Tag Archives: IT recruiting companies

Don’t Ask About This When You’re Interviewing

When you’re interviewing for IT jobs, it’s always important to have good questions for your interviewer.  Good questions not only help you make a more informed decision about whether a job would be a good fit for you.  They also help your interviewer see that you’re truly interested in the employer, the work, the project, etc.  IT staffing firms find there are such things as bad questions, though.  You may wind up completely blowing your interview if you ask questions that are irrelevant, too personal, or related to a controversial topic like religion or politics.  Here’s one more kind of question that IT recruiters find candidates too often (unfortunately) ask in an interview: anything that is exclusively about the perks of the job.

Especially in tech, perks can be a pretty common part of the decision-making process for candidates.  When major, trendy tech employers like Google are known for the perks they provide for their employees, why would it a bad idea to ask about them in the interview?  The problem is that it breaks professional norms and it can lead an employer to assume you’re not interested (or worse, perhaps prepared) for the work.  IT recruiting companies find that, as in most other fields, it’s very important for candidates to focus on the technical aspects of a job, as well as the corporate culture.  Employers want to hire candidates who are completely prepared to handle the technical work they need done, as well as somebody who fits well with their corporate culture.  Your job in an interview is to decide if that’s you.  And if it is, your job is to advocate for yourself as a good fit for the role.  Especially with rarer skills, a bad hire can be very costly for tech employers.  They really can’t afford to hire somebody who doesn’t have the skills or experience they need.  When you waste time talking about things like the free snacks or happy hours, you’ll turn off an interviewer quickly.

So if you actually do have questions about the perks of a job, who can you ask?  Your technical recruiters.  This is exactly what they’re there for.  Your IT recruiting firms are there to talk about all the elements of a job that you can’t or wouldn’t really want to discuss with an interviewer.  These include compensation, commute, and if a company has bad reviews on Glassdoor or elsewhere.  Basically, if a topic could make an interview awkward, your rule of thumb should be to discuss it first with your IT recruiters.  So don’t risk hurting your interview by asking about the perks of a job.  If they’re really that important to you, discuss them with your IT staffing companies.  They’ll be happy to look into it for you—and happy to have you focus on what’s important in your job interview.

 

Interview questions
Stop yourself before you make the mistake of asking about perks in a job interview. Photo credit: Activ-Michoko via Pixabay.

 

Asking for a Raise: What IT Contractors Need to Know

If you worked with IT staffing companies to find your current role, you might be curious about how raises work.  Especially if you’re a contractor, things will be slightly different.  Here’s more info from IT recruiting companies about how and when to ask for raise.

When to ask: It’s important to know that generally, asking for a raise before you’ve been at IT jobs for at least a year will reflect poorly on you.  Professional norms usually dictate that you wait this long for a few reasons.

  • Firstly, it’s your responsibility as a professional to take a job that pays a rate you can live with.  The time to negotiate pay is when you’re working with your IT staffing firms to find a job and accept an offer.  You should always be upfront with your technical recruiters about how much you expect to be compensated when they’re presenting job offers to you.  It’s their job (and in their best interest) to get you a rate that you can happily live with for at least a year (or the duration of a project).  As a professional, you’re expected to do the math and make sure a proposed rate will work for you for the year.  Employers will usually be surprised and upset if you come back and ask for a raise after a short time, like 3 months, 6 months, etc.
  • Another reason you usually need to wait at least a year to ask for a raise is because often budgets have already been set for the year.  So if you’re asking for more money, it’s often just not possible.  Your employer has probably budgeted a certain amount to pay you—no more, no less.  This might change during the next fiscal year, but it’s often already set in stone for the current one.  If you’re a contractor working on a particular project, the budget for this project is likely set in stone.  So again, asking for more money will be a pretty futile exercise.  Every penny has already been accounted for. Asking for a raise before the completion of the project or at least a year of work will suggest that you don’t know much about professional norms and don’t care (or think at all) about the company’s big picture.

How to ask: Put a lot of thought and preparation into this on your own before going to your IT recruiters and employer.

