IT recruiting

There Are No Guarantees in IT Recruiting

The very best IT recruiters thoroughly qualify each candidate before submitting information technology professionals to their clients.  Technical recruiters have to dig to uncover the truths – all in an attempt to make sure the candidate is truly interested in committed to moving forward with their respective IT jobs.  IT recruiting firms teach many “lock down” questions to ensure their IT recruiters Boston do not dangle a carrot in front of their clients only to pull it back when there is interest.

The qualifying questions all have a reason behind them.  For example, IT recruiters CA may want to know what other technical jobs the candidate is interviewing for and where they’re at with each opportunity.  The reason for this question is simply to determine whether the candidate is days or hours away from accepting another opportunity – subsequently making the submittal to their client just a teaser.

Another qualifying question that IT recruiting companies CA teach their IT staffing employees is whether there is anything else holding the candidate back from accepting a client’s offer if the compensation met their needs.  It’s typically pretty shocking what can be uncovered by asking such an open ended question.

However, sadly, regardless of how well IT staffing companies train ttheir technical recruiters CA, there are no guarantees that the IT recruiting agencies can deliver the candidates to the client on the first day of work.  Unfortunately, no matter how many questions were asked, how many references checked, how many conversations or meetings with the candidates (and clients) take place, there are no guarantees when it comes to the high-tech professional actually starting their respective IT job.

Therefore, if you’re a client and frustrated with IT staffing agencies when their candidates back out of a confirmed hire, make sure to dig yourself.  Find out what questions were asked, what conversations had, the last time the IT staffing firm spoke with the candidate and if they ever met the candidate in person.  Do this because at the end of the day, unfortunately IT staffing companies cannot guarantee people.

The Importance of Organization in IT Recruiting

One of the most important attributes to succesful IT recruiters is becoming, and remaining, organized.  IT recruiters Boston talk to hundreds of candidates each week.  It doesn’t do IT staffing firms any good if their respective technical recruiters can’t go back into their ATS system and find the candidate.

While most ATS systems can help IT recruiters CA remain organized, the reality is that it’s up to the respective IT headhunters.  Each must make a committment to stick with a system that works for them to find their information technology candidates.  Whether it’s a notebook, paper folders, Microsoft Outlook, Excel or the IT staffing agencies CRM, a resume database is a critical component to success in the IT recruiting industry.  However, finding the candidates is what leads to the submittals and ultimately the IT job placement.

The Power of Feedback in IT Recruiting

IT recruiting makes use of performance metrics to track success. Because metrics serve as a measure to determine success level, they are valuable to IT recruiters in Providence, RI, Boston, MA, Marlboro, MA, New York, NY, Melville, Long Island, Phoenix, AZ, San Diego & Los Angeles, CA. Another advantage of metrics to technical recruiters and their managers is that they give managers a framework within which to provide advice to new IT recruiters starting out in their careers. The knowledge IT recruiting experts can pass on to younger technical recruiters is priceless. IT staffing firms should never forget the power of communication. Feedback allows technical recruiters to benefit from their mentors’ perspectives on IT recruiting, the lessons they’ve learned about the IT industry over the years, and their advice on performance level, and how to optomize it. Feedback is a powerful tool that no technical recruiting firm can afford to short their IT recruiters on.

IT recruiting firms that create a constant flow of communication between coworkers will create a dynamic, engaged company environment where employees are given all the information they need to succeed. Management styles that collaborate with employees, creating dialogues with an IT contractor or technical recruiter on his or her specific area of expertise – their own role – are proven to be the most effective maximizers of efficiency and motivation. IT recruiters who take orders from a top-down style management lose their sense of autonomy, and subsequently disengage. The reason an authoritative management style has been losing popularity in the broader market is because it’s simply ineffective. A constant interplay of feedback between managers and IT recruiters means that managers stay informed about a technical recruiter’s ideas for improving a role or general company work environment, and IT recruiters stay connected to a manager’s performance assessments. A fluid, metric-oriented, and feedback-focused IT work environment is one that technical recruiters and IT contractors will find positive.

