Tag Archives: IT jobs

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.

Handling Bad Days Gracefully in IT

Just as in any industry, a few bad days here and there are inevitable at IT jobs.  IT recruiters, IT contractors, and IT managers alike all have tough days at work now and then.  The thing that separates truly great IT consultants from average or poor ones is how they handle these bad days at work—particularly if they have reports. Tackling bad news or a lost client gracefully is the kind of thing that almost beats out sparkling resumes.  Here’s how to do that:

1. Keep it quiet.  Venting about a problem at work won’t do you, your reports, or your managers any favors.  Better to save the venting for home and focus on just getting the issue resolved.  Keeping a positive attitude in the face of hardship will absolutely get noticed by IT headhunters, coworkers, reports, and managers, so why not do it?

2. Take a quick mental- or physical- vacation to calm yourself if needed.  Keep a few funny videos, articles, or websites stored in your phone or on your computer (depending on office policy) for some comedic relief.  Use them when you’re having a rough time.  Or go for a walk outside if you can.  Whatever method you use, calming yourself will make it much easier to focus on fixing the problem, rather than fighting through your own emotional response to it.

3. Avoid others until you are no longer NSFW- particularly any of your bosses.  Better not to risk taking frustrations out on others, because this will be remembered, too.  (Take this advice into consideration if you ever notice others at work having a bad day, too!  If a coworker or boss has some kind of personal or work-related issue going on, try to tactfully steer clear until it’s resolved.)

 

How to Handle Conflicts in Your IT Team

It’s no secret that IT headhunters prize IT consultants with sparkling resumes and who never cause conflicts in their teams.  However, there’s just no way that most IT professionals will complete all IT jobs without a single conflict- whether with IT managers or coworkers.  Below are a few ways IT contractors can handle conflicts well at work.

1. Start by framing things from the other person’s perspective.  Consider their values and priorities.  Using somebody else’s priorities to sell them on your own opinion will always be slightly more successful.  (Don’t close yourself off to the possibility that you may want to change your opinion, too!  Sometimes reframing things can force you to notice something your opponent was correct about.)

2. Make yourself vulnerable and pose the other person as expert.  If somebody’s idea is creating an issue for you, your team, or your work, try posing this problem to them—but as a special issue you find them uniquely qualified to fix.  Giving them the ego boost, placing yourself as vulnerable, and posing the issue as a question nearly eliminates the air of conflict.

3. Don’t use the word ‘but’ in your negotiations.  Use the word ‘and.’ It seems like a small thing, but when you say ‘and’ it tells the other person you’re taking their view into consideration too.  Saying ‘but’ tells them you oppose their view and are negating it.  You won’t get anywhere if the other person feels like you are completely negating what they say.

 

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!

 

How IT Contractors Can Hit the Ground Running at New Jobs

IT professionals, especially IT contractors, tend to start new IT jobs often.  It’s helpful, then, for them to really impress their IT managers and IT recruiters by getting a running start in their new positions.  Here are a few ways IT contractors can knock the socks off their technical recruiters and new managers.

1. Make a plan.  Get clear on your manager’s goals, your company’s goals, and your team’s goals.  Set a broad plan on how to achieve what you can within these lists and consider submitting it to your manager for feedback.

2. Come in with a great attitude.  It may sound obvious, but coming in with a positive outlook and demeanor will do a great deal to bring you into alliance with coworkers, managers, etc.

3. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.  To a certain extent, it’s good to find ways to work efficiently and effectively.  However, when you are faced with a choice between the way your current company does things and the way your old company did things, try to adapt to the new way.  Your new manager and coworkers will deeply appreciate it if you respect the way they already do things.  Suggesting new ideas for improvement isn’t bad, but showing respect for current protocol is imperative.

 

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.’

 

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.

 

How to deal with Distractions in IT

Information technology as a field is already fraught with distractions for IT professionals.  Add in the effect of technology itself, including smartphones, social media, and the ever-increasing allure of the internet, and IT contractors and IT managers are constantly under siege from distractions.  Some studies show that the average worker is distracted every 3 minutes, to be exact.  Below are some methods by which IT consultants and IT headhunters can reduce distractions at their IT jobs.

Carve out time for deep thinking:  Blocking off time to work alone and without distraction from the phone, coworkers, or the internet can be incredibly useful.  It’s easy to get through because it’s finite—you aren’t unavailable all day, just for perhaps the length of a meeting or a long meeting.

Talk to people in person or on the phone: Making inquiries on social media or via email can mean several interruptions in the form of messages.  Have one conversation in which you deal with all aspects of an issue in person or on the phone.  Then move on to get the work done.

Reduce and schedule email time: Emails are distracting.  If possible stop answering them as they come in.  This only increases your emails in the future.  Instead, schedule a few times a day and answer and write emails then and only then.  Turn off email notifications and try to make people aware of your system if it helps them.  They may even want to try it themselves!