  • You don’t want to just say you’ve worked for your employer for a year.  Simply meeting expectations means that you’ve earned the paycheck you were originally offered, nothing more.  Build a good case for why you deserve this raise.  You want to be able to demonstrate to your employer that you don’t just meet their expectations—you exceed them.  IT staffing companies find that the most convincing cases for a raise often offer hard numbers and facts. Can you say you’ve cut your company’s server downtime by half?  Can you point to a time when you stayed late to debug code for your team so they could meet a deadline?  These are the kinds of things that you want to highlight.
  • Come up with a rough idea of an amount before you ask.  This will make your discussion easier.  Make sure your amount isn’t absurdly high (like a 40% raise), or you could damage your relationship with your employer.  When people ask for raises that are too high, they risk looking unprofessional.  Asking for a raise that’s too high may also push your bosses to seriously reconsider how valuable the employee is.  If you’re not positive about how much to ask for, your IT recruiting firms can help you with this.  They understand professional norms as well as your employer’s own unique situation.  They may be aware of any financial difficulties your employer has, past raises they’ve awarded, etc.  Their insider perspective could be invaluable in making sure you ask for a raise your boss feels good about saying yes to.

 

Asking for a raise
Want more money? You may have to wait for a bit. Photo credit: TBIT via Pixabay.

 

When Applicants Are Overqualified for Your Jobs

IT staffing companies often hear that managers are anxious about interviewing candidates that look overqualified.  Their usual instinct is to tell IT recruiting firms that they pass on these candidates.  This isn’t always the best course of action, though.  Here’s what to do if you get an overqualified applicant to your open IT jobs.

Consider interviewing them anyways.  Especially if you talk to them only for a phone screen, you don’t have much to lose (and potentially a great employee to gain).  IT recruiters find that some candidates apply to positions they’re overqualified for because of perfectly legitimate reasons.  Sometimes it’s because they’re seeking a position with better work-life balance.  Perhaps they’re now responsible for caring for an elderly parent, small child, etc.  Sometimes a candidate is more interested in a different technology that they have less experience in.  The bottom line is that sometimes a candidate who looks overqualified is actually a perfect fit.

It’s also worth noting that some employers are anxious about hiring candidates with too much experience.  They’re concerned they’ll be too set in their ways to adapt to new procedures and technologies.  When you’re using IT recruiting companies to help with the hiring process, you don’t need to worry about this.  IT recruiters are only sending over candidates who are interested in the work and the environment you can offer as an employer.  Good IT recruiters will make sure the candidate is interested in your tech stack and your company’s procedures.  They won’t send you somebody who can’t ‘play by your rules’ for many reasons.  IT recruiting agencies want to send you candidates who will succeed in your roles and be happy there.  The truth is that particularly in contract or project-based roles, extensive experience can be an asset.  Candidates like this may need less training and will be able to hit the ground running.  This can save time and money when your team is under tight deadlines.

Interview a candidate who looks overqualified by asking some extra questions.  If a candidate looks overqualified, you want to do a little more than just the usual whiteboarding session or have the usual technical discussion.  Asking what draws the candidate to the role, the company, or the project you’re hiring for, is a good start.  If the candidate’s answer doesn’t directly help you understand why they want a role they seem overqualified for, it’s time to ask more directly.  Ask the candidate if they’re comfortable with the pay scale for the role, the fact that it will be entry level, or anything else that directly addresses the fact that they’re overqualified.  The candidate should be ready to answer questions like this because their technical recruiters have likely gone over it with them.

 

overqualified job candidates
Don’t automatically pass on overqualified candidates. Photo credit: Ashlinbpg via Pixabay.

 

Getting Interview Feedback—and What to Do With It

If you’re working with IT recruiting companies to find your next role, you’re giving yourself many advantages.  They’ll help prep you, advocate for you, and negotiate salary for you.  Probably one of the advantages that’s least discussed is that IT recruiters can get you feedback when you don’t land IT jobs.  As a candidate without an IT recruiter representing them, you can try to ask for feedback.  However, it’s never guaranteed.  Most employers actually prefer not to give feedback to rejected candidates for legal reasons.  They don’t want to say something that could be misconstrued or that they may be sued for.  Plenty of companies actually just have a blanket policy to never to give feedback to rejected candidates as a protective measure.  There’s also just the issue of time.  Most employers simply don’t have the time to give feedback to all rejected candidates.  Add to these two common obstacles the fact that you don’t have much of a relationship with the employer anyways, and this makes your chances of receiving feedback pretty low.  When you do have IT staffing companies representing you, they may be able to convince an employer to share some helpful feedback.

