Tag Archives: resumes

Pull Your Head Out of the Sand and Get in the Social Media Game

Information technology, more than in any other field, is not the place to lack presence on social media.  Whether you are IT professionals or a company with plenty of IT jobs, it’s imperative to make sure you put forth an image of yourself on social media.

IT recruiting companies, IT consultants, and IT managers cannot afford to leave their presence on social media to be defined by others.  By not creating your own profile, you are giving up the right to respond to criticism, harness praise, and present your own marketability to IT recruiting firms. IT recruiters CA to IT recruiters Boston use social media and the likelihood that somebody has already said something about you is high.  It’s important to create an online presence that clearly and concisely defines you as IT contractors or your company for IT staffing agencies.  Profiles are not resumes alone, though.  They also list praise from others and competently and cool engage any criticism.  The beauty of social media is that it lets you speak for yourself and add in relevant and flattering voices from others, thus creating the best possible profile for technical recruiters to see.

 

To Be (a College Student) or Not to Be (in IT)?

Information technology became an early adopter of a debate that is now interesting to far more than IT professionals: Is College necessary at all?

IT recruiters nationwide, from IT recruiters CA to IT recruiters Boston have plenty of successful examples of successful people who didn’t graduate college, including Mark Zuckerberg.  IT headhunters can vouch for the fact that plenty of IT jobs can and are done without BA’s or BS’s. IT managers are sometimes request that IT recruiting agencies find them IT consultants with more relevant experience on their resumes, rather than degrees. However, IT recruiting agencies would have a difficult time suggesting everyone forgo college.  In a tough economy full of picky companies, IT staffing firms would be hard-pressed to suggest a college degree hindered IT contractors from success.

What College Grads Should Do As They Enter IT

With recent graduates getting ready to step into the information technology field, IT recruiters can be a great source of advice for how to be the best IT contractors they can be.  IT recruiting agencies would prefer to work with IT professionals who embrace the professional, 9-5 life.  This means IT headhunters look for people who don’t try to live the college life while attempting to perform well at their IT jobs.  IT managers want employees that are well-rested and take care of themselves so they have the energy to put their job performance first Monday through Friday.

IT staffing companies also want to work with IT consultants who are ready to work them—and many other people.  Recent college graduates are used to the luxury of choosing their company all the time.  IT recruiting companies need job candidates who are flexible and willing to spend time and work with people (including IT staffing firms) they don’t always have a lot in common with.

While there are plenty of other pieces of advice that could be given, all of it comes down to this: IT recruiting firms want IT job candidates who are not just nice resumes.  They want people who are ready and willing to commit themselves to their jobs and companies.  This means letting go of the college lifestyle—at least Monday through Friday.

Failing in IT? It’s Ok!

IT recruiters CA to IT recruiters Boston tend to subscribe to the conventional wisdom about failure: avoid it.  But technical recruiters and IT professionals should seriously re-think their concept of failure.

As the founder of Linked In, Reid Hoffman, is now advocating in his new book, failure is merely an opportunity to learn in your career.  Hoffman suggests IT recruiters and IT consultants consider taking more risks in their careers and become more comfortable with the result when things don’t always work out.  The lessons IT staffing agencies or IT contractors can learn from risks and failures far outweigh the other consequences—even if it’s a firing.  The information technology industry is an especially hospitable field to fail in.  With resumes full of contracting stints and innovative projects that sometimes do and don’t work, taking risks looks downright de riguer.  Perhaps one of the most interesting reasons why Hoffman advocates a healthy acceptance of risk and failure is the way he views career paths overall: They are full of uncertainty, which is a good thing.  IT headhunters or IT mangers never know what great surprise is around the bend.

 

Small and Effective Ways To Distinguish Yourself in IT

IT professionals, IT recruiters, and IT managers can all do a lot to positively impact their office and people’s impressions of them in the information technology world.  Sometimes these things are big, like projects you list on resumes.  Sometimes, however, small, simple acts can leave the biggest impression on IT contractors or IT headhunters.

The first kind of act is verbal.  If IT recruiting agencies or IT consultants find a moment to pay an unexpected compliment, praise somebody’s potential, or recognize when somebody takes a risk, they will create a lasting impression in IT jobs, IT job interviews, or anywhere else.  Verbalizing recognition for the things people deserve, but don’t always get recognition for really makes you stand out to IT staffing agencies. The second kind of act that makes a large impact on IT recruiting companies is more kinetic.  Doing something extra, just because you can, is always a shocking and powerful gesture to IT headhunters.  Consider going the extra mile without being asked.  Your efforts won’t be wasted—somebody will always meet you there later and praise you for it.

