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Tag Archives: IT recruiting companies

Improving Communication Skills for IT Jobs

As expected, IT staffing firms and IT recruiters prize technical skills in a candidate when staffing for IT jobs. It’s important to know that communication skills are nearly equally important for some IT recruiting companies and the jobs they’re filling.  Here are some tips for cultivating communication skills that will impress IT recruiting firms, technical recruiters, and hiring managers.

  1. Keep in mind the perspective of the other person.  When you show that you care about others’ wants and needs, they’re more likely to connect with you.  This makes for better communication and better relationships (which can be key at work).
  2. Keep the playing field even.  Whether you have more degrees, success, a better, title, etc, is irrelevant.  Coworkers, bosses, and IT staffing agencies will respect you more if you show respect to them and treat them as an equal.
  3. Listen more than you speak.  It might take practice, but listening pays off.  People appreciate this deeply and they will appreciate you more if you can be a good listener for them.

 

Unexpected Questions in IT Job Interviews

IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies can often provide you with an idea of questions you should be prepared to answer in interviews for IT jobs.  You may not even need IT recruiting firms to help you anticipate these questions—they could already be on your radar.  Sometimes, though, hiring managers will ask questions you or your IT staffing companies and technical recruiters didn’t anticipate.  Here are some ways you can respond to these questions gracefully and with the maximum positive impact to your candidacy.

Firstly, take a breath.  Don’t rush in to answer—it’s ok to pause and think for a second about your response.  Interviewers won’t mind that, particularly if you can give a great answer to their question.

Secondly, try to think about what the interviewer is looking for. Even if the question seems straightforward, it’s worth just considering that the interviewer is seeking a little more information.  For instance, one company asks how its candidates picture their retirement.  What they’re really seeking is the candidate’s interests and whether they align with the job in question. Good candidates will pick up on this kind of thing.

Lastly, don’t hesitate to ask a question in response.  If you give your answer but are unsure you’ve satisfied the interviewer, it’s ok to ask ‘was that what you wanted to know?’  Perhaps you think a question is meant to reveal certain qualities about you as a candidate.  Go ahead and ask.  You may even drive the conversation in a direction the interviewer appreciates, but didn’t even expect.  If you show that you’re thinking about the interviewer and hiring company’s perspective, then you’ll make a good impression on them and the IT recruiting companies they’re working with.

 

2 Times to be Honest, but Edit Yourself in IT Job Interviews

All IT staffing firms would certainly agree that honesty is important in interviews for IT jobs.  If you’re not honest as a candidate or the company is dishonest, you’ll wind up in a job you’re not able to do well or are unhappy in.  Nobody wins in this case– not the hiring managers, candidate, or IT staffing agencies and IT recruiters. There are some times when it’s best to walk the line between honesty and editing yourself, though.  Here are two instances in interviews when technical recruiters would advise you to be honest, but edit yourself.

First is when your priority is your family, not work.  Most IT staffing companies and hiring managers know that it’s likely your family time is more precious to you than time spent at work.  However, you don’t have to say this out loud.  It underscores the point too much and might scare off the interviewer.  Most interviewers won’t ask about this topic anyways.  In this case it’s all the better to avoid making strong statements about how you prioritize family over work.

Second is when you’re leaving a job because your boss or coworkers were difficult to deal with.  Again, this is the kind of thing that IT recruiting companies know happens.  However, when you speak ill of a boss or colleagues, you make a poor impression on interviewers.   There are a few reasons for this, but the most important is that it’s hard for them to know if your complaints are valid. Keep the conversation positive and focus on what you’re looking for in your next job.

 

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.

 

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.

Don’t Stop Your IT Job Search During the Holidays

As the holidays approach, IT recruiters and IT staffing firms are fighting the common myth that it’s not worth keeping up a job search until after New Year’s.  This misconception drives IT staffing agencies crazy because it’s simply not true—there are still plenty of IT jobs in November and December that they’re working to fill. Here are two reasons why you should keep working with IT recruiting companies and IT recruiters all the way through the holiday season.

Firstly, a surprising number of companies find extra cash in their budgets that they need to spend before the year’s end.  This means new projects, possibly even new IT positions that are temporary or permanent.  If you pick up your calls from technical recruiters during the holidays, you could be one of the IT professionals who gets hired with this unexpected money.

Secondly, Even if a company does not find money in the budget they must spend, they may lose workers over the course of the holiday season.  Workers will sometimes wait out a year-end bonus, and then leave a job.  IT staffing companies could be calling you to fill that spot.

 

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 Jobs Are Now Offering Bring Your Parents To Work Days

Particularly in the world of information technology, ‘Bring Your Parents to Work Day’ has caught on.  IT recruiters have noticed that over 50 companies and organizations in the US are now holding their own days when parents can come in and see their children at work in their IT jobs.  While having your parents tag along to your IT job would have once been a huge issue for IT recruiting companies and indicated a serious lack of professionalism to technical recruiters, this is no longer the case….depending on the company and IT recruiting firms.

There is obviously IT staffing firms that will always see Bring Your Parents to Work Day as a highly unprofessional convention.  However, some IT recruiting agencies and companies see this kind of event as a way to market themselves and to allow parents to finally understand their high tech jobs.  It’s also likely the prevalence of Bring Your Parents to Work Day is made slightly more popular by the way millennials tend to be closer to their parents than previous generations.  Researchers have noted this about millennials for a while, and it would be hard to say this observation doesn’t have any influence on IT staffing companies and the companies and organizations that hold Bring Your Parents to Work Day.

 

 

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.