Tag Archives: IT professionals

Meetups: An Old-Fashioned Use for Technology in IT Recruiting

In a world saturated with technology, one of the job seeking methods that is rapildly-growing in popularity for IT consultants and IT recruiters is actually very old-fashioned: the meetup.  Of course, the meetup is not entirely old fashioned.  Advertised and arranged over the Internet, meetups are also full of technical recruiters and IT contractors exchanging information on their smart phones.  IT staffing companies will later tend to store this information and use it on their office computers to fill future IT jobs that come across their desks.

All enabling technology aside, though, meetups for IT contractors and IT staffing agencies require extensive amounts of decidedly old-fashioned skills.  Hearty handshakes, hard copies of resumes, and personable small talk all come in handy for IT recruiting agencies and IT professionals.  Possessing these skills can actually set IT recruiting firms, which so often rely on their Internet savvy and suave email presence to fill an IT job.  The meetup really reminds an industry so enamored with technology that ultimately, a workplace might operate with machinery, but it operates on something Apple or Googlehas never constructed: people.

Cyber Warfare: Suiting Up for IT Battle

One niche area of information technology that IT recruiters are working with is Cyber Warfare.  While the name might connote violence, IT staffing agencies are actually filling IT jobs that require either defending or attacking networks.  Often attacking networks comes down to finding and exploiting software flaws, while defending them requires the opposite: finding and fixing software flaws.

IT recruiting agencies face a surprising dearth of qualified IT professionals when searching to fill these IT jobs.  IT staffing firms are coming up short in finding IT consultants to fill Cyber Warfare jobs because the skills required tend to be fairly specialized and to be especially well-honed with experience.  Since Cyber Warfare has only really begun to grow as a sector since circa the Bush Administration, the pool of experienced IT contractors that IT staffing firms can cull from is understandably still quite small.  The field is also understandably concentrated in particular areas.  IT recruiters Boston or IT recruiters CA, for example, are far less likely to come across IT consultants with Cyber Warfare skills and experience than technical recruiters in D.C. and Virginia.

Simply put, for IT professionals looking to make themselves more appealing to IT recruiting firms, it’s never been a better time to polish one’s technological combat skills.

Looking to Russia for IT’s future?

American IT recruiters, IT recruiting companies, and IT consultants are already aware of the impact that the EU’s approach to information technology on their own market, but some are just becoming aware of Russia’s influence.  While IT recruiters Boston and IT recruiters CA especially have been seeing the plentitude of talent from Russia for a while, the American information technology industry is beginning to slowly grow some relationships with its former cold war enemy.

While the cold war seemed to illuminate incompatible differences between the US and Russia, IT professionals are finding some very compatible strengths between the two.  Russian training in programming and engineering provides some impeccable skills (the same ones IT recruiting firms are already coming across in immigrants), while American entrepreneurialism provides the financial risks and growth that make successful companies. Currently, the cheapness of operating in Russia leaves many of the IT jobs in questions for Russian IT recruiting agencies to fill.  However, IT staffing companies in America may soon be finding themselves filling IT jobs that have grown from collaborations between MIT and the Skolkovo University or the Russian branch of Microsoft.  Though the Russian market is still slow to allow start-up growth, IT staffing agencies would not be ill-advised to start learning how to say at least “zdrast-vuy-tye”—“hello” in Russian.

Tardiness in IT– Not So Straightforward

The IT job board, Careerbuilder, conducted a recent survey on tardiness to work illuminates some interesting trends, but it doesn’t tell the whole story for the nuances of what is acceptable in terms of tardiness for jobs in information technology. This year, the survey reports, over a third of hiring managers surveyed had to fire an employee for being late.  In the IT field, IT consultants tend to be doubly responsible in their jobs for tardiness—they report to their IT managers, but they also are technically reporting to IT recruiters Boston, too. If they are fired for lateness, IT contractors are not only losing their own IT jobs, but possibly losing future business for the IT staffing companies who placed them.  This, of course, could burn that bridge for the IT consultant, making IT recruiting agencies reluctant or simply refusing to work with him/her in the future.

Though technical recruiters and IT managers both would certainly prefer uniform promptness, the sheer variety of roles for IT professionals dictates a wide range of lenience for tardiness. The severity of the consequences for lateness definitely vary from role to role.  For instance, a programmer, who works more independently and in a “backroom” capacity, wouldn’t likely cause much of an issue if he was late for his company or his IT staffing agencies.     A help desk role, on the other hand, which is very visible more “front of the house” would certainly hurt his and his IT recruiting firms reputation if he was constantly late and holding up any trouble shooting operations. The permanency of an IT professional is also a factor.  IT contractors hired on a temporary basis (and requiring payment both for their own work and the IT headhunters’ fee) are far more vulnerable to scrutiny than permanent hires.  This scrutiny obviously includes tardiness.

