Tag Archives: IT job

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.

The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get

The IT staffing industry is not unlike many other sales positions.  The more activity you put out, the better your odds of success.  For IT recruiters, this translates into calls.  Ultimately, the more calls you make in a day, the better your chance of finding those perfect information technology professionals for your high-tech jobs.

Technical recruiters who work hard throughout the day might make as many as a 75-100 calls and emails.  While this can be exhausting, this will likely mean dozens of responses from prospective IT job candidates.   For those IT recruiters Boston who do additional work from the comfort of their own home at night, the next day can literally feel like Christmas as they log on to their computer to await the responses from interested candidates.

The best IT recruiting firms understand the importance of high activity.  No matter how strong of a salesperson you are, if you make half the calls as your competition working for other IT staffing agencies, they will win out every time.  You may make that first placement, but over the course of time, other IT recruiters CA will win.

Technical recruiters Boston who do not make a high number of calls not only stunt their growth, the growth of their IT staffing agency, but also just make for a very slow day.  Your peer who put out 100+ calls the prior day is walking into a barrage of responses the next day while you may not have any due to your weak activity.  This translates into a slow, boring day….without much of a chance of making commissions.

If you find yourself working in the IT staffing industry, then follow my lead.  Make as many calls as possible and you’ll find success.  Ultimately, the harder you work, the luckier you get.

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.

Sending Paper Resumes To IT Recruiters

As an IT recruiter working for one of the fastest growing IT staffing companies Boston, we periodically receive paper resumes blindly sent from candidates in the information technology industry.  Here are 3 reasons why prospective candidates should not send paper resumes to technical recruiters:

1)  They get thrown away:  IT recruiters Boston typically look at paper resumes as a sign that the candidates are not technically saavy enough to utilize email.  Therefore, paper resumes are more of a red flag than a summary of one’s life technical work.

2)  It “ages” you:  Mailing your resume a decade+ ago was your only option of getting your informatioin to IT recruiting companies.  Therefore, this is typically associated with a technique someone from an older generation would do.  While you cannot IT job descriminate, this certainly does not help your chances of landing one of the technical jobs that the IT recruiting company has posted on their website.

3)  They will not be added to the database:  Because it’s paper, technical recruiters will have to scan the resume in order add it to their IT job database.  When you’re looking at hundreds of technical resumes every day, and cal easily parse them with a click or two of a button, then human nature is going to win over and you’re not going to take the extra steps involved in scanning a resume into your IT staffing database (especially knowing #1 and #2 above).

Therefore, if you’re a prospective IT job candidate, save your forty-five cents and email your resume to as many IT recruiters CA and IT staffing firms as you can.  Most will be added to their respective resume databases.

IT Recruiters Work Late

The IT staffing industry is certainly not a 9-5pm.  IT recruiters typically get into the office at 8am, then work until 6-7pm at night.  The most successful technical recruiters then check their Blackberry or iPhone throughout the night and respond back to any strong/interested candidates for their IT jobs.  The very best IT recruiters Boston also jump back online to conduct additional IT job searches from the comfort of their own home.

Due to the fact most all job boards, such as Monster, Dice, Careerbuilder and now Linkedin, and now many IT recruiting companies also have web-based databases such as Bullhorn, technical recruiters Boston can do much of their work from home and see the same user interface as they would in the office of their respective IT recruiting firm.

Therefore, if you’re entertaining becoming an IT recruiter, be sure you know what you’re getting into and the hours you’ll need to commit to in order to be successful.  The harder technical recruiters MA work, the more commissions they ultimately make.

Identifying Top IT Talent

There’s an old saying that the best candidates are typically working and that that has never been more true than it is today in the world of Information Technology.  With all of the gloom and doom that we are constantly being fed by the media about the economy, someone outside of the IT staffing industry would be forgiven for thinking that there would be an abundance of high tech candidates competing over a few IT job openings.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  For that last few years as the economy as continued to falter, the demand for IT resources has increased at a rate that IT staffing companies and IT recruiting firms have struggled to keep pace with.  While you won’t find most technical staffing firms and technical recruiting companies complaining about being one of the few positive growth areas throughout the recession, it has provided the unexpected challenge of finding, then retaining, IT candidates for their clients.

While most IT staffing firms and IT recruiting agencies will still use the traditional methods of searching for candidates such as the job boards and their proprietary database, the lack of quality information technology talent has forced many of the successful companies to go back to their roots and harvest candidates like they had to in the pre-internet days by doing a better job with networking, asking for referrals, and mining passive candidates.  While some IT recruiters find some of these “old school” activities to be outside of their comfort zones, those IT recruiters Boston that have embraced these method have found themselves becoming increasingly successful.  Gone are the days where a recruiter could be successful with a Monster password alone, today’s technical recruiters have to be much more aggressive and proactive and truly think outside of the box.

Great candidates are out there, and they are likely working, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be found or that they don’t want to be found.  The difference is how we have to search.

Before Accepting an IT Job Counteroffer….

You have frustrations with your IT job, the company or the IT manager that you work for.  Ultimately, you decide that you’re better in a different environment so you begin contacting IT recruiting companies to find your next opportunity.  IT recruiters set you up with technical job interviews and you land a position that meets your skills and requirements.

When you give your notice, your IT manager comes back with a substantial counter offer to try to keep you from leaving.  Do you keep it or leave your IT job?  It’s a tough decision, but think about the following:

1)  If you stay, management will always know that you were on the look out for other IT jobs.

2)  If you stay, you’ll likely have a bulls-eye on your back as the company will know you were willing to break your loyalty and leave.

3)  There was a reason why you contacted IT staffing companies in the first place.  There was a reason why you accepted to go on IT job interviews from various technical recruiters.  There was a reason why you wanted to leave.  Unless it was purely financial, those reasons aren’t likely to change.

Contact our IT recruiters Boston here at AVID and jump-start your career.

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.

Submit Your Resume to An IT Recruiter or Client?

You see an IT job posting for a company that you’re very interested in working for – then you see the same position posted by various IT recruiting companies.   Who do you submit your resume to and do you submit to mulitple IT recruiters.  The answer might surprise you.  Submit your resume to the technical recruiter at the IT recruiting firm that is most reputable and/or you have a relationship with.  Here’s why:

1)  Submitting directly to the client could go into an HR black hole.  Remember that not HR are trained to recruit on IT jobs.  Therefore, even if they receive your resume, they may not know whether your a fit for the position.

2)  Once you submit your resume directly to the client, you’re “their property.”  Therefore, if IT recruiters Boston try to submit you thereafter, the company could reject it (then never even contact you).

3)  The IT staffing company may have a relationship with the direct hiring manager.  Therefore, by working through the IT recruiting agency, your resume may not only go directly to the source, the IT recruiter may be able to pursuade the IT manager to speak or meet with you based on their relationship.

Therefore, working directly with IT recruiting agencies is your best chance of landing that next information technology opportunity.

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.