Applications & Development IT Staffing Services

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.

 

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.

 

Good Signs in a Job Interview

Candidates often try to analyze interviews for good or bad signs. This is a pretty natural thing to do, especially if you’re interested in the IT jobs you’ve interviewed for. While there are some things that might indicate that your interviewer liked you, you can never assume you got the job based on any particular signs. Unless your technical recruiters call you with a job offer, there are no ‘signs’ that will definitively indicate that you landed the job.

Taking that into account, there are signs an interview went well. This is worth knowing whether you landed the job or not. If you know you did well in an interview, you can continue performing well in other interviews. Here are three things that IT staffing companies find usually indicate a job interview went well (though not that you definitely landed the job).

1. Your interviewer discusses next steps with you in a non-generic way. This means hearing more than the usual ‘we’ll be in touch with your IT recruiter soon’. While interviewers will often discuss the nitty gritty of the process with your IT recruiting firms, they may share their timeline so you don’t take another offer before it’s done. Things move fast in the tech field and good candidates are often interviewing for multiple opportunities at once. If an employer likes you, they will often share info about next steps with you so they mitigate their risk of losing you to another job offer.

2. Your interview feels more like an interesting technical discussion. Great technical interviews can sometimes be less of a back and forth than just a good conversation about technologies that are relevant to the position. If you find the interviewer seems engaged and you’re both really delving into technical scenarios, hypotheticals, or problems, you may have just had a good interview.

3. Your interviewer is trying to sell you on the work you’ll do in the position, their team, or the company. Because the tech field is such a job seeker’s market, interviewers will often start selling the opportunity if they like the candidate. As mentioned before, good candidates are usually pursuing several opportunities at once. Keeping this in mind, if employers like a candidate they’ll often try to highlight things like the interesting projects their team handles, office perks, or the exciting new technologies they put at employees’ disposal.

 

IT job interviews signs
Knowing an interview went well helps you perform better in future interviews. Photo credit: PDPics via Pixabay.

 

2 Ways Being Over-Prepared Ruins Your Job Interviews

Here’s one surprising mistake IT staffing companies see too often in job interviews: over-preparing.  While it’s certainly important not to underprepare for you job interview, IT recruiting firms definitely see some candidates rejected for the opposite reason.  Here are 2 ways being over-prepared can hurt your chances of landing IT jobs.

1. The interviewer doesn’t feel like they’re having a genuine conversation with you.  IT staffing firms want you to practice some of your answers or questions, but only to the point where you are familiar with them.  Employers really want to see who you are when they interview you—your personality as well as your technical skills and experience.  When you’re so over-prepared it sounds like you’re delivering a monologue, you’ll probably turn off your interviewer.  Making a good connection with your interviewer and showing off great communication skills goes a long way in the tech field these days.

2. You don’t answer the interviewer’s questions or provide the info they want.  Sometimes being over-prepared can make you come across as inflexible or unresponsive to your interviewer.  Technical recruiters find that being over-prepared can lead you to inadvertently neglect to provide all the information the interviewer wants.  You don’t want to be so busy making the points you practiced that you can’t answer an interviewer’s questions or respond warmly and genuinely to their small talk.  IT recruiting companies suggest you make a conscious effort to let the interviewer lead the interview.  Do this even if it means you may wind up leaving some of the material you prepared or studied by the wayside.   Don’t worry, you can always mention it your thank you note!

 

IT job interview mistakes
Delivering monologues won’t impress your interviewers. Photo credit: Concord90 via Pixabay.

 

Why You Should Make Job Offers Faster

If you’re working with IT recruiting firms to fill open jobs on your team, you know it’s hard to find great talent.  The tech field has really been a job seeker’s market for a while now.  Recent unemployment rates for IT professionals illustrate this well.  As of last April, the unemployment rate in IT went as low as 2%.  This is less than half the national unemployment rate for all other fields combined (around 4.9%).  One thing IT staffing firms suggest to increase your chance of landing great tech talent is to make your job offers faster.

Why would making a job offer quicker help you hire more and better IT professionals?  There are two main reasons. Firstly, making a quicker job offer, especially one in the first 24-48 hours since an interview, makes a candidate feel really valued.  Especially in this field, IT recruiting agencies find that candidates are expecting quicker responses from potential employers.  To ensure the candidate feels desired, you need to extend job offers faster than in other industries.  The more interest a candidate perceives from an employer, the more likely they are to take your offer.  IT staffing companies see that candidates often respond well to job offers where they feel like the employer is excited about their skills and experience.  Never underestimate the power of making a candidate feel valued.