One factor that seems pretty universally irrelevant throughout the IT staffing industry is the reason for tardiness.  Too much of it is always a problem, whether it is because one is busy putting a raincoat on their concrete duck or due to traffic.

“Bob” – The Bane of IT staffing companies

Information technology has always had plenty of room for procrastination and general wasting of time.  Productivity becomes difficult for IT managers to monitor when IT consultants spend most of their time on the computer. IT headhunters are often concerned about how disciplined an IT consultant might be, as they face the very real siren call of the internet and its black hole of time-wasting websites.  The worst nightmare for IT recruiters is a skilled IT consultant who becomes too busy wasting time to properly perform his or her IT job.  Really, a technical recruiter’s worst nightmare is “Bob,” the Verizon employee who actually outsourced his own job to China.

IT contractor “Bob” (code-named such by Verizon in its own records), apparently found a way to subcontract his IT job, thusly fooling his IT manager and any IT recruiting agencies he may have worked with to get the job.  While “Bob” showed up for work each day, he merely surfed the net, especially reddit, and occasionally emailed his IT manager.

Obviously, Bob is an extreme, if not amusing example of a real problem that IT staffing firms face.  The process of weeding out IT contractors who will provide strong, efficient, effective work product is not a science.  Assets like great references, a strong history of increasing responsibility in a company or role on resumes, and great IT job interviews tend to be helpful in this process.  However, IT staffing agencies must really be able to hone a sixth sense about what makes IT professionals great candidates who will really perform in IT jobs. The consequences for IT recruiting companies are nothing less than their reputation.

How Europe Affects IT Recruiting Firms

As illustrated in last week’s exploration of Israel as nursery of a surprising portion of America’s information technology industry, IT recruiting firms, IT managers, and IT consultants are often impacted by global trends.  The Big Data Revolution, a driving force in creating the plethora of IT jobs that IT staffing agencies have been filling most recently, has been affected pretty heavily by global trends.  Europe in particular has affected the way American IT recruiting agencies and IT contractors experience the Big Data Revolution.

Europe’s main effect on Big Data has been in the way they protect consumer data.  Europe’s laws and policies are, depending on your source, more protective of the consumer than the laws and policies America’s.  Even if you disagree with the sentiment, the method Europe uses to protect consumers is different from US methods—different enough to warrant a dialogue between the US and EU on how to achieve the task of protecting consumers as the Big Data Revolution washes over our respective continents. How does all of this affect IT recruiters Boston and the IT consultants and IT managers they serve?  The way data is controlled, culled, and utilized is changing and will continue to change until the US and EU have more compatible, if not similar laws and policies protecting consumer privacy.  This change will be reflected directly in the tasks that IT contractors carry out daily, the descriptions for  an IT job that technical recruiters seek to fill, and possibly the amount of IT jobs IT staffing firms are given. 

Generally speaking, IT headhunters, It contractors, and IT managers should not be ignoring the information technology industry news in Europe or any other part of the globe.  It could, and likely will, affect their own jobs.

Dealing with ethical concerns in the Technology Industry

IT recruiters and IT professionals encounter many issues when it comes to finding IT jobs for themselves or filling them for IT managers.  Though it often may not be the most pressing concern, ethics and human rights are inescapable issues in information technology as a field.  Apple is clearly one of the companies that has dealt with human rights criticism most recently, but due to the nature of technology they are not the only ones.  One major factor that makes human rights infractions harder to avoid in overseas factories is the way technology constantly updates and stages large, anticipated release dates.  Every time a new release date is set, a factory tends to require a sudden spike in labor, often resulting in a plethora of workers completing a great deal of overtime hours.

While Apple and others are working towards abolishing terrible conditions in their production, what can IT consultants and IT headhunters do in considering what companies to work with? Ethisphere creates a yearly list honoring particularly ethical companies in a myriad of industries that IT recruiters CA or IT contractors could check before submitting resumes if they have particularly rigorous standards.  When considering a specific company’s ethical track record, technical recruiters and IT professionals can benefit from a quick Google search.  Human rights infringements are, of course complicated matters.  IT recruiting agencies or IT consultants may need to skim a few different articles to get a balanced perspective on exactly how ethical or unethical a company is.  It’s important to note that the search doesn’t have to just be for one’s own edification.  IT professionals in IT job interviews or IT staffing firms in meetings with IT managers or potential clients can definitely display interest in a company with a mention of its stellar ethical record.

