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Telecommunications Staffing & Recruiting

Don’t Make this Mistake at Your IT Job Interviews

IT staffing firms and technical recruiters will almost always prep you for the technical questions you’ll face in interviews for IT jobs or what you should wear.  However, the best IT recruiters can’t prepare you for how to milk every question in an interview.  The good news is this is a skill you can learn on your own, without the help of IT staffing agencies or IT recruiting firms.  Here are some tips on how to use every question of a job interview to highlight your own skill-set and experience, wow your interviewer, and make sure you’re the kind of IT contractor that IT staffing companies can place over and over again.

Ever had a question about experience or skills you don’t exactly have?  Don’t just answer no in these instances.  Take that moment to do a few things.  Firstly, suss out what the interviewer is asking about.  Do they want to know about a more general skill you do have or a kind of on-the-job experience (like ‘dealing with difficult coworkers or clients’) that you could easily suggest is similar to something you already do or have done?  You don’t have to go overboard, but really examining the questions they ask you and thinking about what they’re looking for in a candidate will make you look very hirable.  The best candidates for a job don’t just take its description at face value.  They also try to parse all the nuances of a job and figure out what success at that job looks like.

Once you know exactly what the interviewer is looking for, try to make a (graceful) connection here to showcase skills and experience that you have.  You may not have exactly the experience or skill the interviewer is seeking, but you might have something similar.  Highlight this for your interviewer.  Doing this will ensure they really see your full value as a candidate.

 

Are You Lying on Your IT resume?

Recent studies seem to show that IT professionals lie far more often on their resumes than their counterparts in industries outside information technology.  While this may seem like an extreme conclusion to come to, it’s actually not hard to find instances in which IT recruiters spot inconsistencies in their IT consultants’ resumes.  Sometimes it’s a big lie, but often these lies are really just IT contractors seeking to impress IT headhunters or land IT jobs they are almost (but not quite!) qualified for.

What are some of these lies that IT staffing firms have found on resumes?  They include things that seem harmless like embellished skills and job responsibilities.  These lies are definitely not helping anybody, though—least of all, the job seeker.  Landing a job you’re not actually able to do as well as you say you can is no picnic.  Not only can it be stressful and unpleasant, you may wind up being fired from it and hurting your career overall.  So think twice about lying on your resume—for your own good!

3 Ways to Be a Hit in Your New IT Job!

In a field like information technology, where people tend to move jobs a bit more often, IT consultants are often starting new IT jobs.  While just landing a new job is a success, IT contractors shouldn’t view this as their opportunity to slack off.  The first few months of a new job are crucial for IT professionals.  Performing well in this window of time could yield a few benefits: creating a great relationship with coworkers, and bosses, as well as adding onto a good reputation that will impress IT recruiters and IT staffing firms.  Be vigilant about these things in your first few months of a job.

-Follow the rules to a T.  Don’t break the dress code, even if everyone else might.  Don’t come in late or leave early.  Take your allotted lunch time only. Leave your cell phone in your desk drawer during work hours.  While you can (probably) ease up on the rules in the future, it’s better to give the best impression you can initially.  Be a model employee while all eyes are on you, the newbie.

-Build a strong understanding of your job and how you fit into the company.  Get training on your job if it’s offered and learn everything you can about what you can do to succeed in your role.  But don’t stop there.  Figure out what’s going on in the company at large so you have a better understanding of what you’re doing and how it impacts the company.

–Figure out the corporate culture.  Fitting into the corporate culture can have a far higher impact on your job performance than you might think.  Pay attention to how things are done and not done at your new company.  You don’t have to conform completely, but changing your ways to fit the culture will go a long way with your coworkers and superiors.

 

 

Don’t Get Hired for the Wrong IT Job for You!

Bad hiring mistakes happen (and they are definitely terrible for all IT consultants, managers, coworkers, and technical recruiters involved). However, as an IT professional, you can take steps to protect yourself from being hired for the wrong IT jobs. Beyond polishing your resumes and working with only the best IT recruiters and IT staffing firms, here is what you can do:

-Don’t rush things. Your job search isn’t a race and you’re more likely to wind up a in a bad job if you are moving too fast. Really consider every job offer you get before accepting. Make sure it meets all your needs and you meet all the company’s needs.

-Don’t take a role you aren’t sure you can totally fill. If you’re fully confident you can do everything in the job description, or at least have the skills to learn a few things you haven’t done before, it’s a good fit. If you’re not sure about most of the job requirements, this may not be the right job for you.

-Keep a balance in emphasis on cultural fit/perks and everything else. If you love the corporate culture and/or perks but aren’t sure about the job, the commute, the compensation, or something else, stop and think about it. Working with coworkers you love is important. It’s not going to fix larger issues, though.