The second reason IT recruiting firms suggest you make your job offers faster is to make sure you don’t miss out on your second or third choice candidates.  If your first choice candidate declines, making a slower job offer to them means you’ll make an even slower offer to your second or third choice candidates.  As mentioned above, it’s definitely more of a job seeker’s market.  Technical recruiters usually find that their candidates are often high in demand and receive more job offers than candidates do in other fields.  So losing out on your first choice candidate after a slow job offer could also mean losing out on your second and third choice candidates!

 

IT jobs hiring
Faster job offers will help you land the tech talent you need. Photo credit: tookapic via Pixabay.

 

Tips for Conducting Technical Interviews

Finding great tech talent for the right price is hard.  Even with IT recruiting companies to help you find a candidate pool, it can still be hard to find the best people to fill open IT jobs in your company.  Here are a few tips IT staffing firms suggest using as you conduct technical interviews.

1. Consider ditching any tests or exercises.  IT recruiting firms find that many candidates who are great employees don’t always do well in a timed, pressure-filled exercise or multiple-choice test.  Some candidates will even be less likely to want to continue the process if there’s a coding test or exercise as part of the interview.  With such a limited market, you don’t want to limit your candidate pool further.

2. Aim to have an interesting technical conversation.  The less a technical interview feels like an interview, the more you’ll get a real understanding for what the candidate is like.  One way IT staffing companies suggest doing this is by asking the candidate to talk about a project they loved working on.  Letting them pick the project they discuss will allow the candidate to show you their passion and their strengths in an authentic way.

3. Don’t forget to sell the position to the right candidates.  While your IT recruiting agencies will certainly help you sell the position to the candidates you like, it’s also important they catch your enthusiasm.  They will be sold if you can share what you like about working on your team, your project, etc.  If you have members of your team sit in on the interview, make sure they’re all people who can genuinely convey why it’s great to work at your company or organization.  Nothing sells an IT job better to a candidate than seeing current employees who enjoy the work and culture of a company.

 

technical job interviews
You may limit your candidate pool with a difficult coding test. Photo credit: PIXI1861 via Pixabay.

 

Write Technical Job Descriptions that Attract Candidates

One of the things IT staffing firms find that employers often struggle with is writing the descriptions for the IT jobs they need to fill.  Here are 3 tips IT recruiters suggest for writing the kinds of job descriptions that will help you attract great tech talent.

1. Write a job title that’s functional, rather than creative. Titles with ‘Rock Star’ or similar words may sound fun, but IT recruiting firms find these often don’t attract top-tier candidates.  What candidates respond to most is a title that clearly states what kind of work the role handles.  These titles help candidates picture themselves in the role.  They also appreciate these roles because they have currency in their next job search.  It’s easier to tell future employers that you’re a UX Director (versus a UX Rock Star).

2. Make a clear list of technologies you’ll require a candidate to have and a one for technologies you’d prefer a candidate to have. IT staffing companies find that when required technical skills and experience are lumped with preferred, it creates a job description that is too intimidating for candidates.  Especially with a shortage of tech talent in the US, it’s important to write a description that IT professionals will see and be able to picture themselves succeeding at.  Attracting great talent starts with helping them see a job that is actually do-able.

3. Lastly, try to sell your corporate culture and any projects the candidate will get to work on. IT recruiting companies find that great candidates are looking for projects that will further their career and companies that are fun, engaging, and stimulating to work at.  If you can offer them either, it’s important to emphasize this in the job description.  Since it’s a job seeker’s market, you want to write a job description that doesn’t just accurately portray what you need.  IT staffing agencies suggest appealing to tech professionals in these job descriptions, especially in terms of the kinds of work they’ll get to do and who/where they’ll get to do it with.

 

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Make a clear list of required technical skills and preferred technical skills. Photo credit: webandi via Pixabay.

 

Why IT Jobs Are Recession Proof

People commonly ask whether IT jobs are recession proof.  The simple answer that IT staffing companies would give is yes.  IT recruiting firms can point to the recent recessions as direct proof that IT professionals are very safe in their jobs, no matter how rocky the economy gets.

