidates who are acting on some terrible job interview advice.  Some IT professionals have heard that it will really impress their interviewer if they ask them if they have any concerns about them as a potential hire.  IT recruiters and IT staffing firms would strongly urge that you never, ever ask this question when on interviews for IT jobs.  Here are 2 reasons why this is a terrible question to ask.

Firstly, asking this question might suggest that you aren’t confident in your own candidacy.  Your IT recruiting agencies and IT staffing companies are advocating hard for you.  You need to supplement this effort by coming across as confident in your abilities and experience.  When you’re in IT, confidence is especially key.  Nobody wants to hire somebody who does a sub-par job working on important internal systems, websites, or provides poor tech support.  Giving the impression of low confidence will make it easy for your interviewer to question your competence as an IT professional.

Secondly, asking this question may actually highlight any weaknesses your interviewer hadn’t really noticed before.  Again, your IT recruiting firms are working hard to highlight why you’ll be a great candidate for the IT job.  You should do the same for yourself.  Don’t bring any extra attention to your potential (or perceived) flaws.

IT job interviews advice
Don’t ask your interviewer if they see any reasons not to hire you.

 

Don’t Quit Your IT Job Yet!

When your IT job is unpleasant or stressful, it can be tempting to simply quit and focus solely on finding new IT  jobs with your IT staffing companies and IT recruiters.  Technical recruiters and IT staffing agencies will tell you that this isn’t a good idea, though.  Here’s why you need to tough it out in your current job until your IT recruiting companies and IT staffing firms find you a new job.

  1. If you work as an IT contractor, your resume is already probably full of shorter stints at a lot of companies. This isn’t a problem on its own.  However, if you quit a job without having another to move into, these things combined can create a red flag.  Hiring managers want to be able to trust that you’re reliable and resilient, even if you’re faced with a tough project, team, end-user, etc.
  2. Quitting a job without having another lined up will make it easier for hiring managers to assume you were fired or about to be fired. While your IT recruiting firms can try to explain these things, it’s better to have nothing for your IT recruiting agencies to explain for you. Do your best to keep your resume as pristine as possible, because you never know what other candidates you might be up against.
IT job search
Don’t quit before lining up a new job. It could really hurt your IT career.

How to Resign Your IT Job Gracefully

 

After a long search for new IT jobs with your IT recruiters and IT staffing firms, you’ll have one more task: resigning from your current job.  Sometimes technical recruiters and IT staffing agencies hear about people handing this poorly.  Here are some tips to make your resignation graceful so you don’t burn any bridges.

  1. Tell your manager in person if you can. If not, tell them over the phone.  IT recruiting companies often hear about how people feel intimidated about actually resigning with their bosses.  While it might seem scary, the best way to handle this is to directly tell your manager.  Do not hide behind email, no matter how tempting it is.  It probably won’t be bad at all, anyways.
  2. If your manager asks for it, write a short letter of resignation. This letter can be a single sentence.  IT staffing companies and IT recruiting agencies would advise you to keep any grievances out of it.  Don’t give any feedback or list the reasons why you’re leaving.  Simply state that you’re resigning and when your last day is.
  3. Now back to that feedback: Should you share it? Only if you can do so constructively and you have somebody you think will be ready to hear it.  If you think your manager or HR won’t be interested or take it well, it’s best to just hold back.  Vent to your family or friends, maybe even your IT staffing agencies. It’s better to leave with positive relations at your job, even if you never want to work there again.
IT Letter of Resignation IT Jobs
Your manager may request a letter of resignation before you leave your IT job.

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.

 

 

Think About This Before Your Next IT Job Search!

When you’re searching for new IT jobs, there are decisions you need to make.  There are plenty of things your technical recruiters and IT staffing companies will want to know: what kind of IT jobs do you prefer?  Do you like client/end-user interaction? What kind of corporate culture do you do best in?  But something your IT recruiters and IT staffing firms may not ask you about (but is still very important) is what kind of boss you think you can succeed with.

