Tag Archives: IT headhunters

Review: “Secrets from a Body Broker: A Hiring Handbook for Managers, Recruiters, and Job Seekers”

Technical recruiters will find Rey’s book, Secrets from a Body Broker: A Hiring Handbook for Managers, Recruiters, and Job Seekers, packed with valuable tips for personnel management. She starts by revealing two secrets – Secret #1 is “Discrimination is the cornerstone of each and every hiring decision. This is because hiring decisions are personal decisions made by people, and people will discriminate, even at the most subconscious of levels”. Secret #2, she tells us, is “A large percentage of managers who are in charge of hiring have little or no formal training in interviewing and hiring process”. The takeaway for technical recruiters is that hiring decisions may not be based purely on technical credentials.

A technical recruiter specializing in headhunting may see a technical candidates’ resume as an ideal match for an open IT job he or she is trying to place, but the hiring manager may feel differently. Whether the IT position is a remote job, requires an in-person interview, or a series of phone interviews, fit matters. A technical hiring manager wants not just the skill-set, but also someone he or she can respect and work well with. Even for a remote IT job, communication between a hiring manager and technical candidate via email may still play a key part in the project completion process. A hiring manager’s priorities will be affected by bias — as Rey notes in secret number 1, and discrimination for some small imperfection in a technical recruiter’s mind, such as sub-par communication skills may be crucial for a hiring manager’s comfort levels when working with a technical candidate. For this reason, a marginally less-qualified technical candidate may be selected over a standout from a skill perspective, because there is more to the big picture in a role than simply qualifications.

It may seem frustrating to an IT staffer that predicting the success of candidates that seem qualified can seem as chancey as betting, but at the end of the day, that’s the game of the technical staffing industry, and IT recruiters just have to keep their batting averages as high as possible.

Review:”Technical Screening – SQL Server Developer”

Obi Ogbanufe’s Technical Screening – SQL Server Developer helps technical recruiters develop a more efficient technical screening process for vetting candidates. The book discusses how to compare a technical candidate’s skills and background to the technical role requirements, and use cues in a candidates’ technical resume to best determine a match. One challenge Ogbanufe identifies for the technical recruiter is the issue of appearing confrontational when asking screening questions that ultimately determine whether or not the recruiter will get an interview with the employer. The nature of these types of questions is that they weed out the weaker links from the stronger ones, so offending a candidate accidentally by touching on a candidate’s technical limitations during the screening process is an easy mistake to make. The trick to preventing stepped-on feelings in technical candidates during the screening process is a technical recruiters’ savvy and diplomacy when delivering the questions. This book enumerates strategies and tactics to make conversations with the best technical candidates, as well as the not-so-best go smoothly. Technical Staffing Agencies can take cues from these concepts to make interviewing technical candidates a breeze.

The book also tackles the issue of efficiency. The IT Staffing Firm that can land more technical candidates in less time without sacraficing quality in the skills of the candidates submitted will make better use of company time than less-efficient IT Staffing Agencies. Technical Staffing Firms know that time is money, so time well spent means happy technical recruiters and technical hiring managers. If technical headhunting is a game of minutes, Ogbanufe shows how to best track those minutes to add up to hours that count. Technical recruiting companies will find tips in this book on understanding the job description of the SQL Server Developer more fully in order to best understand the type of technical candidate best suited to filling the role, and a guide to the technical terms most common in job descriptions for these roles. Finally, the book delves into the art  and science of building relationships with these technical candidates, and keeping the communication lines open. That’s something that anyone in technical recruitment will find valuable!

Review: “Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People”

Technical recruiters are in the business of  hiring for technical jobs. Their area of expertise is finding the best technical candidate for an open job position, and building relationships with the best techies on the market leads to success in the technical staffing industry. IT firms specialize in the “secrets & science” of hiring top technical candidates, and Weinberg’s book focuses on just that topic. According to him, technical people are great problem solvers. Determining which technical candidates are the best is an art that involves skills in job-description writing, candidate-sourcing, mixed-media ad creation, and more.

He covers how to review resumes efficiently and in a profitable way. He also delves into interview techniques that allow technical recruiters to interview a diverse technical candidate pool in a courteous and respectful way. The type of questions technical staffing firm reps ask technical candidates is a big factor in achieving the interview balance; another key part of the equation is how the questions are phrased. Phone screening the technical candidate is a key skill the IT staffing recruiter needs to get a handle on.  So is the reference check. He closes with tips on extending an offer. This book has everything recruiters at IT staffing agencies need to close the deal for their best technical candidates.

