Tag Archives: IT recruiting firms

Not Optional: Bring Your Own Questions to IT interviews

IT staffing firms often prepare IT consultants to answer tough, detailed questions that you’d only encounter in the information technology field. Technical recruiters Boston should be equally focused on making sure that IT contractors interviewing for IT jobs are able to ask their own questions.  IT recruiting companies need their job candidates to answer questions for a few different reasons.  The first is to give the impression that IT professionals have their own, independent thought process. Critical thinking is an imperative skill that can be put on resumes, but IT staffing companies are much better served when a job candidate verbally demonstrates critical thinking abilities.  Secondly, IT recruiting agencies need job candidates to ask questions so they can indicate that a true engagement and interest in the job.  Not asking questions could easily translate to a disinterest in a job or company, leaving job candidates and their IT recruiting firms left out of the running to fill a position.

What are the best kinds of questions for IT staffing agencies to prepare their job candidates to ask?  Questions could be about the culture of a company, what a typical day looks like for the person who will fill the position in question, or why the position has become available.  IT headhunters can also encourage their candidates to inquire about management styles, how much or little team-work is required, and what kind of person they have worked best with previously. One major area to stay away from, however, is compensation.  IT recruiters add an extra layer of complication to the mix and IT job candidates generally makes an interviewer uncomfortable when they bring up compensation before an offer is made.

Education is Working Now to Change the IT Market of the Future

IT recruiting firms are well-aware of the disparity between the IT jobs available in the US and the number of people who actually study and graduate with the right training to be IT professionals. Everyone knows Math and Science need some heavy promotion among students, but few know it on the kind of practical level that IT staffing firms do.  Every time technical recruiters attempt to fill IT jobs and see how few US citizens’ resumes meet the requirements, they see firsthand the way US schools have not promoted Math and Science.  Enter Code.org.

Code.org may very well change the pool of IT contractors that IT recruiting companies choose from.  With its exciting, celebrity-laden video and solid, well-researched missing, code.org may bring computer coding to more of today’s students, propelling them into the hands of IT staffing firms of the future.  Of course, Code.org is not the only proponent of increasing US proficiency in skills viable for the information technology field.  Obama is an outspoken champion of Math and Science in schools and brings many other voices with him in his rallying cry.  Though it might take some time for all this advocacy to actually bear any fruit, IT staffing agencies will almost certainly see more US IT consultants and they can work with in the future.

Is Cutting Telecommuting in the IT Field A Blow to Women and Families?

Yahoo’s recent anti-telecommuting decision has thrown the practice into the spotlight, but IT recruiters have been debating its merits for years.  IT staffing firms are often given IT jobs to fill that provide options for IT consultants to telecommute.  The benefits are numerous for IT staffing companies, IT contractors, and companies.  Costs are saved for companies when they don’t have to supply water, heat/electricity, food, and other expenses to their employees.  Additionally, if many studies are to be believed, the productivity of workers is higher when they are allowed to telecommute.  IT recruiting firms also encounter arguments counter to telecommuting including that productivity does not go up, collaboration and creativity or work product suffer, and IT managers feel a general lack of control.

While most of the perceived benefits and detractors of telecommuting are obvious (particularly in the information technology field), a more subtle element in the debate is how feminist or family friendly the practice is. Especially with Mayer’s recent policy change at Yahoo, how telecommuting affects men and women with child-rearing needs becomes a prominent part of the debate.  IT recruiting agencies have often marketed IT jobs with flexible hours and telecommuting policies to women and men with family obligations.  IT professionals with families often appreciate the chance to telecommute so they are able to spend more time at home.  When telecommuting is cut, it can be seen as a blow to families and women (who tend to elect to work in flexible arrangements for child-rearing purposes more often than men).  When Mayer, a prominent woman in a male-dominated field who just recently had a child of her own cuts telecommuting, the move becomes a very complex discussion of how technical recruiters and their clients are or are not doing enough for women and families.

Americans Aren’t Convenient to Overlook in IT Field

Recently the news has noted quite a bit of American opposition to the H-1B reforms, especially in the information technology industry.  IT contractors have been alleging that technical recruiters already have a track record of favoring alien workers over American workers to fill IT jobs (even when they should not be).   IT staffing firms, they say, will only overlook American IT consultants more as H-1B reforms take place.

While the issue is obviously very complicated, IT recruiting firms obviously do not intend to overlook all American candidates, and very often are presented with a dearth of them.  IT headhunters follow the laws regarding H-1Bs and puts as much energy as possible into finding American workers because it’s in America’s interest and in IT recruiting agencies’ best interest to do so in terms of business.  IT staffing agencies can save a significant amount of time and money if they do not focus their efforts on IT contractors who require sponsorship. The hours, energy, and fees  IT recruiting companies might have to spend with immigration attorneys, clients, and job candidates are certainly not desirable when IT staffing Boston can find American workers who don’t require any of that. IT jobs, like the rest of the field, tend open and fill quickly, so time is of the essence to IT staffing companies.  All across the country, IT recruiters Boston to IT recruiters CA know that an American candidate is much easier to place in an IT job.

One Man’s Hacker is Another Man’s IT Professional

IT recruiting firms, like the rest of the world, might increasingly find themselves forced to reconsider their stances on hacking.  IT staffing companies have already been dealing with IT contractors and consultants who may openly or covertly already hack in order to sharpen their own skills and value as potential hires.  As a Bloomberg writer mused back in July, perhaps hacking behind closed doors is perfectly harmless in many instances.  Technical recruiters may often be working with IT consultants who have hacked their own iphones, etc and subsequently learned some valuable development, support, or other skills relating to the device.

Of course, hacking can have more victims than one’s own iphone.   IT recruiting agencies are also finding themselves filling IT jobs that defend against hacking for large amounts of personal information or even information that affects national security.  IT staffing agencies may also knowingly or unknowingly be filling IT jobs that focus on hacking in self defense.  As more and more large companies like Burger King become vulnerable, techniques like placing false information become acceptable to IT staffing firms and the companies they represent.  IT recruiting companies, with the rest of the world, are witnessing the rules change at the speed of the Internet.  What was punishable by law one day may become resume staples for IT contractors and IT recruiters.

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.

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.

H-1B’s Might Drive Change for IT Recruiting Companies

It might be January, but today feels more like Christmas Eve to the information technology industry.  As a bipartisan group of senators are set to present a bill that will increase the H-1B cap (and increase it again, depending on the demands of the market), IT recruiting firms, IT managers and IT contractors are waiting with baited breath.  IT jobs are very often sought-out by immigrants in need of H-1B’s and IT recruiters Boston and IT recruiters CA will likely be affected with the rest of the technology market if the bill is passed.

In addition to a general strengthening of the industry, IT headhunters are likely to see a surge in foreign applicants’ resumes for technical jobs if the bill is passed.  Previously, technical recruiters and IT consultants alike tended to count on the number of H-1B’s evaporating quickly.  This bill may change the game for IT recruiters San Diego as IT jobs become more open to immigrants and as companies reap the more indirect benefits of the bill.  Even if the bill does not pass, it marks considerable progress toward a bill like it passing one day in the future.  Whatever the result, IT staffing firms are sure to remember this day for a long time.