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Tag Archives: IT recruiting firms

Are Tests Necessary in IT Job Interviews?

Sometimes your IT recruiters and IT staffing firms will tell you to prepare to take a test at your interview.  An employer may want to test your abilities with particular technologies or methodologies, even if your resume and IT staffing companies and IT recruiting firms already suggest you’re good at something.  Sometimes this can frustrate job candidates—they don’t want to have to take a test because it’s stressful or time-consuming.  However, your technical recruiters and IT recruiting agencies can tell you that there are reasons why these tests are helpful to you and the potential employer.

The main reason these tests are worth taking, is that they will likely show you whether you’d be able to succeed in a job.  You don’t want to take a job that you’ll flounder in, and neither does the interviewing company or your IT recruiting companies.  The best IT jobs for you are the ones that you already have the skills to succeed in—and a test can help determine this.

Perhaps the other main reason these tests are worth taking is that putting in the time and effort just to take the test distinguishes you as a candidate.  There are plenty of other candidates who won’t want to take the test.  This will weed them out as competition for you.  So bit the bullet and take the test—even if you don’t get 100%, you may still get the job!

 

A Quick Way to Dramatically Improve Your IT Job Interviews

Most IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies will tell you to make sure you do research on the companies that you’re interviewing with.  Your technical recruiters and IT staffing companies may even give you a bit of background information on the companies.  But having a familiarity with the company won’t impress your interviewers and win you IT jobs.  If you want to really stand out and impress your IT recruiting firms with your interview performance, you should try to find one or two things that you really like or admire about the IT companies you’re interviewing for.

The key to doing this is two-pronged.  Firstly, try to make sure you can speak about these items that you really like about the company for at least a few minutes.  If you merely state that you like that the company is doing things to be more environmentally friendly, that’s not enough.  Be able give a few examples and/or to tie this to your own career trajectory.  Secondly, it will really impress your interviewer and IT recruiting companies if you can talk about these one or two things in an authentic way.  To return to the environmentalism example, don’t mention it if you aren’t actually interested in this topic.  If you try to fake an interest, it will likely show through to your interviewer.

 

Why is Passion Important in IT Job Interviews?

Working with IT recruiters and IT staffing firms, you’re probably talking a lot about how to sell yourself to future employers.  Your IT staffing agencies and technical recruiters have probably covered the bases you already know—being on time, dressing appropriately, and practicing answering basic questions.  To give yourself an edge in winning your dream IT jobs and impressing IT recruiting companies and hiring managers, you need to find a way to show your passion for important elements of jobs.

How do you show passion in an effective way in a job interview?  To start, it has to be authentic.  If you tell your interviewer that you’re passionate about a particular programming language, it won’t mean much to them.  If you’re actually passionate about a particular programming language, you’ll be able to tell stories that demonstrate that. Beyond authenticity, it’s important to be able to keep your professionalism as you describe your passion for customer service or elegant code.  IT staffing companies have an easy time finding jobs for people who can strike that balance between being easy to work with and having passion for their work.  For instance, it might be easy to speak condescendingly to an interviewer if you think you know more about a technology than they do.  However, that will make you seem like a terrible potential employee.  Lastly, make sure you can draw the connection between what you’re passionate about and how it’s key to the job.  Sometimes this will be obvious, but sometimes you may have to draw that connection for the interviewer.  Show a little bit of relevant, well-demonstrated passion to your interviewer and you’ll really impress them and your IT recruiting firms.  You may just land the job!

 

One Easy Way to Improve Your IT Resume

Perhaps you’re trying to create a resume that attracts IT recruiters and IT staffing firms.  Or maybe you’re already working with technical recruiters and IT recruiting companies, but your resume needs a little oomph.  Here’s one tactic to make that resume more powerful and alluring for both IT staffing agencies and hiring managers alike.

Arguably the most important part of your resume, the part IT recruiting firms and interviewers spend the most time considering, is the bullets you have beneath previous IT jobs.  One of the most efficient ways to make your resume more impactful, then, is to polish these bullets.  How can you do this?

Ask yourself this question about each job: ‘What did I do to increase this employer’s revenue, make their workplace better, or make my team or boss’s workload easier?  Now go back and try to work some of these answers into your bullets for each job.  You’ll want to keep a brief reference to your main job duties, but your achievements are most important.  If you can help IT staffing companies and interviewers see what value you bring to employers in a very concrete way, you will immediately increase your chances of landing a job.

 

Delete These Things from Your IT Resume

When you’re working with IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies, they’re likely to help you edit your resume.  To really impress your technical recruiters and IT recruiting companies, you can hand them something that won’t take much editing.  Here are three things you can clean off your resume before giving it to IT staffing firms and IT recruiting agencies.

Start by deleting irrelevant personal information.  Take out hobbies that don’t pertain to the kinds of jobs your IT staffing companies will likely be submitting you to.  For instance, hobbies and interests like ‘spending time with family’ are most likely just taking up unnecessary space on your resume.

Next, if you graduated college or high school more than 5 years ago, consider taking off the year you graduated.  Unfortunately, employers may still discriminate against older job candidates.  If you take off signifiers of your age, you maybe be increasing your chances of getting a job interview later.  Age discrimination may still occur, but it’s harder to dismiss a candidate who makes a stellar impression in an interview—especially if it’s only for being older.

Lastly, make sure to delete your references and their information if you’ve listed them on your resume.  Your IT recruiting firms may want to contact those references for the hiring company.  In any case, references don’t belong on resumes, they belong on their own separate document.

