Tag Archives: IT staffing firms

Tips for May and June Tech Grads

If you’re part of the class of 2017, you may be planning to push that job search off until later in the summer.  The tech field is a job seeker’s market, right?  Why not kick back and take a little break before entering the workforce? Don’t be tempted to do this.  Unfortunately, the tech field is a bit less of a job seeker’s market for entry-level grads.  IT staffing companies find that there are absolutely less open IT jobs out there for recent grads.  You also don’t want to limit your options.  If you wait until later in the summer or fall, IT recruiters will have filled plenty of the jobs with coveted employers.  Starting your job search doesn’t have to be so arduous, though.  Here are 4 simple things you can do to start searching for IT jobs now.

1. Make your resume visible to employers and technical recruiters.  Post your resume on Monster, Dice, LinkedIn, etc.  Make a public, professional LinkedIn profile.  Don’t just rely on your school’s internal job portals.  If you’re a programming student, get on Github or similar sites.  IT staffing agencies will be looking for great candidates there, too.

2. While you’re at it, reach out to IT staffing firms.  Find some trusted IT recruiting companies in your area and reach out to and pass along your resume.  Even if you’re working on your final exams, they can begin your job search for you now!

3. Do your research on the kinds of roles you prefer your salary expectations.  Make sure to take your location into consideration here.  IT recruiting firms find that sometimes new grads will price themselves out of great jobs because they don’t have realistic salary expectations.  Your IT recruiters can help you out a bit, but it’s also important for you to do your own research prior to conversations with them.

4. Get a real email address and clean up your social media.  You don’t want to keep your school email address anymore—you’re going to be a professional soon!  Get an email address that you won’t be embarrassed to share with potential employers and IT recruiting firms.   Make sure you clean out all pictures, quotes, comments etc on your social media that you wouldn’t want a future boss to see.  IT recruiting agencies definitely see candidates with terrible social media profiles miss out on roles.

 

Graduate IT jobs
Graduating in May or June? Time to get a new email address! Photo credit: vloveland via Pixabay.

 

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3 Reasons to Work for Employers Who Aren’t “Cool” or “Hip”

If you’re looking for new IT jobs, brand name, “cool” employers can seem like the only way to go.  There are certainly benefits to working for a company everybody recognizes, or one that’s cited as a hip place to work.  However, you’ll do yourself a disservice if you don’t also seriously consider employers that might be less well-known. Here are 3 reasons why it can be just as rewarding, fulfilling, and even fun for IT professionals to work for an employer that’s not necessarily “cool,” or “hip.”

The technologies.  IT recruiters find that when candidates can list what technologies they’d like to gain experience with, it doesn’t mean they need to limit their search to the most publicized companies in the tech sector.  Many smaller, lesser-known companies use equally (or sometimes more advanced) technologies.  Be open with your IT staffing firms about your career goals.  If you want to work with certain technology stacks, your technical recruiters will know which employers in your area use them.  You want to land in a job that challenges you, moves your career forward, and is interesting.  It’s entirely possible to find that at a company that’s not very ‘cool’ at all!

The perks.  The awesome perks you read about well-known, ‘hip’ employers are just as likely to be at companies you’ve never heard of.  Especially in the tech space, IT recruiting agencies find that employers are working hard to attract and keep talent in a job seeker’s market.  Plenty of them have adopted the same kind of awesome perks to do this.  Stocked kitchens full of free snacks and coffee?  Game rooms?  Relaxed dress codes?  Company outings?  You don’t need to go to a name brand company to find that.  You might find those perks in company that seem to do “boring” work.

Work-life balance.  IT staffing companies caution candidates that many name brand employers everyone wants to work for require a rigorous work schedule.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But, for some people, work-life balance is paramount.  Perhaps they have young families to take care of, older parents to help out, or some out of work interests (like adventure racing) that require a lot of time or travel.  Whatever the case, if you’re interested in a job that offers great work-life balance, your IT recruiting firms may suggest an employer you’ve never heard of!

