Tag Archives: information technology

Creating Accountability in IT Teams

In a field like Information Technology, the ability to build accountability among reports is crucial for IT managers.  While IT recruiters and IT staffing firms will provide IT contractors who work well independently in their IT jobs, there are a few key strategies that managers should employ.

  1. Start a tradition of sharing major achievements with everyone.  This might include awards or simply recognizing employees for accomplishments via company-wide emails.  Whatever it is, you’ll create incentive for IT consultants to raise their own work-level to match that of their peers.  If positive recognition is obviously up for grabs, people will always work for it.
  2. Have reports document their own progress each day or over the course of a project.  Consider checking it on at least a quarterly basis.  That documentation will be enough to create accountability without you actively micromanaging them.  This will create accountability that’s not born of fear or resentment, which is key. (These things as motivation tend to hurt productivity.)
  3. Consider having meetings to start the day or week in which team and individual priorities are laid out.  The best meetings will be the ones in which team members report their own priorities and plans, rather than a manager meting them out.  Reports will feel empowered and may even get excited about their to-do lists as they tell them to the group. 

 

Why IT Professionals Should Write Short Emails

IT recruiters, IT contractors, and IT managers are all too aware of the frustrations of receiving long-winded emails at their IT jobs.  IT professionals in any part of the Information technology field know that long emails not only take up too much time in a fast-paced industry, but also tend to be less effective in communicating the point.  There is even an official five sentence maximum email movement (called simply the Five Sentences movement).  Here are a few ways for IT consultants and IT headhunters to shorten their emails.

  1. Before writing, figure out your purpose.  What are you trying to say?  Encapsulate that in a few sentences.  Don’t spend the email trying to figure out what needs to be said.  Do it before you start typing.
  2. Cut pleasantries.  You don’t have to be rude in an email, but it’s also unnecessary to say things like ‘Hope you’re doing well.’  You can safely assume people already know you wish them well, especially if you talk to them often.
  3. Be confident.  It can take a little courage to send shorter emails, but short, clear emails are the calling card of some very successful people.  Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos are some great examples in the IT field.

 

Security in IT: Tenuous Ground

Information technology companies today are able to start up quicker than companies in many other fields.  The IT contractors and IT managers in these companies are also rapidly facing some very serious consequences for their work: security issues.  IT recruiters Boston to IT recruiters CA can attest to how imperative security is for IT professionals.

However, as some of these companies try to quickly blossom and meet a need, sometimes they have been forced to partially or completely forfeit a focus on security as they perform their IT jobs.  The situation is certainly gray enough to make it hard to decipher who might be negligent, who might be at fault, or who might be just a victim.  As technology moves at lightning speed, laws and regulations for this sort of issue struggle to keep up and IT contractors must make their own best judgments on how much attention they will pay to security.  The lesson for buyers of these shiny new-born products is clear: consume with caution.

Training IT Employees to Be More Self-Sufficient

Information technology is fast-paced and can require a lot of efficiency from IT professionals at every level within the industry—from IT recruiters to IT contractors to IT managers. One way to achieve that independence is to train IT consultants to act as self-sufficiently as possible, thus taking burdens off IT managers so they can focus on their own IT jobs.  There are a few ways IT managers can help their reports to begin to act more independently.

  1. Give them confidence: Assert out loud that you trust your employees and you believe in their work product.  Help them find pride in their work so they both hold themselves accountable for their results and have the confidence to move forward without checking in with you constantly.
  2. Create pre-determined check-in points when possible.  Doing this means the employee feels your trust in them, but everyone can check a project through various stages to make sure it’s progressing well.  The check-in points de-personalize your request to check an employee’s work (because it becomes just another deadline on the project), and thus underscore your initial implication that you trust them.
  3. When employees do have questions, ask them what their first instincts and thoughts are.  Encourage the correct responses and gently and constructively correct the responses that aren’t right.
  4. Praise employees when they get things right.  Emphasize that they accomplished something big- on their own.  They’ll want to re-live that feeling again soon.

 

Researching Companies Before IT Job Interviews

Most IT headhunters will advise their IT contractors to research a company before they go to interviews for IT jobs.  And for most IT contractors, it’s certainly not the first time they’ve heard that advice.  What IT professionals don’t often think about before interviews is how to research an information technology company.  IT managers aren’t simply impressed if IT consultants can throw out a few random facts.  There are a few things that should guide the research one does before interviewing with a company.

1. Focus on the big picture. Get a bigger sense of the company.  Consider looking at it from the 5 questions a journalist uses: Who, what where, why, how.  Who does the company serve, who are the big players there?  What are the company’s core values, future goals, etc.  Where are the major locations for a company: its headquarters, its clients, markets it hopes to grow into.  Why does the company do what it does?  How does the company achieve its goals? And so on.

2. Ignore the stuff that’s too personal.  Social media, Glassdoor, etc all make it far too easy to learn the gossip and scandals of a company’s employees.  Pay attention to things that will affect you as an employee but forget the rest.  It won’t help you to know it and it will probably hurt you.

3. Check the company’s presence online.  In the news, on their website, in the press room of their website, and with a general Google search.  Being able to give the company back some of the image they’ve created for themselves will definitely earn you some brownie points. Focus on the positive, of course.

Finding a Job in IT When You’ve Been Unemployed for a While

In a market as hot as information technology, IT recruiters and IT managers tend to be very suspicious of IT contractors who haven’t been employed for stretches beyond 6 months. Of course, for IT consultants with big gaps on their resumes, there is certainly hope for getting IT jobs.  For these IT professionals, it’s all about selling yourself carefully to IT staffing agencies and employers.  Here are a few things you can do to deftly repackage yourself after a long stint of unemployment.

