Jobseekers

Throughout history, there have always been a lot of jobs to fill and not enough qualified candidates to fill them.  There’s also always been ferocious competition to find those with technical qualifications. Even Julius Caesar was in the business of recruiting. He promised a cash reward to any soldier who brought another to join the Roman army.  The Roman army had their own forms of equal employment opportunities, compensation, temporary staffing and best practices. Two thousand years later we’re still dealing with the same problems.

The IT recruiting industry that we are all familiar with today did not take form until the 1940’s as a result of WWII.  Temporary staffing firms began to advertise for workers to fill the void in the workplace left by those who were called into the military. After the war, recruitment agencies became popular as a response to the growing workforce with new skills that could be applied to the budding information technology field. In the 1970s, recruitment agencies shifted from working with those seeking employment to working for the company. Large corporations began outsourcing their hiring efforts to recruiting agencies during a time of wealth and expansion.

In 1986, labor laws began to alter and the line between employee and independent contractors was unclear. Congress abolished safe harbor for certain high-tech professionals, which affected the way engineers, system analysts, computer programmers and other professionals in comparable lines of employment were classified. The Revenue Act of 1978 allowed employers to appeal reclassification of an employee if the technology industry had categorized certain types of workers as independent contractors in the past. This was changed in 1986 by an amendment preventing employers from appealing reclassification if the employee had been placed by a third party IT staffing agency.

In response to the 1986 labor law, companies began reclassifying all their employees, changing their status from 10-99s to W-2s. As web and technology based businesses began to flourish in the 1990’s with the Internet boom, IT recruiting agencies began to place engineers, system analysts and computer programmers for the hundreds of new and booming companies. At the climax of the Internet explosion, the true golden age of IT recruiting agencies, companies were frantic for IT staffing solutions that would help meet the demands of the engorged economy and the never-ending supply of wealth.

Not too long after the dot com boom, came the dot com bust in 2001-2002.  Out of the smoke & ashes of this economic recession, two men ventured off on their own, risking it all, to start one of the nation’s leading IT recruiting and technical consulting firms: AVID Technical Resources. AVID is a contract and permanent information technology recruiting company specializing in placing individuals with either an applications development or infrastructure support background.  Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, the company has additional offices in Denver, TX; Chicago, IL, San Diego, CA; Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco, CA;  Des Moines, IA; Minneapolis, MN and Seattle, WA. AVID was listed as one of the Leading Search Firms in the Northeast US by Forbes Magazine and named the 7th Fastest Growing Private Company in Massachusetts by the Boston Business Journal.

Although the economic downturns have been hard on the technical recruiting industry, AVID Technical Resources has continued to grow year after year. With hard work and dedication, AVID has capitalized on the continued need for contract IT professionals to meet project deadlines and/or stay current with their business systems.

For all the improvements that have been made in applicant tracking systems, job boards, social media sites etc., we’re still no better off than Caesar was. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them. That’s why AVID’s success is the result of hard work. No other IT staffing company will work harder to fill your IT positions or find you that perfect IT job. One can expect that when the economy begins to get back on its feet, the recruiting business will be in high demand once again and AVID will be crowned the king.