This might seem like a pretty straightforward question, but the more thought you put into it, the more likely you can make sure your IT recruiting companies and IT staffing agencies place you in a job you can be happy in.  Start by thinking about your previous bosses.  What qualities were great for your work style and what qualities weren’t?  What qualities made you happy or unhappy?  Make a list and share it with your IT recruiting agencies.  During interviews, ask the kinds of questions that can (without putting your interviewer on the defensive) help you see if your potential boss has these qualities.  While it’s not the most important part of a job, a boss will make a big impact on how much you enjoy it.

 

Try This For Your Next IT Phone Interview

Technical recruiters and IT staffing agencies see candidates approach phone interviews for IT jobs too casually all the time.  The truth that IT recruiters and IT staffing firms wish all their candidates knew: phone interviews are just as important, if not more so than in person interviews.  These interviews are the gate to getting further in the process.  So for your next interview, here’s a tip to really knock it out of the park and impress your interviewer and IT recruiting companies: take notes before and during.

What does this mean exactly? Start by taking notes for your interview when you prep with your IT recruiting firms and IT staffing companies.  Keep these on hand for your interview so you have a plan for what you want to emphasize to your interviewer.   Use them to guide yourself during the interview so you stay focused, concise and articulate.

Why and how should you take notes during the interview?  Firstly the why.  Take notes so you’re prepared if you get a second interview.  Especially if your IT recruiting agencies are sending you on multiple interviews, it can be hard to remember details from a phone interview.  Now the how.  Take notes in a way that doesn’t interrupt the conversation.  Keep the flow of it. But take important notes when you can.  If you can’t at all, take them immediately after.  Your interviewer at the next interview will be impressed, but you should make it look effortless!

 

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.

 

1 Easy Way to Make Your IT Resume More Effective

There is plenty of advice out there on how to polish your resume to attract IT recruiters and IT staffing companies.  While some advice is mediocre, here is one tip that will definitely get you a lot more attention from technical recruiters and IT staffing agencies: Break up and cut down any big blocks of text in your IT resumes.

Why will this make a difference to IT recruiting companies?  It’s all about making it easier for IT staffing firms to see that you’re a great fit for a job.  When IT recruiting firms are trying to find the best IT professional for a job, they’re looking at hundreds of resumes. It really slows readers down when your resume is full of dense blocks of text—and time is of the essence for IT recruiters.  So make it more likely that IT recruiting agencies will be able to quickly scan your resume and see how accomplished and experienced you are.  Use bullet points that are concise and cut out extra info that’s too technical or unnecessary.  It might just help you win your next IT jobs!

Common IT Resume Mistakes

As you polish your resume for IT recruiters and IT staffing firms, you may want to stop and make sure you’re not making any mistakes that will make technical recruiters and IT recruiting agencies take your candidacy less seriously.  Here are some mistakes that are especially common in resumes from IT professionals:

1.    Your resume is full of clichés.  IT staffing companies and IT recruiting companies don’t want to see that you’re wasting precious space on your resume with phrases like “hard worker” or “fast learner”.  These phrases are too hard to quantify and don’t mean much anyways.  Focus on listing actual technical skills and accomplishments.

2.    You wrote your resume all in the third person.  IT recruiting firms see this far too often from both US and international resumes.  The problem with talking about yourself in the third person, especially on your resume, is that you’ll come across as egocentric and out of touch with professional norms. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot this way.

3.    Lastly, your resume shouldn’t be on a creative template or format.  Graphic designers are often guilty of this because they’re trying to show off their skills.  However, when you work with IT staffing agencies, they’ll want you to keep your resume in a simple, conventional format.  Your skills and experience should speak for themselves.  Don’t obfuscate them with a nonconventional format, border, etc.

IT Salaries Are Rising in 2015

IT professionals have done well, even through the past recessions, but surveys are showing that 2015 has been very good to those in IT jobs.  Until recently, most IT recruiters and IT staffing companies have seen that only a slight majority of programmers, BA’s, project managers, etc received yearly raises.  As 2015 starts rounding up, technical recruiters and IT staffing agencies can now see a whopping 67% of the candidates they work with receiving raises in compensation.

IT staffing firms and IT recruiting agencies have not only seen an increase in those who received raises, but also a marked decrease in IT professionals who have received pay cuts.  If this wasn’t enough good news, bonuses have also increased on average nationwide.  All of this is a good sign for the IT jobs market, so keep your IT recruiting companies close and your resume polished.