Tag Archives: IT recruiting firms

Identifying Top IT Talent

There’s an old saying that the best candidates are typically working and that that has never been more true than it is today in the world of Information Technology.  With all of the gloom and doom that we are constantly being fed by the media about the economy, someone outside of the IT staffing industry would be forgiven for thinking that there would be an abundance of high tech candidates competing over a few IT job openings.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  For that last few years as the economy as continued to falter, the demand for IT resources has increased at a rate that IT staffing companies and IT recruiting firms have struggled to keep pace with.  While you won’t find most technical staffing firms and technical recruiting companies complaining about being one of the few positive growth areas throughout the recession, it has provided the unexpected challenge of finding, then retaining, IT candidates for their clients.

While most IT staffing firms and IT recruiting agencies will still use the traditional methods of searching for candidates such as the job boards and their proprietary database, the lack of quality information technology talent has forced many of the successful companies to go back to their roots and harvest candidates like they had to in the pre-internet days by doing a better job with networking, asking for referrals, and mining passive candidates.  While some IT recruiters find some of these “old school” activities to be outside of their comfort zones, those IT recruiters Boston that have embraced these method have found themselves becoming increasingly successful.  Gone are the days where a recruiter could be successful with a Monster password alone, today’s technical recruiters have to be much more aggressive and proactive and truly think outside of the box.

Great candidates are out there, and they are likely working, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be found or that they don’t want to be found.  The difference is how we have to search.

All IT Staffing Companies Are Not Created Equal

If you’re an information technology professional, you know that there are a countless number of IT recruiting firms to choose from when you’re in need help of your next assignment.  Therefore, when searching for the best technical recruiting agency to partner with, consider some of the following as not all IT staffing companies are created equal:

1)  How long has the IT recruiting firm been in business?
– Was the company created after the recent economic recession or did they make it through the downturn?   Unfortunately, or fortunately, recessions typically weed out the weaker technical staffing companies and only the strong survive.

2)  How many IT recruiters and/or IT staffing offices does the company have?
– This would be a good indication of the size of the IT staffing agency, and potentially the attention that you’ll receive.

3)  Google the IT staffing firms and find out what clients and prospective IT job seekers have written about them.  In the information technology age, there are a number of ways to get feedback.

4)  Do the IT staffing comanies have a vertical industry niche that matches your background or a strong footprint with local companies that you’re interested in working for?

IT Recruiters Should Prep Candidates For Counter Offers

Counter offers can be heartbreaking for IT recruiters.  After putting in countless hours into their IT search, meeting with prospective candidates, coordinating IT job interviews and helping streamline a new hire, having a candidate back out of a placement due to a counter offer can be very deflating.   To help ensure prospective candidates don’t blindside your technical recruiters, we suggest IT recruiting companies do the following:

1)  Provide training:  Teach your IT recruiters Boston how to properly roll out an offer.  Create a checklist that technical recruiters need ask a candidate when attempting to get their committment for a new IT job opportunity.

2) Be thorough:  When going through a “lock down” checklist, be as thorough as possible.  If they’re working, find out what their motivation is to leave?  Is it the commute?  People they work with?  Opportunity?  Financial stability of the company?  If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then even after a strong counter offer, the candidate’s situation will likely not change.

3)  Prep your candidates:  Every time IT headhunters roll out an offer to a candidate who is currently employed, be sure to prep them for a counter offer from their current client.

4)  Ask hypothetical questions:  IT recruiting agencies should make sure their technical recruiters ask hypothetical questions when preparing their candidates for counter IT job offers.  Examples of some hypothetical questions would be:  “What would you do if your company countered?”  “Is there anything your current company could do to keep you if you gave your notice?”  “Is there any financial number that would keep you from leaving?”

While prepping candidates for counter offers won’t guarantee the IT job seeker won’t turn down your opportunity after the fact, it certainly does help minimize the risk for technical recruiting companies.

IT Staffing Agencies vs Human Resources

For IT recruiting companies, human resources is a department that often sparks feuds and a source of friction.  However, in some cases, HR is actually a critical ally for IT staffing firms and various independent technical recruiters.  Here are two scenarious that provide positive and negative repercussions when HR and IT staffing companies collide:

Positive:  In many companies, all contract and permanent IT hiring is channeled through human resources.  Therefore, from the perspective of IT recruiting firms, getting to know the key HR figures is a key component to success for technical staffing agencies.  Furthermore, instead of getting to know every line manager, from the Help Desk to Applications Development, IT recruiters can focus their effort on building relationships with just a handful of key personnel in the Human Resources department to secure all open IT jobs.