 

Cool IT jobs
The cool employer might not always be the right employer for you. Photo credit: ColiN00B via Pixabay.

 

Want to see our open IT jobs?  Follow us on LinkedIn.  We post new jobs daily!

 

IT Professionals Should be Documenting This

Every IT professional has triumphant moments at work.  Maybe you solved a difficult ticket for the VP.  Maybe you suggested some powerful changes to your company’s technical environment.  It’s great to take a minute to bask in your achievement, but there’s something else you should be doing: documenting it for later.  Taking 5 minutes to document your achievement, in a word doc, by hand, or by simply saving relevant emails to a folder, will do a lot for you in the future.  Here’s why IT recruiters suggest you document your triumphs at work.

1. You can use this document to easily update your resume. The resumes IT staffing firms find most marketable don’t list responsibilities below IT jobs.  They list achievements and contributions.  Electronically documenting your big wins at a job can especially streamline the process of updating your resume.  All you’ll have to do is copy and paste. There are many reasons why tech professionals suddenly find themselves needing a current, polished resume.  Maybe they’ve been laid off or fired.  Or perhaps, especially in the tech field, they’ve been contacted by IT recruiting firms about a passive opportunity that’s too good to ignore.  Documenting your achievements at work makes the scramble to unexpectedly update your resume less stressful.

2. You can use this list of achievements at your next review or in your next request for a raise. Even if it seemed like a huge deal when you found that bug in the program and took the initiative to debug it by yourself, you may not remember it 6 months later.  And it’s not only hard for you to remember these moments— sometimes it’s downright impossible for your bosses to remember them.  When they’re managing a team, a department, or a whole company, your achievement might not be something they think of when you need to ask for a raise or are doing a review.  IT recruiting agencies suggest you take matters into your own hands and advocate for yourself.  Document the contributions you’ve made at work so you can share them all with your bosses when it counts!

3. Lastly, this document might serve as a great pick-me-up. Just as all tech professionals have great days, they also all have a bad day now and then.  Save a document with all your big wins at work and take a look at the next time you’re having a tough day, a crisis of confidence, or are just feeling unmotivated.  Just as you benefit from advocating for yourself, you also benefit from cheering yourself on.  True tech professionals know that you can’t always count on coworkers and bosses to do this—sometimes it’s great to be able to rely on yourself.

 

Documenting
Documenting your achievements will help you in the future. Photo credit: JaneMarySnyder via Pixabay.

Want to see our open IT jobs?  Follow us on LinkedIn.  We post new jobs daily!

What To Do in Interviews if You Don’t Know a Technology

IT recruiters find that sometimes employers change the requirements of IT jobs even as they’re conducting interviews.  Sometimes a candidate will be asked about a technology they’ve never had exposure to or aren’t very confident in.  If this happens to you, here are a few tips from technical recruiters.

1. Don’t lie. Never, lie about having familiarity or experience with a technology.  This will always hurt you.  If you wind up hired for a job you can’t do, ultimately you’ll be fired. If your lie is exposed, either because you can’t answer further questions about the technology or some other way, you’ll lose all credibility with this employer and IT recruiting firms.  Once IT staffing agencies or employers find out you’ve lied about something, you’re often blacklisted.  Worse, sometimes they’ll tell others in the industry about your actions.  That means you might ruin your reputations with others, too.

2. Stay calm and present the fact that you don’t know something in a neutral way. It’s ok not to have exposure or expertise with every programming language or web platform.  Things are changing constantly.  New technologies are released frequently and companies often implement new technologies to keep up with industry trends.  If you don’t have exposure, experience, or expertise in a technology, it’s fine. IT staffing firms find that if you present this as no big deal, your interviewer is likely to see it the same way.

