Tag Archives: IT recruiting agencies

How to Get Recruited for IT Jobs

If you’re searching for new IT jobs over the year, you may be wondering how to connect with IT staffing firms and technical recruiters.  The good news is that it’s pretty easy to get the attention of good IT recruiters and IT recruiting agencies.  Here are some steps you can take:

  1. Contact IT recruiting companies yourself.  Call the main line, email their info number or reach out on LinkedIn.  Most IT staffing agencies welcome calls, emails, and contact from candidates.
  2. Make yourself visible online.  Make sure you have a profile on LinkedIn, Monster, and other job searching sites.  Post your resume so IT staffing companies can easily find you as they search for particular skills.
  3. Go to networking events, particularly ones that list a lot of recruiters who plan to attend.  Bring copies of your resume and/or business cards to hand out to IT staffing companies who may be there.

How to Write Follow Up Emails After IT Job Interviews

Landing IT jobs definitely gets easier when you enlist some strong IT recruiters and IT staffing firms to help you in your job search.   There are some things you need to do on your own, though, to strengthen your candidacy.  One of the most important things that your technical recruiters can’t do for you is to write a thank you note after job interviews.  How do you do this well?

Firstly, take notes in the interview.  Are there topics of conversation you will want to re-hash in the thank you note?  Maybe something the hiring manager said was vital to the job?  Write it down for yourself during the interview so you don’t forget it later.

Secondly, tell your IT staffing companies you’d like to write thank you notes to your interviewers.  IT recruiting agencies are usually thrilled to pass along thank you notes for candidates, so this won’t be a problem.  You may even be beating them to the punch—sometimes IT recruiting firms will ask you to write a thank you note themselves.  For a timetable, you should try to aim for about 24-48 hours.  A quick response will reflect well on you and the IT staffing agencies you’re working with.

Lastly, do more than just thank the interviewer for their time.  Continue a piece of the conversation you may have been having with the interviewer, mention a resource, or offer some thoughts on what you’d do if you were offered the job.  The point is to show a little initiative and interest in the position itself.  A generic thank you note won’t mean much.  However, one written with real thought about the position, company’s needs, or even just the interview itself, will make a big impact.

 

 

IT Jobs, Danger and Responsibility: The Story of Pavel Durov

Most IT recruiters and IT staffing firms wouldn’t describe IT jobs as dangerous.  This is, of course, the case, 99% of the time.  Recently, though, IT staffing agencies and technical recruiters have been shown an exception: the wild story of a very dangerous IT job—being creator of Russia’s version of Facebook.

Pavel Durov, a celebrity in Russia on par with Mark Zuckerberg in the US, has recently become endangered due to issues between the government and his company.  While Russia’s own issues with corruption and censorship weigh heavily on this story, there’s another message for IT recruiting companies and IT recruiting agencies: IT is a powerful industry with a great deal of responsibility and power.  As it begins to truly shape our world and deeply affect our politics, Information Technology endows its jobs with a great deal of ethical responsibility.  IT professionals, and by extension, IT staffing companies, are not just coding—they’re deeply influencing the future.

 

Tips for IT Office Parties

As the holidays approach, plenty of IT staffing agencies and IT companies will be having office parties.  These may seem unnecessary, but they’re actually a great moment for you to network with technical recruiters, colleagues, and possibly increase your chances of landing IT jobs in the future.  Here are a few tips from IT staffing firms to help you ace your holiday office parties.

Firstly, be a little more casual and comfortable.  Events like this don’t call for exactly the same manners, dress code, etc as work.  In fact, if you’re too stiff, it will be detrimental.  IT recruiting agencies would recommend relaxing a bit, making a few jokes, and coming in clothes that aren’t quite business professional.

Second, don’t bring your smart phone with you and don’t cling to your date.  IT staffing companies would suggest that the best way to make the most of holiday parties for work is to be fully engaged.  Don’t spend long spans of the party checking your phone in the corner.  Don’t only speak with your date.  Work the room and be social with your coworkers and managers—it’s the reason you’re at the party.

Don’t indulge too much on the alcohol.  It seems like common sense, but it’s worth repeating.  IT recruiting firms would absolutely recommend keeping your drinking to a minimum so you’re fully in control for the whole evening.

 

 

Ace your IT Interviews by Telling Stories

IT staffing firms and IT recruiters are always looking for job candidates who excel in ways beyond just their technical skills.  Having certain skill-sets might make it seem like somebody is a great fit for particular IT jobs.  Howevever, it’s important for IT staffing companies and technical recruiters to be able to present candidates who not only have great IT skills and experience, but are able to demonstrate they’re excellent assets to their teams and managers.  How do you demonstrate to IT recruiting firms, interviewers, and hiring managers, that you’re an asset to the teams you work on and will work on in the future?  Tell some stories.

Tell IT recruiting agencies or interviewers a story about a time you stepped up and owned a process, fixed a problem, or did something else that was out of your job description.  Talk about how this affected your team and managers (positively, obviously) and what you learned from it.  These kinds of stories will demonstrate initiative, follow-through, team-work, and reliability.