Review: “The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company”

Technical recruiters know that a technical candidates’ resume speaks volumes.  Thus the ability to separate power resumes from weaker ones is key. IT recruiters who are familiar with The Google Resume will be doing themselves  favor when is comes to identifying strong technical resumes (and the candidates behind the resume). Gayle McDowell instructs technical candidates on the type of job experience, educational background and extra-curriculars that makes a candidate top tech material. Recruiters at IT staffing agencies can use the same information to identify the type of winning technical resumes that grab the attention of the best technical corporate employers, like Apple or Google.

IT recruiting companies looking to hone their technical staffing skills will find this book useful. McDowell’s advice is more than opinion.  As a former member of Google’s hiring committee, he’s not bluffing when he claims to know what top tech firms demand in a technical candidate.  The book’s behind-the-scenes look at tech companies gives technical recruiters a better idea of how to make a good fit between a technical candidate and employer based on knowledge of various tech firm’s corporate environment. Reading this book will make the technical recruiters at any IT staffing firm more competitive, and more successful at what they do: finding the right IT consultants.

Review: “Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent”

In the Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent, Joel Spolsky details the steps that go into interviewing top technical talent, and into finding that quality of technical candidates in the first place. He goes into the technical hiring process, how to extract information from tech-savvy candidates on their potential technical efficiency levels. He reveals that top-tier software developers are ten times more productive than average ones– a fact that IT recruiters with great connections to good IT jobs should take careful note of. Recruiting companies and IT Staffing Firms would do well to train all of their technical recruiters in this knowledge. Speaking from his technical experience working for years at Microsoft, he instructs in how to hire great technical programmers.

Aside from the IT staffing and technical interviewing side of the business, technical hiring managers deal with, technical recruiters work in professional environments with a strong team element, and Spolsky offers valuable advice recruiting firms can use to build a stronger, more cohesive work environment. He speaks to problem-solving for recruiting teams that aren’t delivering up to potential, keeping technical recruiters up-to-date with the latest phone screen techniques, and tips on sorting technical resumes. One chapter IT recruiters won’t want to miss is “The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing”! If your passion is technical recruiting, you’re new to the industry, or work for an IT staffing firm, pick up a copy today and treat yourself to Spolsky’s technical expertise.

Review: “Breakthrough Technical Recruiting”

Ford’s Breakthrough Technical Recruiting offers IT Recruiters & Technical Hiring Managers advice for navigating the IT headhunting process. Ford speaks with authority from his own years of supervisors’ experience as a former recruiter, armed with technical recruiting strategies that led to high placement rates. Finding and identifying highly qualified technical candidates is a challenge Ford is familiar with and can provide perspective on across a variety of industries. His IT staffing secrets are priceless for the IT headhunter looking to step things up a notch, or for IT recruiting companies in the Boston area and beyond. His lucrative tips will serve IT staffing firms well.

Ford delves into interviewing strategies for technical recruiters that will help cut through the fluff and determine which IT candidate interview answers reveal stellar potential or a second or third-place contender. As every technical recruiter knows, generating viable leads is a cornerstone aspect of the IT staffing industry. IT recruiting companies need well-developed telemarketing tactics, and this book provides insight into this side of the business. Recruiting firms will find this book a valuable source of IT staffing information that will serve IT headhunters well over time.

Review: “A Beginner’s Guide to Technical Recruiting” by Prabakaran Murugaiah

What does a technical recruiter starting out for the first time in an IT Staffing Firm need to know? According to  Prabakaran Murugaiah, author of “A Beginner’s Guide to Technical Recruiting”, a lot. Murugaiah warns technical recruiters in-training that the big picture in the IT Staffing industry and in technical headhunting is changing at a rapid pace in 2011 (when he wrote A Beginner’s Guide), and beyond. The takeaway for technical recruiters starting a career in IT Staffing is that more experienced technical recruiters mentoring rookies may not have all the answers. It’s up to the protege technical recruiter to educate him or herself on the industry changes that are happening in short order.

Technical qualifications are no longer everything. Technical skills are still, as ever, center stage, but technical employers place a high value on other skills as well. Those skills include communication ability, company environment fit, and personality type. A fast-paced technical environment will look for different personality types in their IT candidates than a smaller, less rushed company atmosphere will. A Beginner’s Guide keeps technical recruiters abreast of culture changes like these in the staffing industry, and offers advice for technical recruiters looking to best take maximize the power of this industry knowledge.  IT candidates qualified on all skill facets important to technical employers are easier for technical recruiters to spot after reading this book. Read it today for practical technical recruiting tips!

