Tag Archives: IT job

Coping with Competitive Atmospheres in the Technical Industry

Technical candidates have a range of company atmospheres that best match their personal comfort levels. Some IT pros prefer finance environments, which tend to be fast-paced & high-stress, while others find working at a nonprofit or educational institution more their preference. Regardless of what point on the scale of competition a company lies on, however, what most companies will have in common is some range of competition – between coworkers, between competitors, or simply as a team effort to achieve company goals. How technical candidates cope with stress will determine whether it drives them forward or holds them back. Technical recruiters, who are familar with coping techniques for stress because the nature of their jobs is high on competition, deadlines & unexpected turns of events, are in an ideal position to advise technical candidates entering a potentially stressful work environment on best managing within the atmosphere.

Technical Career Development

Technical candidates can make use of a variety of tools as they seek to map map out a path to career advancement. Technical professional development can happen through membership in a technical organization, through networking with other technical professionals, or through mentorship. Technical recruiting companies can provide key tools to technical candidates to facilitate their potential for success. Among the interview prep services an IT staffing firm can provide to boost a talented technical candidate’s chances of interview success is interviewing role play. Especially for technical positions that involve a phone screen & face-to-face interview stage, a technical recruiter willing to guide a technical candidate through a practice run of each type of interview will have a much higher chance of placing a solid candidate than IT recruiter who preps a technical candidate minimally.

When IT recruiters coach technical candidates for interviews, they should be sure to cover several main topics. Environment is key subject for a technical recruiter to go in-depth on, as a candidate who is technically proficient, but not a culture fit won’t pass final interviewing rounds. Another often overlooked, but significant factor to familiarize a technical candidate with is the company’s organizational structure, and more importantly, the hierarchy structure of the specific company group the technical candidate would be working with. Sample interview questions will also help a technical candidate to formulate answers that are concise & consistent – crucial for a good interviewing “story”. Reviewing common questions such as inquiries about long-term goals will help a candidate respond effortlessly when the real deal comes around. Finally, a little positive encouragement never hurt anyone’s interviewing chances! Letting a candidate know they’re a natural fit for the role (if it’s your genuine opinion) & that they’re in a great position to perform to win during the interview will be a plus for a technical candidate & IT recruiters’ chances of a successful placement.

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.

Corporate Technical Talent Acquisition

Solid strategies for corporate technical talent acquisition is necessary for any successful IT recruiting company. One of the key components of workforce planning is the ability to accurately predict. Technical recruiters who understand the needs of client firms they represent will be able to cater to those client’s needs much better than IT recruiters who simply try to make a match between HR bullet points on a job description & a potential candidate’s resume. The trick for recruiting professionals is to avoid the common trap of feeling constantly stuck in a reactive mode – reacting to a client’s feedback, reacting to a technical candidate unexpectedly backing out of an offer to accept an alternate offer, or any number of other reactive scenarios.

A second key factor in the IT recruiting process is the use of sophisticated technological sourcing tools. Top technical candidates can be a challenge to find, so a comprehensive recruiting strategy can lead to technical candidate contacts from a variety of sources. In the technical recruiting industry, relationships are key. An increasingly global economy can make maintaining some of those relationships difficult, given the obstacles of time differences, office phone systems that may not be set up for international calls, and the potential lag time involved in contacting someone primarily by email.

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.

The Next Generation of IT Experts

As a society and an economy, the need for technical specialists is global. In an age increasingly dependent on technology, the demand for technical consultants is massive and growing. How do educators cultivate interest in technology in grade and high-schoolers in order to motivate the next generation of technical talent? There are 3 levels on which the cultural & societal biases affect a young person’s exposure to the idea of the field of high-tech as an attractive career path.

The first is reputation. The prevalent social bias is that a career in high-tech is stereotyped as lacking glamor. When high school students envision a dream career, they are culturally pre-programmed to daydream about lucrative careers in the entertainment industry – becoming a pop sensation, or a competitive dancer. Careers that require a higher qualification level than pure talent supplemented with training, but which still project a socially glamourous image — being a hot shot lawyer or politician, also make young people’s radars as a dream job, but a career in tech doesn’t usually strike young imaginations the same way.

The second is a basic lack of information. It’s rare for Java experts to come to a high school and talk about their passion for tech, or even for IT recruiters to visit high schools to network with a potential new crop of tech experts. Teachers who introduce the topic in the classroom, and invite technical colleagues to give presentations in class can potentially spark interest in students still trying to make decisions about a career path. In addition, more classes in computer science can add to student’s knowledge of tech and comfort level with it. The fact that many students take their first computer science course as a college requirement is indicative of the dearth of teaching available on this topic on the pre-secondary education level.

Lastly, the family environment on the microcosmic level (in the US, at least), doesn’t emphasize the importance of advanced technical skills. While parents may stress as part of basic parental advice the significance of academic achievement, good writing & spelling skills, or communication abilities in general, conversations about how lucrative and in-demand high tech skills can be are far from commonplace. Parents who suggest that their children meet with IT recruiters in high school and college to consider the advantages of gaining technical expertise, or speak with counselors to weigh pros and cons will have fully explored options for high levels of income that their peers may never have realized were available. Now that’s competitive advantage.

Technical Consultants in Research & Development

Technical contractors & permanent employees working in technical research & development know that the information technology industry moves at warp speed, and that keeping up-to-date with technical change can pose a challenge. Research & development, especially in technology, is also often key to a firm’s level of success or failure, leading to intense competition. IT specialists who have a strong interest in keeping his or her firm at the forefront of technological innovation will need to have well-formulated strategies in place in order to surpass the competition’s work. New product creation is one way that a company can pull ahead, and the technology behind it is the responsibility of top-performing IT professionals.

Innovative technical consultants are exactly the type of candidate technical employers seek to hire, and that IT staffing firms can place almost instantly. When working with a technical staffing agency, a technical professional should highlight projects in which he or she had a lead contribution to the invention or implementation process for new technologies. Technical employers that sell or market products, systems, & services need energetic technical candidates to develop and design technical applications. Crucial to the process of innovation is the ability of the members of the team responsible for implementing the new technology to collaborate with one another. This requires teamwork skills in addition to the technical skills required to bring new ideas in technology from theory to practice. Technical recruiters are always open to talking to candidates possessing both of these skills, so candidates who are confident in their abilities in those areas should contact an IT staffing firm for opportunities.

Leadership in Tech

Managers working in technology need to have well-developed leadership skills to compliment their technical qualifications. Technical recruiters understand that technical employers that partner with IT staffing firms seek technical candidates that are both tech-savvy and display strong interpersonal skills. Technical managers need to be skilled in technical training, which has it’s own language. Being familar with this language and conveying it articulately to new technical hires is a key focal point of a technical managers responsibilites. IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies speak to technical candidates over the phone to guage leadership ability, and technical employers hiring candidates for a technical management position will definitely ask interview questions aimed at determing a technical candidate’s level of proficiency in that area.

Landing a top-paying technical job involves not just qualifications, but also the ability to recognize the highly subjective nature of the hiring process. A technical candidate who uses these variables to his or her advantage has the highest chance of walking away with a job offer. Complimenting an interviewer on a wardrobe choice at the start of the conversation won’t compensate for an incomplete technical skillset, but if a candidate’s qualifications are solid, and the candidate can convey strong confidence in his or her area of technical expertise, starting the interview conversation on a positive note can only help make a positive impression and break any tension in the air from the start. Keeping these subtelties of the interviewing process in mind will help skilled technical professionals move into management with ease.