Tag Archives: IT headhunters

Programming a bridge over the Gap (Model)

Could IT Professionals use some practice communicating?  IT staffing firms Boston to IT recruiting companies CA have long been aware of “The Gap” model— A method of looking at the gap between IT consultants and the IT recruiters they serve.  Hiring managers and IT headhunters are certainly looking for IT contractors who can deeply comprehend and create what IT recruiters Boston need.  However, there tend to be a few barriers that obstruct great communication between those who hold IT jobs and the IT recruiters San Diego they serve.  Generally, the Gap Model tends to note that IT consultants tend to have a higher reliance on logic and rationality, lack empathy for less experienced information technology users, have less of a need for social interaction, have a higher propensity for perfectionism when it comes to technological issues, and to operate on ‘IT time,’ or to take longer than expected to complete IT tasks.  Of course, these qualities tend to be the opposite of what technical recruiters possess, creating a conflict in work styles and communication within IT staffing agencies themselves.

When people discuss the Gap Model, they tend to compare these communication barriers between users and IT recruiters MA to the kinds of communication conflicts caused when people are actually speaking different languages.

Whether the comparison is an exaggeration or not, the Gap Model certainly suggests an important problem—one that the information technology industry, including the IT staffing industry, IT contractors, and hiring managers would all do well to consider.  Resumes, Linkedin and Monster profiles, and IT job interviews would be great places for prospective candidates to make sure they stress their willingness to communicate with a variety of IT recruiters LA.  With some of that trademark IT professional obsession and perfectionism, the Gap Model could easily become a thing of the past.

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.

Sportsmanship in an IT Recruiting Team

The IT recruiting field places an emphasis on teamwork, and the technical recruiter who proves to be a good team player will stand out positively from those who contribute less to their coworker’s success. Technical recruiters working within the same office for the same company have a common goal – to place as many qualified technical candidates as possible in IT roles that suit their professional backgrounds. The IT recruiter who sees him or herself as a valuable member of a larger team effort will grasp the big picture goal of a technical recruiting organization. Recruiting is all about making personal connections, fostering business relationships, and keeping in touch with important players in the technical industry. The ability to carry over that focus on people from a job description to interaction with coworkers will make a technical recruiter successful, and most likely, more confident in his or her success than IT recruiters who are more self-reliant than team-oriented.

The definition of teamwork, however, isn’t limited to a specific office location within a company. A technical recruiter working out of company headquarters has as many professional teammates as the company has office locations. AVID Technical Resources may be headquartered out of Boston, MA, but the technical recruiters in the Boston office maintain close ties to those in the Marlborough, MA office, as well as the Providence, RI office. One way for IT recruiters to keep in close contact with teammates in offices that are geographically distant is phone conferencing. AVID’s IT recruiters in the San Diego and Los Angeles offices communicate regularly with technical recruiters in the Boston office. Staying in touch is an essential part of being a team player – regardless of how much space separates team members.

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.

Early Bird Gets the Worm

For technical recruiters working in the IT staffing industry, the early bird gets the worm.  Because technical job boards are such a major resources for IT recruiters, and sites such as Monster.com dominate the market for prospective IT job seekers, the earlier IT recruiting companies open the door to allow their IT recruiters Boston to log into these sites the better.  Ultimately, thousands of candidates post their resumes every day.  Therefore, typically the first IT headhunters to reach out to each will have the right to submit their resume to the appropriate IT jobs.  Additionally, ties do not go to the runner, the first IT recruiter to email a candidate will usually be the IT headhunter that the candidate will work with.

Therefore, IT staffing agencies should open their doors by 8am at the latest.  Otherwise, provide keys or a swipe pass to their IT recruiters CA so the early birds can get the worm.