Tell IT staffing companies or a hiring manager a story about a time you met somebody’s expectations—before they even expected it.  Maybe you anticipated a manager’s need, headed off a potential problem with a project, or were just prepared for something your team wasn’t.  These kinds of stories demonstrate that you are not only capable of doing your job, but doing it with little supervision.  This is a manager’s dream.

 

Why Use IT Recruiting Firms?

Ever wondered why IT recruiters are useful in your search for IT jobs?  Why not just do the search yourself instead of working with IT recruiting companies?  There are few reasons you should cultivate a relationship with technical recruiters—some of which are not obvious.

Firstly, IT recruiting companies have access to far more job openings than you do as the average job seeker.  Not all job openings are posted publicly.  Sometimes hiring managers have IT staffing companies working on a job that you may not even know exists.  Working with them means you will know about them and be able to apply.

Secondly, IT recruiting agencies have strong relationships with the companies they’re working for.  This means they can recommend you (as somebody whose expertise the hiring managers trust), make sure your resume doesn’t get lost in a stack of resumes, and even fight for you to get the salary or pay rate you want.  All these benefits are hard to put a price on, but they’re very important in a competitive job market.

The Golden Rule for Success in Your IT Jobs

So you’ve worked with some IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies to land your dream job.  How do you excel at your new gig so your boss and coworkers notice and IT staffing companies fight other IT recruiting companies to place you for your next IT jobs?  There are a lot of ways to ensure success, but there is one golden rule everyone should try to follow: Bring your boss solutions, not problems. 

How can you do this?  Make sure you think one step beyond issues that arise or you’re concerned will arise.  IT recruiting firms have an easy time placing the kind of employee who not only notices a problem, but can then anticipate for his boss what some possible solutions would be for it.   Employees who make solutions, not just identifying problems, their focus are easy to manage and work with.  These are the kind of people IT recruiting companies get requests for—employees that make life easier for their teammates and bosses.  Take a shot at this the next time you spot a problem—you’ll be surprised at how well this habit will impact your job performance and career.

 

 

Don’t Lose IT Jobs For These Silly Mistakes

IT recruiters see all sorts of reasons that IT contractors fail to get IT jobs.  Sometimes IT professionals don’t get jobs for good reasons: they don’t have the right skills, experience, or their salary expectations aren’t right for the job.  However, sometimes technical recruiters find out that their candidates don’t get the job for very avoidable reasons.  Here are a couple below that you can avoid the next time your IT staffing agencies or IT recruiting companies set you up for a job interview.

Don’t come off as selfish or too interested in compensation/benefits.  While compensation is certainly a very important part of any IT job, the best thing you can do is let your IT staffing firms handle this part.  Have candid conversations with IT recruiting agencies about what you expect for benefits and compensation before you go on interviews.  They can handle this topic for you, leaving you free to really focus on the job and the company in interviews.  When an interviewer gets the impression that you’re more interested what you’re getting paid, they’ll be concerned you’re not interested in the work itself.  This is a red flag you can easily avoid!

Don’t cross professional boundaries.  Sometimes, when people are either nervous in interviews or too relaxed, they can be less than professional.  You certainly don’t want to come across as a robot, but you’ll shoot yourself in the foot if you start to overshare, swear, or get too chummy with your interviewer.  Making your interviewer uncomfortable is the quickest way to lose a potential job, so keep things professional at all times!

Don’t show up too early or late.  Being either too early or too late are easy to avoid.  They’re also easy reasons interviewers to jump to all sorts of negative assumptions about you.  Show up 10-15 minutes early for an interview.

IT Job Hunters: Check Online for Info About Corporate Culture!

In the past, IT contractors have to ask their IT recruiters and IT staffing companies about the corporate culture of the IT jobs they’re interviewing for.  Things are changing now, though.  IT recruiters are no longer the only source of info about a company’s corporate culture—now the companies themselves are posting videos, pictures, and more info about their corporate culture online.

If you’re up for an IT job, ask your IT recruiting agencies if they know about any online info about the company’s corporate culture.  It’s worth looking into this info for yourself so you can decided if the company is a place you could be happy.  While corporate culture is often mentioned secondary to the actual job description by IT recruiting firms, it’s still very important.  IT staffing firms that can place people in jobs they love and corporate cultures they love, find the most success and longevity in the placements.  This is because happy workers have been proven to be more loyal and productive workers.  So don’t hesitate to ask your technical recruiters if there is info online about the corporate culture of companies you’re interviewing with.  This information is important!

 

IT’s Next Best Employees: Veterans

IT recruiters and IT staffing firms tend to see plenty of resumes from recent veterans, but not all of them value the military experience.  While there plenty of IT staffing companies that do think about it, not all technical recruiters understand how military experience translates to most IT jobs.  Though the skills can be different, sometimes this is a good thing.  IT recruiting companies and the companies they work for are starting to realize that military experience can translate to special skills that not all IT contractors have.

This trend isn’t currently growing fast enough to accommodate the number of unemployed veterans in the US.  However, the good news is that it will likely grow in the future.  The military relies on technology more and more every day.  Soon IT recruiting agencies will be able to see a plain link between the jobs IT professionals have done in their military past and the civilian jobs they’d like to be considered for.  In the interim, it’s up to IT staffing agencies to be creative enough to start to see how well veterans are often prepared for civilian IT jobs.