3. Mention technologies you are familiar with, especially ones you think would help you learn the one(s) you don’t know. Employers hire candidates all the time who don’t have the exact skill-set they initially started for searching for.  You might be a good fit for the job, even if you need to spend some time studying a new programming language or development method before you start.

 

IT job search
Don’t have exposure to the technology your interviewer is asking about? Don’t panic. Photo credit: TeroVesalainen via Pixabay

 

2 Mistakes Not to Make with Your References

Good references are imperative to landing new IT jobs.  Here are two mistakes that IT recruiters see candidates make far too often.

Don’t give references that you haven’t spoken to recently.  When technical recruiters and potential employers call your references, you want them to be prepared to take the call.  Reach out to your references when you start you job hunt.  Ask them if they would vouch for you (or vouch for you again if they have before).  You’ll want to share all of the kinds of roles you’re interested in pursuing.  While this is a courtesy to your references, it will also make you look like you’re organized, prepared for the job search, and you understand professional norms.  Employers will know you didn’t follow the usual procedure most other candidates do if your references answer the phone and are confused—or worse yet, don’t remember you.  (It’s also worth noting that you want to look at least somewhat memorable to potential employers!  Who wants to hire the candidate who didn’t even make a dent on their reference’s radars?!)

Not reaching out to your references is also a mistake because it’s a missed opportunity to help them  give you a really powerful recommendation.  Your references will do a better job if you share the kinds of experience or qualities you’d like them to highlight when they speak to your  IT staffing firms and potential employers.  Are you applying for jobs requiring customer service skills?  Ask your references to mention it if they have a positive impression of your customer service skills.  Need them to highlight your debugging abilities?  Let them know before any IT recruiting agencies call.  You can’t control what a reference says, but you can provide them the info to be as helpful to you as possible.

Don’t give a misleading or fake reference.  Sometimes IT recruiting firms find that candidates will give references who they haven’t actually ever work directly with.  Some candidates will go so far as to give the names and numbers of people who know them and pose as former coworkers or managers.  Giving deceitful or blatantly fake references is the worst mistake you could make as a candidate.  IT staffing companies usually decide never to work with a candidate again if they do this.  Employers will usually blacklist you.  Being anything less than truthful in your job search will definitely hurt you chances of landing your next role.

 

Job search references
Haven’t talked to your references recently? Fix that before your job search! Photo credit: bssmadeit via Pixabay.

 

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.

 

Employee Appreciation Day in the Tech Field

Today is Employee Appreciation Day.  While this may seem like a silly internet holiday, the message is pretty important for most tech employers.  IT staffing agencies find that many candidates are often poached as passive candidates.  Since it’s such a strong job seeker’s market for IT professionals, making sure employees feel appreciated on a regular basis is imperative.  IT recruiters find that this isn’t just about great salaries and the stereotypical perks for IT jobs (free lunch, etc).  Here are some of two ways IT staffing firms suggest you make your employees feel appreciated – today and every day- to increase retention.

Offer flexible hours and telecommuting options.  Studies have often shown that the more control employees feel like they have over their days, the more they love their jobs.  Offering flexible schedules or the ability to work from home will go a long way with employees.  This is particularly true in tech.  IT recruiting firms find that since the work most IT professionals do can be done remotely and often requires concentration and solitude, remote working options are particularly attractive to tech employees.

Offer chances to work new and exciting technologies.  Technical recruiters find that employees in tech are often motivated to make a move if they can’t work with technologies that will further their career and/or interest them.  Making a concerted effort to give your employees the opportunity to work with the technologies that interest them will help them feel appreciated.  Ironically, employees are often more loyal to employers that help support their careers in the long term.

Use more popular development methodologies.  When tech employees work within a development methodology they don’t like, it can make their jobs miserable.  Using a popular development methodology like Scrum can be another way to help show your employees how much you appreciate them.

 

IT candidate retention
Showing your tech employees appreciation is about more than perks. Photo credit: herblady28 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.