1.      Be prepared to explain your reason for unemployment and what you’ve been doing during that time.  It’s important that either you have a good reason you’ve been out of the workforce (like taking care of a family member, maternity leave, etc).  If you don’t, the next best thing is to make sure you’ve been busy during that time doing things that still increase your value to the workforce.  Classes, volunteering, and an active job search are all great things to be doing during this time.

2.      Even if you’re desperate, don’t let it show.  Employers don’t want to hire just anybody for their job.  They want the best candidate with the most interest and passion for the position.  Focus on these points, rather than how much you personally need or want the job.  Selling yourself as the best fit, not the one what wants the job the most, is the only way you’ll succeed.

3.      Dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s.  If you’re unemployed, you have absolutely no excuses left for errors in your job application materials, your interviews, etc.  Technically, you have an advantage over your employed competition.  Make sure you use the time you have to your advantage and be prepared and polished.  It could eclipse your employment gap!

 

Keeping Workers Productive in IT: It’s About the Big Picture

IT recruiters and IT managers are always on the lookout for IT contractors that are self-starters, focused, and productive.  Sometimes the burden of making sure an IT consultant fits that bill might fall upon the IT manager, though.  In order to be truly effective as an IT professional, or really a professional in any field beyond information technology, somebody needs to have a good understanding of the bigger picture. 

So what does this mean exactly and how can it achieved?  To make sure workers understand the meaning of their IT jobs, they need to understand the goals of the company and how their individual job fits into those goals.  To know the significance of one’s daily tasks gives them a greater sense of urgency.  If managers are clear about the greater effect of somebody’s work upon the company’s productivity, they can really appreciate why their work is important and why they need to stay focused.

Knowing the potential impact of having an understanding or the way one’s role fits into a company’s larger goals, how can managers provide this for their reports?  There are a myriad of ways, but the most effective ones can be very small.  Adding an extra sentence into an email about a project, taking an extra minute to mention the relevance of a task when training, or even forwarding an appropriate email about company-wide goals can help.

The key in providing this info is to make it empowering, not to leave employees cowering.  The message should be ‘you and what you do are important to our company,’ rather than ‘messing up this task will have serious ramifications for you and the rest of this company.’

 

How to Network Better in IT

Even in a field largely populated with introverts, like information technology, it’s important to know how to network.  IT contractors need to be able to network with IT recruiters, IT managers, and other IT professionals.  There are ways for even the most introverted IT consultant to network effectively, though, whether with IT recruiting agencies or other IT professionals.

  1. Make your networking goal-oriented—towards the right goal.  Good networking is done to help others, not oneself.  If  you have a purpose in conversation, mainly to see how you can help somebody else, you will have a far less awkward and uncomfortable conversation.  The payoff will obviously come later when you operate with this goal, but it will come in spades.  People will remember you fondly and be eager to return the favors you’ve done in the future.
  2. Focus on the quality of your connections, not the quantity of them.  Don’t spread yourself too thin.  Have a manageable number of contacts that you can reliably offer to help once in a while.
  3. Find venues that you enjoy.  You don’t have to network at ‘networking events.’  Meeting new people who are in your field can be done anywhere.  Keep business cards on you even when you’re off duty.  Be open to small conversations in unexpected situations.  These will make for the best connections anyways—they will be the most memorable.

 

How Older IT Consultants Should Job Search

Since the recession started back in the early 2000’s, IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies have seen an influx of older IT consultants looking for IT jobs.  Though the information technology market hasn’t suffered quite as badly during the recession, older IT contractors seeking jobs have certainly had a harder time getting hired (while the field was not at its peak).  There are a few reasons why the older IT professionals get their resumes tossed off the pile first, but with a little attention, they can get around this and get the attention of technical recruiters and IT managers alike.

Focus your search appropriately: There are some fields that will always value older workers.  These include health care, education, government, and nonprofits.

Limiting your resumes: You may look a bit older than 35, but your resume doesn’t have to betray that right away.  Hold back on the impulse to make your resume more than a page.  List the most relevant recent experience, so it’s still powerful, of course.  Just limit your experience listed to the relevant stuff-  you can talk about the other experience if needed in an interview.

Keep your skills current: Even if you aren’t young and fresh, your skills can be.  You may really impress IT recruiters and managers if you do this, because you’ll be exceeding their expectations.

 

When Your IT Manager is a Bottleneck

As in any industry, IT professionals are sometimes faced with IT managers that are bottlenecks.  Sometimes it’s because there are simply too many things going on—Information Technology is of course a very busy industry.  However, sometimes the manager just is disorganized or inefficient.  There are a few things that IT recruiters would suggest that IT consultants can do in these circumstances.

1. IT contractors can anticipate the problem and do what they can to avoid it on their end.  If it’s obvious that getting approval from a manager is difficult, making sure that they’re handed something for approval well in advance of the date it’s need it will help.  So will trying to finish everything one can without that manager’s approval before going to them.  There are a lot of ways that one can address the problem subtly without going directly to the manager about it.

2. IT professionals can try to simplify things and make them as easy as possible for their managers.  After doing IT jobs for a while, people begin to see how their managers’ work styles and preferences.  Catering to these will streamline things a bit, even if it seems like a pain on the outset.

3. As a last resort, IT consultants can be direct with their managers.  If they have the right relationship, a conversation noting the issue and offering some solutions might go a long way.  Offering solutions is a key part here because it separates the truly valuable employee from the disposable ones.  Managers, particularly busy ones, really appreciate the extra effort.