IT Candidates: An IT Recruiter’s Asset

IT recruiters know that people are assets. Like any good asset manager, a technical headhunter at an IT staffing firm knows how to approach a technical candidate strategically, with the goal of accurately assessing a technical candidate’s technical strengths as well as soft skills. Just as important to an IT recruiter’s people-reading skill set is the ability to recognize an IT candidate’s technical and interpersonal limits. A technical recruiter who has a good grasp of a technical candidate’s strengths and weaknesses will be able to capitalize on their abilities better than an IT recruiter who has a blind spot for a technical candidate’s weak points. What a thorough technical staffer will always keep in mind is that everybody has weaknesses, so finding ways to showcase a technical candidate’s strengths involves avoiding focusing on areas where an IT candidate can’t perform as strongly. Knowing the value of an asset is key to a technical recruiter’s craft.

A technical recruiter who realizes that human capital requires an investment will result in the best potential for placement will be willing to invest time and coaching with a technical candidate. A technical candidate who has been prepared by an IT recruiter to be as informed as possible about a company’s culture and standards will have the best chance of acing an interview. Other techniques IT recruiters can use to boost their odds when seeking a placement for a qualified technical candidate include interview prepping, reviewing a technical candidate’s assessment of personal strengths and weaknesses, and reviewing interview-ready wardrobe choices. An IT recruiter who knows that a talented technical candidate is their most important career asset will invest accordingly. Investment leads to success, and that’s what all IT recruiters want.

Power Hiring in Technical Recruiting

Technical recruiters on top of their game understand that placing technical candidates within any industry isn’t just about matching a skill-set to an IT job description. There’s a lot more to consistently producing winning candidates who clinch IT jobs than pure background & skills. The IT recruiters who understand the issue of fit will be the one who comes out ahead in most cases.  Technical recruiters who consults mentors who have been in the staffing industry longer than themselves will find that they can learn from techniques developed by veterans of the industry — a practice known as benchmarking. Top performing IT recruiters Boston who have developed strong benchmarking strategies have a track record of success stemming from their ability to continually replicate the process of making strong information technology candidate recommendations that result in strong hires.

What are the secrets to identifying a high performer? A technical recruiter will have limited access to a candidate — perhaps communicating by phone & email, & sometimes in person, but for limited periods of time. With only a small window of time available to assess a candidate’s strength’s, weaknesses, personality, culture fit & potential red flags, a technical recruiter has to have an arsenal of pointed questions. An ineffective question is wasted time, so IT recruiters need to constantly analyze what each question they pose during screening reveals to them about the technical candidate. If even one question IT headhunters tends to ask an IT candidate doesn’t have a solid answer to this question, the question should be discarded. Time is of the essence, so a question that fails to bring new information to light takes up time both a candidate & IT recruiting companies can’t afford to lose. An efficient interviewing process is one example of a benchmarking strategy, but the best way to learn more is to network directly with IT staffing companies with high placement rates. Contact successful technical recruiters on Linkedin, or at tech networking events & ask them for their thoughts. The quickest route to achievement is to benefit from other’s trial & error, & resulting sucesses.

Coping with Competitive Atmospheres in the Technical Industry

Technical candidates have a range of company atmospheres that best match their personal comfort levels. Some IT pros prefer finance environments, which tend to be fast-paced & high-stress, while others find working at a nonprofit or educational institution more their preference. Regardless of what point on the scale of competition a company lies on, however, what most companies will have in common is some range of competition – between coworkers, between competitors, or simply as a team effort to achieve company goals. How technical candidates cope with stress will determine whether it drives them forward or holds them back. Technical recruiters, who are familar with coping techniques for stress because the nature of their jobs is high on competition, deadlines & unexpected turns of events, are in an ideal position to advise technical candidates entering a potentially stressful work environment on best managing within the atmosphere.

Technical Career Development

Technical candidates can make use of a variety of tools as they seek to map map out a path to career advancement. Technical professional development can happen through membership in a technical organization, through networking with other technical professionals, or through mentorship. Technical recruiting companies can provide key tools to technical candidates to facilitate their potential for success. Among the interview prep services an IT staffing firm can provide to boost a talented technical candidate’s chances of interview success is interviewing role play. Especially for technical positions that involve a phone screen & face-to-face interview stage, a technical recruiter willing to guide a technical candidate through a practice run of each type of interview will have a much higher chance of placing a solid candidate than IT recruiter who preps a technical candidate minimally.