Leave the Photo Off Your IT Resume

Recently, IT staffing agencies and technical recruiters have been seeing a lot of resumes with photos of candidates included.  This trend is certainly puzzling to IT recruiting companies and it doesn’t do much to impress hiring managers.  Here’s why it’s better to give IT recruiters your resume without adding in your photo.

Firstly, IT recruiting firms will usually want you to remove your photo from your resume because your LinkedIn profile will already provide a picture of you.  It’s actually best to have a LinkedIn profile in addition to your resume, since both are tools that hiring managers and IT recruiting agencies appreciate.  So don’t create unnecessary overlap between these two—leave the photo off the resume.

Secondly, IT staffing companies prefer you leave your photo off your resume because it takes up valuable space on a document that hiring managers will usually just briefly skim.  Even though most IT candidates don’t have to limit themselves to 1 page resumes, it should be noted that hiring managers still don’t spend hours poring over your resume.  It’s best to keep it as concise as possible.  This would mean that beyond simply editing your resume, take out all unnecessary elements—especially photos.

Lastly, IT staffing firms would rather you left a photo off your resume because it detracts from your actual skills and experience.  The best resumes are the ones that just honestly lay out the kind experience and skills a hiring manager wants.  If you add flashy things, like an unconventional design or a photo, that might deter a hiring manager’s attention from the true content of the resume.  In a worst case scenario, they even assume you’re trying to deter attention from a lackluster resume with flashy elements.  So leave the picture off and let your experience and skills speak for themselves!

Why You Should Be Open and Honest With Your Technical Recruiter

If you’re working with IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies for your IT job search, you’ve probably talked to them at least once on the phone or in person.  Sometimes, IT candidates are concerned about what they tell IT staffing firms and technical recruiters.  They apply the same polite, guarded etiquette you’d use with a hiring manager or interviewer.  However, it’s actually in your best interest to be as open and honest with your IT recruiting companies as possible.

Why should you be an open book with IT staffing companies and not with hiring managers? Because you want your IT recruiting firms to know everything you can relay about your ideal next IT jobs.  If you hide your preferences for particular work environments or embellish your actual certifications, skills, or experience, it will only hurt you.  You want your IT recruiting agencies to know what kind of job you can be successful and happy in.  If you hide any of this information or omit it, you’ll be preventing IT recruiting firms from getting you that kind of job.  You may even be guiding them to place you in a job that makes you unhappy, stressed, or potentially a job you even fired from.  Nobody wins in this scenario– not you, your IT recruiting companies, or the employer.  So don’t hold back.  Tell your recruiter everything that you think will help them find your dream job.

What Is Working With an IT Recruiter Like?

Why do so many IT candidates work with technical recruiters to help them find their next IT jobs?  It makes their search faster, easier, and more effective.  Good IT recruiters and IT staffing firms will work with you to make sure they understand exactly what you’re looking for in your next role.  This doesn’t just include the work, but also the kind of work environment, team, and bosses you thrive with.  If you’re honest with your IT recruiting companies and give them a full picture of the kind of jobs you really succeed in, they will present these kinds of opportunities to you.

Once IT staffing agencies find opportunities that match what you’ve described, they’ll start setting you up for interviews.  These will differ a little from job interviews you’ve done without IT recruiting agencies for a few reasons.  Firstly, your IT recruiting companies will really be the ones to handle compensation negotiations for you.  You’ll communicate with them about your preferred rates, benefits, etc, and they’ll go to bat for you.  Secondly, your IT recruiting firms may even walk you into the interview and make sure you have a good start to the experience.  This leads to the last difference.  Your IT staffing companies will be advocating for you as well.  Since they probably have a good relationship with the hiring company, their word will be trusted and add an extra oomph to your candidacy.  If all of these differences sound good to you, think about contacting an IT staffing firm like AVID Technical Resources.  You have nothing to lose.

 

Is Job Experience Important for IT Job Seekers?

If you’re a recent grad working with IT recruiters and IT staffing firms to find your next IT jobs, you’re probably wondering if it’s best to add job experience to your resume, or use up that space with information about your studies and certifications.  While both are certainly important to IT staffing agencies and hiring managers, it’s important to know what exactly is valued in the IT industry.

The truth is that while IT recruiting firms and hiring managers need you to list the relevant skills for jobs, job experience, even if it’s not particularly relevant, should still be listed.  Recent studies show that without work experience, your chances of getting a job are severely diminished. The experience is actually just as important as your degree.  This holds true even in fields like IT, where degrees in things like computer science are highly regarded by IT staffing companies and technical recruiters.  So don’t let your work experience drop off your resume—it may just be what gets you the job!

Don’t Say This in IT Job Interviews

For most interviewees for IT jobs, no matter how much you prepare with your IT staffing firms and technical recruiters, questions about your greatest weakness are still intimidating.  The most common answer that hiring managers and IT recruiting agencies tend to hear seems like a good idea: “my weakness is that I’m a perfectionist.” Don’t be tempted to actually give this answer, though!

Because it’s such a cliché answer, telling your interviewer that you’re a perfectionist will mean that you’ve totally wasted that moment in your interview.  Even if you are indeed a perfectionist, you won’t impress your interviewer or your IT recruiting firms by saying it’s your biggest weakness.  Since it’s heard so often, it’s hard for anybody to take that answer seriously.  In fact, you may be letting your IT staffing agencies down by giving such an unimpressive answer.  Your interviewer may ding you a few points for giving such a meaningless response to their question.

So what should you say?  Work on a real, honest answer with your IT recruiters. Name a skill that’s not essential to the jobs you’re interviewing for and give an action plan for how you’re addressing it.  Something like this will actually impress an interviewer, especially if your action plan is thorough.