Why is getting negative feedback an advantage?  If you can get constructive feedback, sometimes it can help you learn how to interview better.  Or perhaps it can even help you make larger changes in your career.  Some common examples of useful interview feedback are when employers tell technical recruiters a candidate didn’t land the job because they brought up politics in an interview, didn’t wear appropriate clothes, or were late.  These are certainly reasons IT staffing firms find that candidates are rejected from jobs.  They’re also very easy things to fix so candidates can make sure they do nail an interview in the future.  Sometimes a candidate didn’t brush up enough on a technology before the interview or was unprepared to take a coding test.  If their recruiter can share this, the candidate will know to study and prepare more next time.

So if you’re working with IT recruiting firms, don’t forget to ask for feedback when you’re rejected from an employer.  Keep an open mind and really consider how you might use any feedback you receive.  While nobody loves being told they did something wrong, that’s only a minor part of this process. You can choose to turn your feedback into an opportunity to become even more employable.  You also have the benefit of your recruiter’s opinion.  Good IT recruiters will be happy to take a few minutes to discuss this feedback with you and help you understand what you can do better in your next interview, how you can build a more marketable skillset, etc.  Taking this time to learn lessons from interview feedback now means a better career in the future.

 

interview feedback for tech interviews
Getting constructive feedback can make you a better interviewer. Photo credit: Tumisu via Pixabay.

 

2 Questions to Ask Candidates in Technical Interviews

Interviewing technical candidates can be challenging. You want to find a way to assess their skills without making your interview a non-stop whiteboarding session or test.  Here are two questions to ask candidates that IT recruiting companies suggest for technical interviews.  These questions help managers explore a candidate’s technical skills, personality, and experience.

What environment did you come from previously? Technical recruiters find this question can help managers get a candidate talking about a few important things.

  • Perhaps most importantly, a candidate can take this as an opportunity to talk about the technologies they’ve gotten to work with most recently.  They can use this question to help you understand the range of their technical skills (and if they’re what you need in your next hire).
  • Next, this question can lead to a discussion about the team they worked on.  Was it large? Small? Who did they report to?  Did they have anyone reporting to them? IT staffing firms find that this kind of information will help you understand how much of projects the candidate actually handled themselves, if they had to own these tasks or others checked their work and helped, if they can manage people effectively, etc.
  • Lastly, the question can give you a good gauge of the kind of corporate culture the candidate is coming from.  While technical acumen is important, the ability to fit into corporate culture is nearly as imperative. When candidates don’t mesh well with a corporate culture, IT recruiting agencies usually see that the candidate is unhappy and winds up leaving the role early or is let go.

What environment are you looking for in your next role? IT recruiting firms find that when you can get the candidate to articulate their next ideal environment, it will help you understand if they’re a good fit for your role in a more in-depth way.

  • This question will build upon the first one to help you understand not only a candidate’s strengths, but what will make the candidate happier.  And good IT staffing companies know that happier employees are always more successful in a role (and stay longer, or until the completion of a project).
  • A candidate’s answer to this question will also let you know if their needs match what you and your company can provide.  For instance, perhaps the candidate is not interested in IT jobs that report to a higher level like CIO– but your open job requires it.  You’ll be able to tell the role won’t be a good match.  Or perhaps the candidate tells you they want a more advanced tech stack in their next employer, and you can offer that.  Now you can confidently sell the job harder to the candidate.  Getting on the same page will help you make the right decision to hire, or not hire, a candidate.

 

Interview questions for technical candidates
Having a candidate articulate what they want in their next environment is immensely helpful. Photo credit: qimono via Pixabay.

 

Find IT Recruiters Who Will Get You Jobs You’re Happy With

Working with IT recruiters doesn’t guarantee you a job that will be a great fit.  Sometimes bad technical recruiters will place you in a job with a work environment you hate or with a workload you can’t handle.  Here’s how to make sure you work with IT staffing firms that will help you land a role you can succeed in and enjoy.

If an IT recruiter contacts you first, really look at their messages.  Do you they speak English well and write in a professional manner?  Are they offering a job that makes sense for your skill-set?  If the messages are confusing or suggest a role that is obviously not a fit for you, you can probably reply ‘no thanks.’

If the message does interest you and seems worth considering, look up the recruiters who contact you and the IT recruiting companies they come from. If they have bad reviews, or worse yet, no online presence, you may want to skip working with them.  Legitimate IT recruiting firms have their own website and decent reviews.  They probably also have a LinkedIn page and at least some social media presence.  In terms of reviews, you can take everything with a grain of salt.  If they have only a couple of bad reviews mixed in with a lot of good ones, they’re probably worth talking to. If IT staffing agencies have a ton of bad reviews, that’s a bad sign.  Don’t be a target for an IT recruiting scam or work with an IT staffing agency that doesn’t care what you need to succeed in a role.