For solid proof that IT staffing agencies can help you find a job that will weather a recession, consider 2009.  That year, when unemployment rates in the US were over 10%, for the tech field it was more like 5.4%.  This number is strikingly low—it’s nearly as low as the unemployment rate is now after the recession (4.9% as of October 2016).

Why are IT jobs recession proof?  IT recruiting agencies find that these kinds of jobs are necessary for two big reasons.  Firstly, technology has become absolutely imperative to the basic functions of most businesses.  From the hardware a business uses, to the email system and customer management tools a business uses, to the web presence it maintains to attract and maintain customers, there is simply no way most (if not all) businesses could run without technology. This means that technical recruiters are constantly asked to find the IT professionals to maintain, improve, install, and help users understand, that technology.

The other reason that IT jobs are recession proof is that the technology is a way to improve business processes and cut costs in hard times.  IT recruiters find that in a recession, companies will often be all the more inclined to need tech professionals to help them streamline and save money.

If all of this doesn’t convince you to reach out to IT recruiting companies, the field is even stronger outside of a recession.  IT staffing firms are seeing an especially low 2.5% unemployment rate in tech this year.  IT jobs aren’t only recession proof, they’re a great way to go when the economy isn’t in crisis!

 

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IT unemployment is low, even in bad economic times. Photo credit: geralt via Pixabay.

 

3 Tips for Hiring Top Tech Talent

1. Rethink your tech stack.  IT recruiters find that great tech talent can often be sold on a position by the technologies they’ll get to use in IT jobs.  The best candidates usually tell IT recruiting companies that they want their next role to be more than just a paycheck and perks.  They want their next roles to help them advance in their career.  If you’re using an old tech stack, your technical recruiters may have a tough time attracting amazing talent for you.

2. Brag about your company culture and perks online.  Even though your IT staffing firms will help sell your company as a great place to work, candidates still usually do some research online.  Places that have no trouble attracting top tech talent make sure that candidates see great things about them when they do this research.  What does your Glassdoor page look like?  Have you built it out and added pictures?  Do you have reviews there?  Consider asking happy employees to leave reviews, because they are your best advocates.

3. Have candidates meet their potential coworkers.  IT recruiting firms find that the employers who introduce candidates to the team they’d work on have an advantage.  As mentioned above, your current workforce can be some of your best advocates to new talent.  Meeting potential coworkers helps a candidate visualize working at your company.  IT recruiting agencies also find that if your team is relatively happy, they can share the value of working at your company in terms the candidate really appreciates. Even if a candidate doesn’t like a member (or members) of the team and decides not to work there, this is still a good practice.  IT staffing agencies find that when a candidate doesn’t like the team enough to work somewhere, it would have been a bad hire anyways (which can be awfully costly).

 

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Is your tech stack going to attract great talent? Photo credit: markusspiske via Pixabay.

 

 

What IT Jobs Will Be In Demand In 2017?

IT recruiting agencies from California to NYC are still seeing a great market for job seekers, even as the fall is winding down and other industries are slowing their hiring.  While the whole tech field is booming, there are a few IT jobs that will be particularly hot in late 2016 and 2017.  Here are some of the jobs that IT staffing agencies will find most in demand in the next year or so.

Software Engineers, Systems Engineers: IT recruiting companies will be looking for candidates to fill these jobs because they’re so often essential.  Systems Engineers keep technologies running for businesses and keep them current.  When things crash, Systems Engineers are needed.  They’re also needed for installations, updates and/or maintenance.  Software Engineers will be essential to businesses and consumers in the next year because they’ll create and update the applications for cutting edge technologies.  There is no industry that won’t need Software Engineers and Systems Engineers in 2016 and 2017.

Network Analysts: IT recruiting firms will be seeking Network Analysts a lot in the near future because they can be so useful both on the business and technology side of things.  As business owners are coming to embrace the way technology can really enhance their business’s performance, Network Analysts will become all the more in-demand.

Data Analysts: With big data becoming more and more prevalent as a business tool, IT staffing companies will definitely be looking for Data Analysts.  The healthcare field especially, which is big and only getting bigger, has come to rely heavily on data analysts.  Of course, healthcare won’t be the only field using IT staffing firms to find data analysts.  Education and retail are also noted enthusiasts for Data Analysts.

 

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Healthcare is one industry driving the need for Data Analysts. Photo credit: Parentingupstream via Pixabay.