When IT recruiters coach technical candidates for interviews, they should be sure to cover several main topics. Environment is key subject for a technical recruiter to go in-depth on, as a candidate who is technically proficient, but not a culture fit won’t pass final interviewing rounds. Another often overlooked, but significant factor to familiarize a technical candidate with is the company’s organizational structure, and more importantly, the hierarchy structure of the specific company group the technical candidate would be working with. Sample interview questions will also help a technical candidate to formulate answers that are concise & consistent – crucial for a good interviewing “story”. Reviewing common questions such as inquiries about long-term goals will help a candidate respond effortlessly when the real deal comes around. Finally, a little positive encouragement never hurt anyone’s interviewing chances! Letting a candidate know they’re a natural fit for the role (if it’s your genuine opinion) & that they’re in a great position to perform to win during the interview will be a plus for a technical candidate & IT recruiters’ chances of a successful placement.

Leading in Technical Engineering

Technical recruiters who want to best understand how to identify top candidates for technical engineering positions should have a good understanding of the role of a technical engineering leader. The ability to recognize leadership traits & categorize leadership ability or potential separately from other good professional qualities will make recruiting for management-level technical engineering roles easier. Directors in technical recruiting understand that there are technical, functional & interpersonal aspects of technical leadership. A technical engineer in a leadership function needs to have a range of skill-sets that a technical professional in non-management levels of the same role may not have, or need — at least until he or she advances into a leadership role!

The important skills – what should IT recruiters know about the skills a technical engineer should have when coaching a technical canditate seeking to enter a leadership role for the first time? A technical engineer expecting to enter a management role should be prepared to collaborate with product management to define a product roadmap, hiring motivated employees, interfacing regularly with senior management, and adressing budgeting concerns. Management in IT is different from non-management technical positions, so technical recruiters and technical candidates who understand what’s involved to make the leap will be best positioned to reap the benefits of the preparation.

Corporate Technical Talent Acquisition

Solid strategies for corporate technical talent acquisition is necessary for any successful IT recruiting company. One of the key components of workforce planning is the ability to accurately predict. Technical recruiters who understand the needs of client firms they represent will be able to cater to those client’s needs much better than IT recruiters who simply try to make a match between HR bullet points on a job description & a potential candidate’s resume. The trick for recruiting professionals is to avoid the common trap of feeling constantly stuck in a reactive mode – reacting to a client’s feedback, reacting to a technical candidate unexpectedly backing out of an offer to accept an alternate offer, or any number of other reactive scenarios.

A second key factor in the IT recruiting process is the use of sophisticated technological sourcing tools. Top technical candidates can be a challenge to find, so a comprehensive recruiting strategy can lead to technical candidate contacts from a variety of sources. In the technical recruiting industry, relationships are key. An increasingly global economy can make maintaining some of those relationships difficult, given the obstacles of time differences, office phone systems that may not be set up for international calls, and the potential lag time involved in contacting someone primarily by email.

Sourcing: Finding Premier Technical Talent

The challenge IT recruiting companies face when trying to find top technical talent for advance IT roles is to know where to find them. Technical candidates operating at high technology & income levels may not post their resumes in high-traffic job-seeking sites like Monster or Careerbuilder. These technically advanced candidates may have Linkedin profiles, however. Unfortunately, it’s generally calculated that only 50% of the professional population has created an online profile. While it means a lot of technical professionals do have searchable profiles, it also means that 50% of the professional population doesn’t have any presence on Linkedin, and can’t be reached through the career-focused social networking site. As IT recruiters know, even when staff at a technical recruiting firm do identify a promising resume on Linkedin, the trick is to identify whether or not they are seeking new employment.

With Linkedin’s increased popularity, competitor career networking sites have sprung up across the web. Finding these sites through search terms typed into a search engine can generate potential leads for IT staffers. Technical recruiters who join these types of sites and actively peruse profiles & contact eligible candidates may find this method of finding high-quality technical candidates useful. Staying ahead of the competition in IT recruiting means thinking outside the box, and taking advantage of tools other technical recuiters may not be aware of. Thinking in the margin will get IT recruiters ahead, and that’s an opportunity no technical recruiting firm can afford to forfeit.