Evaluating IT Staffing Companies

When it comes to choosing the right IT recruiting firm (among hundreds of IT staffing companies) to represent you with your job search, there are many options.   A quick internet search for an IT staffing or IT recruiting company in any given location can yield overwhelming results.  This can be a particularly challenging issue for many IT job seekers as choosing the wrong company can make the difference between getting their ideal job, or getting the runaround.

There are many factors one should consider when reaching out to IT staffing agencies or technical recruiting companies but here are a couple of quick tell-tale signs that let you know if you are on the right track.  First off, doing a little research on a company can prove very revealing. Typically, where there’s smoke there’s fire so if you see a number of negative Google or Yelp reviews that should serve a good indicator for what you may be getting.  It takes time for someone to add a review (good or bad) so if someone has taken the time to share their experiences with others, they’ve typically felt pretty strongly about what happened to them.

Next, what happens when you finally connect with IT recruiters.  Do they seem genuinely interested in helping you with your career, by asking you questions about your past positions and experiences, in addition to your goals and aspirations moving forward.  Or do they seem more interested in the positions they are currently working on and if you’ll be a fit for any of those openings.  Reputable technical recruiters will want to spend a great deal of time getting to know you and what drives you, so they find the best opportunity for you.  If you’ve determined any follow-up steps after your initial call or meeting some IT headhunters, does the IT recruiter call and/or email as scheduled.  If they don’t do these basic things and appreciate and respect your time then there’s little chance that things will improve.  You only get one chance to make a first impression and if this is a snap shot of the recruiter at their best, then you wouldn’t want to see them at their worst.

Ultimately, it’s very important for a candidate to remember that while IT staffing firms will be evaluating them as they search for a new position, they should also be evaluating the IT staffing agency.  Making the wrong decision can seriously impact a candidates career.

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.

IT Recruiters Should Prep Candidates For Counter Offers

Counter offers can be heartbreaking for IT recruiters.  After putting in countless hours into their IT search, meeting with prospective candidates, coordinating IT job interviews and helping streamline a new hire, having a candidate back out of a placement due to a counter offer can be very deflating.   To help ensure prospective candidates don’t blindside your technical recruiters, we suggest IT recruiting companies do the following:

1)  Provide training:  Teach your IT recruiters Boston how to properly roll out an offer.  Create a checklist that technical recruiters need ask a candidate when attempting to get their committment for a new IT job opportunity.

2) Be thorough:  When going through a “lock down” checklist, be as thorough as possible.  If they’re working, find out what their motivation is to leave?  Is it the commute?  People they work with?  Opportunity?  Financial stability of the company?  If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then even after a strong counter offer, the candidate’s situation will likely not change.

3)  Prep your candidates:  Every time IT headhunters roll out an offer to a candidate who is currently employed, be sure to prep them for a counter offer from their current client.

4)  Ask hypothetical questions:  IT recruiting agencies should make sure their technical recruiters ask hypothetical questions when preparing their candidates for counter IT job offers.  Examples of some hypothetical questions would be:  “What would you do if your company countered?”  “Is there anything your current company could do to keep you if you gave your notice?”  “Is there any financial number that would keep you from leaving?”

While prepping candidates for counter offers won’t guarantee the IT job seeker won’t turn down your opportunity after the fact, it certainly does help minimize the risk for technical recruiting companies.

IT Recruiters Monopolize the IT Job Market

There are so many IT recruiting companies Boston to choose from it can be overwhelming.  Due to the sheer volume of technical recruiters, it seems like virtually every information technology position from a client company has at least one IT recruiting agency working on it.  Therefore, knowing IT recruiting firms Massachusetts have a virtual monopoly on the local IT job market, prospective candidates should utilize IT staffing services.

When considering what IT headhunters to contact, see our blog posted on July 27, 2012.  You can start by simply doing a Google search for IT recruiters Boston or find a list of IT recruiting firms Boston on the Massachusetts Staffing Association website.  Given there are so many IT recruiters to choose from, be sure to find a technical staffing company that fits your needs and who you feel comfortable with.