Negative:  Some HR departments look at IT recruiting agencies as competition and fear their job may be on the line if they outsource too many high-tech positions to technical recruiting companies.  Therefore, it’s

Additionally, some HR departments are in an internal power struggle with the various IT managers and staff to get everything centralized.  Therefore, when IT staffing agencies circumvent HR and get information technology needs directly from hiring managers, this undermines everything they’re trying to do from a process persective.

Therefore, while HR and technical recruiters can work well with one another, and ultimately need one another, there can be friction in many situations.  IT recruiters Boston never know until they contact each new client as every company is different.

Can Facebook Help Your IT Job Search?

Everyone’s favorite social networking site, Facebook, plans to launch its own job board later this summer. The board will aggregate IT job postings from third-party sites and make them searchable to Facebook users. Considering the massive reach of the site, 955 million monthly active users, of which more than half are daily users, 552 million, the idea may seem like a dream for all IT recruiters, IT job seekers, employers or IT recruiting companies. Two debates are raised however on the effectiveness and appropriateness of Facebook as a professional IT job seeking and technical recruiting tool.

One fundamental question for Facebook’s potential new job board is how to publish open positions to its multitude of users. The site exists to promote social networking and while it may be one aspect of this, IT job searching is not the main reason people visit Facebook. If IT jobs were to solely take the form of ads on the side of the page, they could likely be ignored as most other ads on Facebook are. Another proposed idea is to include job postings directly in newsfeeds, using information in a user’s profile and timeline activity to match particular interests or skills. Considering the way we use Facebook, newsfeed job postings may be annoying and overlooked. Maybe Facebook should call up one of Boston’s top IT staffing firms and have our web designers and programmers create the solution.

As AVID IT recruiters Boston can tell you, matching the perfect candidates with our IT job openings is tough work. Considering my own carefully maintained Facebook profile and those of my many friends, it seems the information published by Facebook users may not provide the best source for matching technical jobs. Facebook profiles most often do not include extensive information about one’s professional experience, interests, or skills. Listing a workplace or position is not even a profile requirement.  Take a look at Facebook’s professionally minded step-sister, LinkedIn, on the other hand. LinkedIn by design is a means to display your information technology career information in detail and invite employers and IT recruiters MA to view it and reach out. A Facebook profile showcases very different aspects of one’s life – 1000s of pictures from college and your recent family trip, life updates and that great song you just listened to, rather than your project details at work.

There’s always the risk too of showcasing the wrong personal life details with the wrong professional contacts. People have failed interviews and lost jobs for precisely this reason. If Facebook users were to alter their profiles to make them more professional in nature and appealing to IT recruiting firms, by deleting those photos of you and your college roommates at the bar in matching pumpkin Halloween costumes (guilty) and adding complete professional resume details (boring) wouldn’t we lose the appeal and charm of our most beloved and addicting work distraction (just kidding, boss)?

LinkedIn was built as a professional networking site, allowing users to make connections with people they are not necessarily friends with, or may not even know personally, but who may provide insight into a desired career. We understand Facebook as a place for friends to connect and share socially with each other (even those 200 “friends” you’ve barely, or never, met but you still convince yourself it’s not creepy to look through every picture from their last trip to the beach.) While all IT job seekers should be using LinkedIn to connect with other IT professionals who offer networking opportunities and career advice, do you really want to “friend” your IT recruiter on Facebook?

Selecting the Right IT Recruiting Firm for You

Finding the right IT staffing company can be difficult….especially in an area like Boston where there are so many IT recruiting firms to choose from.  To help you find the right technical recruiting company that is right for you, and ultimate an IT recruiter who you can build a relationship with, try the following approach:

1)  Cast a wide net:  Do a Google search for IT recruiting companies.  Consider doing a more targeted search if there is a geographic location you’re looking at such as IT recruiting companies Boston.

2)  Look for reviews of each technical staffing firm, then narrow your list down to 8-10 IT recruiting agencies that have the best feedback.

3)  Review the websites of the list of IT staffing firms on your short list and narrow it down to your top 3-5 IT recruiting firms.

4)  Contact each IT recruiting company and speak with one of their technical recruiters.  If you feel comfortable with the person, set up a time to meet in person.

Building a relationship with an IT recruiter is one of the most important components to a successful IT job search.  This will ensure he or she calls you first the minute the appropriate technical jobs opens up.