Cyclical Happiness in IT

Information technology is certainly stands apart from most fields in most ways.  However, there is one commonality that it tends to share with other professional fields: its happiest employees are generally its most valuable.  Happy IT consultants are not just pleasant to work with, they also get a lot more work done for IT managers and reflect well on their IT staffing companies.  While studies are somewhat inconclusive, they tend to suggest what we already know: happy IT contractors want to not only meet the expectations of their IT jobs, but exceed them.

IT recruiting companies know they can make a decent match when they find among stacks of resumes the IT professionals who can do the requirements of a job.  When IT recruiting agencies place a candidate in a job they truly love, though, they have made a truly spectacular match.  Technical recruiters can generally count of a candidate who loves their job to want to really prove their worth to a company.  People who love their jobs tend to be easier to manage and attempt to expand and grow in their roles.  And of course, the more somebody does to please their manger and IT staffing firms, the more a company will do to keep that employee happy.  This is the best kind of cycle IT headhunters can hope to implement in an office: a cycle of happiness and productivity.

 

IT’s new Silicon Valley: Berlin

IT recruiters Boston and IT recruiters CA are used to hearing about start-ups from Israel, Silicon Valley, and most recently, Russia.  However, IT recruiting firms and IT contractors will soon be hearing a lot about start-ups from Berlin.

The information technology field has already seen a slow rise in German start-ups for a few reasons.   IT headhunters will be seeing more successful companies and IT jobs coming out of Berlin because like Russia, the city offers a cheap cost of living.  Office space and amenities for company employees keep overhead very low for IT managers at start-ups in Berlin. Like Russia, Berlin is still recovering from an unsuccessful attempt at Communism and like Russia, Berlin is now a hotbed of potential for IT professionals looking to take entrepreneurial risks.  IT recruiting companies should seriously consider brushing up on their German—it might be a necessary skill on the resumes they look at in the future.

Education Strives to Keep Up with IT

In a struggle to keep up with the constantly changing demands of the information technology field, universities are creating new educational programs to create IT professionals ready to participate in the hottest areas, such as Big Data.  IT recruiters will able to select from pools of IT contractors with new degrees in very current areas, like Big Data or social media-oriented marketing programs.

IT staffing agencies will no longer stretch to reconcile resumes with IT jobs that require very specific and very new skills. Cornell is creating, aided by a grant from NY, a school specifically geared towards the skills needed to develop start-ups.  These graduates may well be the CEOs and IT managers that IT staffing companies help to develop teams for.  IT headhunters may also be contacting graduates of Columbia, the University of San Francisco, or many other universities, where programs are being developed specifically to graduate big data specialists.  Whichever new hot area IT recruiting companies are especially interested, they will soon have a specified pool of IT consultants to choose from.

IT Raises its Presence in a Surprising Arena

IT recruiting firms, IT managers, and IT consultants are all still discussing a surprising topic: national policy.  IT staffing agencies and other IT professionals, even those as influential as Mark Zuckerberg, began a heated conversation about H-1B workers several months ago as the nation considered significantly increasing the number of H-1B visas allowed per year.

The debate over how often IT recruiting companies submit foreign resumes versus American resumes for IT contractors has been a problem for years.  IT staffing firms have suggested, with much contesting from American workers, that there simply are too few US candidates for the IT jobs they fill. The new serious moves towards allowing more H-1B’s has simply fanned the flames of a fire that the information technology industry has quietly been burning. The final result of the actual debate may not even interest the rest of the nation outside the IT sector.  What might be the most lasting impact may simply be the entrance of loud, passionate voices from technical recruiters in the midst of political conversation.

Building a Positive IT Team

The best companies to work for are the ones where “service with a smile” isn’t just a façade for customers or clients, it’s natural.  This is especially true of companies in information technology because it so often ends up being more of a “back of the house” industry where grumpy IT consultants could easily hide behind a computer screen.  IT recruiters and IT managers can focus on particular qualities when finding IT contractors to fill IT jobs and create great culture in a company.

IT recruiters firstly need to look for optimistic and enthusiastic candidates.  The importance of hiring people who are naturally “glass half full” types is imperative.  This is not a “fluff” topic that should come second to resumes.  Secondly, IT staffing companies should identify candidates who carry two personality traits: kindness and service.  Both of these traits are at the core of what makes a good team player.  It’s easy for IT professionals to call themselves “team players,” but it’s harder to fake having these character traits.  Lastly, IT staffing agencies should attempt to find candidates they think will be likely to polish and improve a company’s image with every interaction they have with clients and business contacts.  By choosing candidates with these personality characteristics, IT recruiting firms are not only building a strong IT team, but also a healthy one that will retain its members.