 

Change in the IT World: Necessary and Risky

Facebook’s changes this week certainly haven’t gone unnoticed by IT recruiters or the rest of the world.  While analyses on the details of these changes vary, the consensus seems to be one that the information technology world, and thus technical recruiters and IT consultants, have long understood: Change is key to staying relevant, but it needs to be done with caution.  IT recruiting firms and the IT professionals they work with often seek the balance between change and prudence in their work.  Frivolous change, change done solely for the sake of meeting technology’s break-neck pace, can meet loud criticism.  And loud criticism can mean the demise of a person or company’s reputation—at a break-neck pace, of course.

Marissa Mayer at Yahoo has also been struggling with similar issues.  As IT staffing firms and IT contractors watched her call all Yahoo employees back to work, they also saw the criticism pour in.  The results of Mayer’s change are yet to really be seen, but the consequences of shaking things up have certainly already manifested themselves and Mayer’s reputation has taken a hit.  Of course, not everyone is as visible in their actions as Mayer and Facebook, but the lesson for IT recruiting agencies and anyone else in the information technology field is just to make change cautiously.  Even when the industry standard requires IT recruiters CA to IT recruiters Boston to make change quickly to remain relevant, these changes are still subject to equally quick criticism.

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.

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.

Strategies for Engagement in the Responsibilities of a Technical Role

Technical recruiters know that the highest chances of successful performance in a high-tech role involve technical candidates who are fully engaged in the nuances of a technical role, within & outside of the work day. The career IT contractor who focuses on technical skill-sets during office hours will never reach the level of accomplishment & engagement in his or her role that the technical contractor for whom the industry is a passion will. Strategies for full engagement involve maximizing the venues available to a technical candidate for reinforcing & building on technical knowledge.

One of those venues is the home. Technical candidates who use some of their evenings at home, or free time on weekends to expand their technical literacy levels will be in line for promotion, because they’ll be able to perform at higher levels during the week day than those who don’t. Making use of educational tools is another strategy that can result in significant payoff in terms of skills acquired & potential for an increase in income. Enrolling in courses or tutorials online in high-demand technical skillsets can capitalize on a technical contractor’s marketability. Libraries may also be a good resource, allowing cost control by offering free borrowing services.

Finally, higher education has a strong impact on income. IT recruiters know that a graduate-level degree or coursework on a resume will make getting the contractor placed through a technical staffing firm easier, and the hiring decision process shorter.

Re-Adjusting Existing Paradigms in Technology Education

In the interest of cultivating the future technical candidates of tomorrow, educational institutions need to assess the paradigms currently in place for technology education, and recognize the ways in which they need to change. In the rapidly evolving high-tech industry, the leaders in the technology field are not only technically proficient — they need to have strong critical thinking skills and solid communication skills. These are the “soft skills” that supplement the technical expertise of the top-earning technical consultants, and that are the critical factor in their income levels. Technical employers need IT staff that can not only deliver on the technical side, but that can also operate successfully as a member of a team, and as contributor to company culture.

In an increasingly competitive, technology-driven part of history, customers no longer have a small range of choices when it comes to selecting technology services. For that reason, the service itself loses central importance, since so many competitors are offering comparable products, and the true distingishing factor becomes the relationship companies maintain with their customer bases. The ability to build and keep those relationships, and by association, keep client retention rates high, depends on techncial candidates committed to that mission. It also necessitates a certain level of communication and critical thinking ability when challenges do arise. The technical candidates that are able to display those qualities will always have an IT staffer‘s ear, and lots of options when contacting technical recruiting firms.

Building Digital Literacy in the High Tech Industry

It’s said that the 21st century is the information age. Yet, despite a societal overload of information, technical employers often have difficulty finding technical candidates at the knowledge & performance level that they require for company operations. The gap between employer demand and job-seeker skill-sets indicates a lack of digital literacy in the high tech industry. Technical candidates currently working outside the IT industry, and looking to make a lucrative switch into the high-tech world can bolster their marketability by increasing their digital literacy levels. Technical candidates who develop a detailed plan of action for technical self-educating will give themselves a competive advantage over other candidates.

Speaking and meeting with IT recruiters can be an extremely valuable part of the game plan for a technical candidate. Technical staffers have a bird’s eye view of the technical industry, are familiar with the key players, and know what pay grade ranges specific technical skill sets bring, and what level of performance within those skill-sets technical employers require. IT staffers speak with technical employers on a nearly daily basis, and have a good grasp of what they’re looking for. Whether it’s interview tips, resume polishing, or basic skillsets, an IT staffing company can be an excellent resource for a consultant looking to build his or her digital literacy.