Review: “Technical Screening – Java Developers” by Obi Ogbanufe

Technical Recruiters know that placing an IT candidate in a Java role is no easy task – technical candidates with the right background, technical skills, and level of proficiency with Java aren’t always a quick find. One interview approach technical recruiters use when screening IT candidates for a potential interview for a Java Developer role is to ask the IT candidate to rate him or herself on a scale of 1 to 5. The downside of this interview style is that the technical recruiter depends on the IT candidates’ accurate self-assessment and truthfullness. An IT candidate who rates him or herself as a 5 out of 5, or a Java Developer expert, may not be able to perform on the level expected by the hiring manager. Then again, the hiring manager and IT candidate may simply have different ideas about what a ‘5’ means. If an IT candidate has mastered an intermediate level of Java Development in past work experience, and accordingly, self-rates as a 5, the hiring manager, who may want an IT candidate proficient in a top-tier level of Java Development may consider that same candidate closer to a 2 or 3, since mastering intermediate levels only brings an IT candidate to starting levels for expert level performance.

Obi Ogbanufe tackles this and other issues surrounding technical recruiting for Java Developers. He includes real examples of successful Java Developer screening questions, and discusses which IT candidates’ answers match what IT employers are looking for, and which answer types should serve as red flags to IT recruiters. IT Staffing Firms like AVID Technical Resources take the phone-screening process seriously, using it to filter out weaker IT candidates from the ones that technical recruiters see potential in. One key element in a successful Java Developer placement is a technical recruiter’s understanding of the technology itself. By familiarizing him or herself with the Java technology, a technical recruiter will be better equipped to identify incomplete or inaccurate answers to interview questions instantly. A technical recruiter with this ability will operate more efficiently and make better use of each work day than a recruiter who needs to seek advice on the accuracy level of each candidates’ replies. Efficiency and speed leads to more successful IT job placements, and thats a win-win for IT candidates and technical recruiters alike.

Skill Testing Online

Any job-seeker who has interviewed with a staffing firm before has probably taken online skill-testing. Staffing firms can purchase online skill tests from test providers like Proveit, Eskill, or Brainbench, which offers testing for candidates in a range of skill sets. Technical test topics include Java, Dreamweaver, and ColdFusion MX. These resources can be useful for technical recruiters seeking to place candidates in roles that require proficiency in these areas. Offered in multiple languages, and in options including in-office testing or remote, skill assessments can be useful purchases for staffing firms.

For candidates, online skill testing can be just as helpful. Rather than purchasing access to skill assessments as a company would, job-seekers can log into free assessment providers like Smarterer to test their abilities in skills commonly sought by employers, such as Excel aptitude, Powerpoint skills, and more.  Candidates who have invested time building relevant industry skills have an opportunity to showcase their skills through an assigned score, comparing them to other test-takers. High-scoring testers may want to display their scores on their Linkedin profiles, or send them to recruiters as a resume supplement. Got Skills? Show them off!

Secrets for Making your Recruiter your Best Friend

In today’s job search environment, recruiters often play an instrumental role in a candidates job search, whether the job is in the medical, financial or technical industry, or the position sought is contract or permanent. The reason is that recruiters spend each work day doing for a living what candidates do only during periods of time when they’re on a job search – create relationships with hiring managers and their companies, keep abreast of the most current job openings available, and cruise job boards like Monster, Indeed, and Craigslist, as well as professional networking sites like Linkedin and Yammer. A job-seeker applying to jobs online may encounter at least one position of interest that has been posted by a recruiter. In contacting the recruiter, the prospective candidate for the position initiates a relationship with the recruiter to determine if he or she will be a good fit for the role.

Here’s a secret: cultivating a relationship your recruiter correctly can make him or her your best friend. Mainly because that person has the potential to get you a new job. What is the protocol for candidate-recruiter alliances? The golden rule is – Imagine they’re the boss. If you make contact with a recruiter over the phone, your confidence, ability to describe your past roles and the value you added persuasively and succinctly, and clarity when defining the type of role you want to be your next will be as impressive to the recruiter as it would be to a hiring manager. The type of candidate that impresses a hiring manager is the kind of person a recruiter wants to get in front of the manager. It’s a win-win for everybody.

So here’s the bottom line: when you speak to a recruiter about a role, handle it like in interview. If you meet with a recruiter face-to-face, dress to impress. If your recruiter requests that you send references, or stay in contact once a week, make it a priority to do so, just as you would if you were in long-term negotiations with a hiring manager. Recruiters operate in a fast-paced environment – they’re not going to eat up a lot of your time. An investment of a few minutes a week on the phone with a recruiter you’ve established a relationship with could be the difference between getting the salary and benefits you want in a company you want to work for, or having to settle for less.

IT Recruiters at AVID focus on maintaining relationships with IT candidates with technical backgrounds. As an IT staffing agency that is more specialized that an all-industry recruiting firm, AVID offers candidates recruiters who are experts in staffing for the tech industry, and are best equipped to assist IT candidates with their job search.