A lesser-known neonatal unit of America’s IT Industry

Since the IT job market often insists that it’s not what you know, but who you know, it seems it would be wise for IT consultants to know who has the technical job opportunities they’re seeking.  The source of many of the IT jobs that technical recruiters are working on is actually an area more known for its political conflict than its technical acumen: Israel.  Despite all of its internal (and external) turmoil, Israelis can all seem to agree that innovation is key.  Dubbed “The Startup Nation,” Israel has birthed 12 companies alone that just Cisco has bought in the past decade or so.  With such high contributions to the information technology industry, there is no doubt that most IT staffing firms are filling jobs with Israeli origins.

 What makes Israel a natural origin of some of the jobs IT headhunters have on supply?  The Economist posits that Israel’s innovative nature comes from its land: as desert dwellers, Israelis are highly practiced at creativity.  Living with a constant water deficiency turns out to be a perfect problem-solving boot camp.  IT recruiting agencies and IT contractors might also find themselves working with Israeli-born companies because English is highly prevalent there, as are all of the standard business practices of a largely democratic nation.  IT recruiters MA and IT recruiters CA may hardly notice they are working with a foreign-born company when they encounter of the many Israeli start-ups the American market has acquired.

What can IT staffing agencies and IT consultants do with this information?  Use it for even more preparation in IT job interviews and the process of submitting prospective candidates and their resumes.  Knowing that a sizeable portion of the Information Technology market has originated in Israel, IT recruiters can further inform their research.  A candidate or IT recruiter who knows more about the company they’re working for is always more successful.

Keep Cautious and Carry On: Social Networking Policies and IT Professionals

What’s in your Facebook news feed?  Freedom from restrictive IT staffing workplace policies.  Well, limited freedom, anyway.  IT recruiters and IT consultants have long extolled the value of having a blog or Twitter account to display one’s information technology acumen for potential IT jobs.  The well-edited, visually appealing blog or Twitter stream is nothing short of a living extension of resumes.  However, even as social networking technologies are becoming the new breeding grounds for IT contractors and IT recruiters MA, caution rules the content.  Workplaces scrambling to protect the reputations of their IT recruiters Boston and IT staffing companies have been implementing policies that can run the gamut from lenient to incredibly restrictive.  IT recruiters CA, of course, have always advised acting on the safe side and following these Policies, no matter how much they might hinder one’s expression.

A recent article in the New York Times seems to indicate some freedom for bloggers, tweeters, facebookers, and other social networking technology users.  The National Labor Relations Board has taken several noticeable stands on the issue lately, including re-instating workers who were terminated for (allegedly) incorrect social media usage and pressuring companies to write more lenient social media use codes.  Facebook, Twitter, and their ilk should all be given the same freedom of expression that we have around, say, a water cooler. Extending the water cooler metaphor, IT recruiting companies would caution IT consultants to exercise the prudence that a newbie at work might have.  A newbie at an IT job wouldn’t freely vent about supervisors or co-workers at the water cooler (even though it is technically allowed) because they are concerned about making a solid, positive first-impression.  IT headhunters would rather that IT contractors, who are particularly vulnerable as they search for IT jobs or begin new ones, keep the content of their “living resumes” as palatable as possible to hiring managers and IT staffing agencies.  Venting about workplace issues or co-workers at IT jobs is still a risky move for those seeking IT job opportunities.  Even as the National Labor Relations Board brings new freedom to social media use, technical recruiters would suggest that IT consultants and IT contractors post, tweet, etc. with care.

Technical Professionals Adjusting to a Project Management Role

Technical Professionals who have become experts in their chosen areas of technical talent may find their career trajectory leading them into a management role, and realizing, once in that role, that their job experience so far hasn’t prepared them for the pressures and challenges of IT management. Project management, a standard step in the promotion ladder in IT, is not only an advancement, it’s a major career shift with a new set of responsibilities and skills required. IT professionals who have become accustomed to a self-directed schedule now need to learn how to manage people, and integrate interactions with others into their daily schedule. Time management, while probably a skill many technical professionals are proficient in, becomes central.

IT recruiters placing seasoned technical consultants in a first project management role are in a position to prep technical talent for the IT job ahead. Technical professionals located on a wide range of the spectrum can qualify for a project management role after a certain number of years working as a successful technical contractor. IT staffing agencies will then see a technical candidate as a desirable placement for a project management role coming from a variety of technical jobs: information technology professionals, engineers, and even medical professionals. Working with IT staffing agencies to make the transition into the new job is a challenge IT headhunters can make easier for technical consultants through solid, targeted advice.