If your technical recruiters seem legitimate, have an open, candid conversation with them about what you want.  They should care about more than just your technical skills and experience.  If you have scheduling needs, are looking to avoid a long commute, or need a particular kind of work environment to succeed, they should care about this.  Good IT recruiters want to place you in a job that is as compatible with your life and work style as possible.  This is because happy employees are productive, successful employees.  You can’t do your best work if the corporate culture of a company is suffocating to you or you’re exhausted from a marathon commute!

 

IT job search
Your IT recruiters should put you in a job that makes you happy. Photo credit: moonpie via Pixabay.

 

Reasons Candidates Are Late to Job Interviews

One of the worst reasons to be rejected for IT jobs is because you showed up late to the interview. After all the prepping you did, all the studying and time spent editing your portfolio, you don’t want to blow an interview just because you didn’t leave early enough.  Here are a few reasons why IT staffing companies find that people are late.

You didn’t leave enough time for security checks.  IT recruiting companies do find that candidates will sometimes have to go through security checks before interviews. These may not take long, but if you’ve planned on arriving just in time (which you probably should not) then a surprise security check will make you late.  To avoid this issue, try asking your IT recruiters before the interview if they anticipate any security checks.  If they say yes, ask for an estimate of how much time you should build in for it.  If your technical recruiters aren’t sure about this (which is unlikely) build in an extra 15 minutes for yourself.  If you’re more than 10 minutes early when you arrive, you can go take a walk, grab coffee, or simply wait in your car.

You didn’t leave enough time for traffic.  IT recruiting firms usually recommend that you leave enough time for yourself to get to your interview, even if there is severe traffic.  You never know when there may be an accident or construction on your route.   Even if you’re leaving outside of rush hours, there’s still a risk of something slowing down your trip and making you late to the interview.  Give yourself a buffer of time that’s generous enough to handle the most severe traffic and still get you to the interview 5-10 minutes early.  As mentioned before, if you arrive too early, no problem.  Simply find a way to wait so that you’re out of your interviewer’s hair.

You replied on public transportation—and it took longer than you expected.  As anybody who rides public transportation knows, there are a lot of factors that can make a trip take longer than you anticipated.  Even if you go by the estimate on a public transportation website, you may still wind up late to an interview.  Truthfully, most IT staffing companies suggest that you take a taxi, Uber, or get a ride to an interview.  It will likely be much faster and more reliable for this kind of situation (where lateness is so problematic).  If you do decide to use public transportation, give yourself a large buffer of time.  Consider practicing the trip if you can, as well.  If you can’t, make sure you’re familiar with the buses or trains you’ll be taking and buy your ticket in advance online if possible. Remember that if you need to take a few minutes to find the correct train, that could be the few minutes you’re late by!

 

Late to job interviews
Give yourself a big buffer of time if you’re taking public transportation to your job interview. Photo credit: Pexels via Pixabay.

 

 

What Makes IT Resumes Different?

If you’re looking for new IT jobs, your first step should be to update your resume for IT recruiters and employers.  As an IT professional, your resume will be a bit different from resumes in other industries.  Here are some key elements of IT resumes.

The technical skills section. This is one of the most important features of a resume for IT staffing companies.  It helps them decide quickly if you have the skills to be a possible fit for an open job.  Make sure to put this section right at the top of your resume and keep it thorough, organized, and updated. The best technical skills section is a snapshot of the technologies and skills you’ll be talking about in your employment history below.  It’s important to make sure you only add skills to this section that you are 100% confident you actually have.  Technical interviews will often quickly reveal it if you lack something you’ve mentioned in the technical skills section.  If an interviewer finds you ‘fudged it’ and included something you can’t actually back up, you won’t get the job (and your technical recruiters probably won’t want to work with you anymore, either).

You have more leeway to go beyond 1 page. IT recruiting companies find that employers in the tech field are a bit more lenient with the length of resumes.  While you don’t want to write a novel, if you have a great arsenal of technical skills and experience, it’s ok if you need a bit of extra room to elaborate.  Technical resumes have some extra sections (like the one mentioned above).Another reason you can write a longer technical resume is that hiring managers do want to see details about the projects you’ve worked on.  IT staffing agencies find that when you give better detail on the technical projects you’ve done, employers have an easier time picturing you performing the role they’re hiring for.