Coping with Competitive Atmospheres in the Technical Industry

Technical candidates have a range of company atmospheres that best match their personal comfort levels. Some IT pros prefer finance environments, which tend to be fast-paced & high-stress, while others find working at a nonprofit or educational institution more their preference. Regardless of what point on the scale of competition a company lies on, however, what most companies will have in common is some range of competition – between coworkers, between competitors, or simply as a team effort to achieve company goals. How technical candidates cope with stress will determine whether it drives them forward or holds them back. Technical recruiters, who are familar with coping techniques for stress because the nature of their jobs is high on competition, deadlines & unexpected turns of events, are in an ideal position to advise technical candidates entering a potentially stressful work environment on best managing within the atmosphere.

Technical Career Development

Technical candidates can make use of a variety of tools as they seek to map map out a path to career advancement. Technical professional development can happen through membership in a technical organization, through networking with other technical professionals, or through mentorship. Technical recruiting companies can provide key tools to technical candidates to facilitate their potential for success. Among the interview prep services an IT staffing firm can provide to boost a talented technical candidate’s chances of interview success is interviewing role play. Especially for technical positions that involve a phone screen & face-to-face interview stage, a technical recruiter willing to guide a technical candidate through a practice run of each type of interview will have a much higher chance of placing a solid candidate than IT recruiter who preps a technical candidate minimally.

When IT recruiters coach technical candidates for interviews, they should be sure to cover several main topics. Environment is key subject for a technical recruiter to go in-depth on, as a candidate who is technically proficient, but not a culture fit won’t pass final interviewing rounds. Another often overlooked, but significant factor to familiarize a technical candidate with is the company’s organizational structure, and more importantly, the hierarchy structure of the specific company group the technical candidate would be working with. Sample interview questions will also help a technical candidate to formulate answers that are concise & consistent – crucial for a good interviewing “story”. Reviewing common questions such as inquiries about long-term goals will help a candidate respond effortlessly when the real deal comes around. Finally, a little positive encouragement never hurt anyone’s interviewing chances! Letting a candidate know they’re a natural fit for the role (if it’s your genuine opinion) & that they’re in a great position to perform to win during the interview will be a plus for a technical candidate & IT recruiters’ chances of a successful placement.

Leading in Technical Engineering

Technical recruiters who want to best understand how to identify top candidates for technical engineering positions should have a good understanding of the role of a technical engineering leader. The ability to recognize leadership traits & categorize leadership ability or potential separately from other good professional qualities will make recruiting for management-level technical engineering roles easier. Directors in technical recruiting understand that there are technical, functional & interpersonal aspects of technical leadership. A technical engineer in a leadership function needs to have a range of skill-sets that a technical professional in non-management levels of the same role may not have, or need — at least until he or she advances into a leadership role!

The important skills – what should IT recruiters know about the skills a technical engineer should have when coaching a technical canditate seeking to enter a leadership role for the first time? A technical engineer expecting to enter a management role should be prepared to collaborate with product management to define a product roadmap, hiring motivated employees, interfacing regularly with senior management, and adressing budgeting concerns. Management in IT is different from non-management technical positions, so technical recruiters and technical candidates who understand what’s involved to make the leap will be best positioned to reap the benefits of the preparation.

Sourcing: Finding Premier Technical Talent

The challenge IT recruiting companies face when trying to find top technical talent for advance IT roles is to know where to find them. Technical candidates operating at high technology & income levels may not post their resumes in high-traffic job-seeking sites like Monster or Careerbuilder. These technically advanced candidates may have Linkedin profiles, however. Unfortunately, it’s generally calculated that only 50% of the professional population has created an online profile. While it means a lot of technical professionals do have searchable profiles, it also means that 50% of the professional population doesn’t have any presence on Linkedin, and can’t be reached through the career-focused social networking site. As IT recruiters know, even when staff at a technical recruiting firm do identify a promising resume on Linkedin, the trick is to identify whether or not they are seeking new employment.

With Linkedin’s increased popularity, competitor career networking sites have sprung up across the web. Finding these sites through search terms typed into a search engine can generate potential leads for IT staffers. Technical recruiters who join these types of sites and actively peruse profiles & contact eligible candidates may find this method of finding high-quality technical candidates useful. Staying ahead of the competition in IT recruiting means thinking outside the box, and taking advantage of tools other technical recuiters may not be aware of. Thinking in the margin will get IT recruiters ahead, and that’s an opportunity no technical recruiting firm can afford to forfeit.