Contract work is more accepted and more common. Many IT professionals use contracting as a legitimate way to gain skills and exposure to new technologies.  Since technology is always changing so quickly, it can become necessary to move faster from company to company to get exposure to new technologies at a more compatible rate.  Contracting is also just a more common way for managers to hire in the tech field.  IT recruiting firms find that sometimes employers only need contractors to finish a particular project. Perhaps a company can’t afford to hire somebody with a rare skill-set permanently. Just make sure to mark when a position is contract on your resume, so people know you didn’t leave early or were fired.

 

Tech resumes different
Tech resumes have some key differences. Photo credit: 3dman_eu via Pixabay

 

Land IT Jobs You Don’t Have the Experience For (Yet)

If you’re seeking a new role in an area of the tech field you don’t have much experience in, there are ways to make you a more appealing candidate to IT recruiters anyway.  Whether you’re looking to land your first Helpdesk role, or you want to move from Desktop support to a Network Engineer role, here are 3 ways to beef up your application materials and impress technical recruiters.

1. Seek out opportunities within your current employer to get hands-on learning experience relevant to the IT jobs you want to work in.  You might be able to do this in your current company in 2 ways.  Firstly, your bosses may allow you to get some hands-on experience in a formal way (like a side project for a different department).  This is probably the most preferable.  If you do well, you can demonstrate that you met the expectations of a manager in this area.   If your company can’t help you out with any formal learning opportunities, you might still be able to informally shadow the people who hold the roles you’d like to hold one day.  While this isn’t something you can put on a resume, it will help you to better direct your own study of relevant skills and technologies.

2. Seek out opportunities outside your current employer to get relevant hands-on learning.  You can volunteer, take freelance jobs, or perhaps create your own project on your own time.  IT recruiting firms have an easier time placing somebody who can point to demonstrable experience, even if the candidate made that experience happen.  Consider offering your services for free or reduced charge to local nonprofits, checking websites with volunteer opportunities, or reaching out to people within your network to seek out hands-on learning opportunities for the skills and technologies you’re interested.  If you’re learning how to code, create your own website, etc.  Having a portfolio of examples of your work will certainly make you more marketable to IT staffing companies.

3. Consider getting a certification if there are any relevant ones.  Employers generally put a lot of trust in certifications, so these can be a great way to help IT recruiting agencies visualize you in the roles you want.  IT recruiting companies always find that that candidates with certifications can get at least a bit of  an edge over those who don’t have them.  Certifications can also be a way to gain more hands-on experience with technologies or skills.  (Some certifications actually require hands-on experience.)

 

IT Job search
Want to move into a new kind of role? Get some hands-on experience in your off-time. Photo credit: StartupStockPhotos via Pixabay.

 

Why Consider Contracting Roles?

Many IT professionals are resistant to contracting.  However, when you’re looking for new roles, IT recruiters would strongly suggest that you consider contracting roles.  Especially in the tech field, contracting can have a lot of benefits that permanent roles don’t.  Here are 3 reasons why IT staffing firms suggest you seriously consider contracting in your next role.

1. You can expand your technical skills and experience. Contracting means moving around more, but it also means getting exposed to new technologies and skills as you move.  As opposed to a permanent job that you may spend years at, contacting lets you move on to work with new software, programming languages, etc, sooner.  This translates to faster growth in your career and a resume that is more enticing to employers and IT recruiting companies.

2. You might make more money. IT staffing companies often find their contractors have a higher income when they can go on their partners’ benefits. The biggest differences between contracting and permanent roles are usually the benefits (most contracting roles don’t provide benefits).  However, this isn’t actually much of a problem for some people.  If you have a spouse or long term domestic partner, you can often get benefits through their job.  (It’s worth noting that the cost per partner may actually be cheaper this way.)  Most contracting jobs pay more money to help you buy benefits completely on your own (often expensive).  You’ll be making more money, but spending less of it on healthcare, dental etc.  Thus you’ll find yourself with a fatter paycheck.

3. You can get hired faster. IT recruiting firms find that the hiring process for contractors is often less time-consuming and stringent.  If you need to move on from your current role quickly, contracting is a better way to do this.  Perhaps you need to move to a new area of the country, your current role is at a toxic workplace, or you need to make more money soon.  Being open to contracting will help you land IT jobs much faster to solve these problems.

 

Contracting for IT jobs
Contracting can have big benefits for IT professionals. Photo credit: qimono via Pixabay.