Monthly Archives: February 2013

How Europe Affects IT Recruiting Firms

As illustrated in last week’s exploration of Israel as nursery of a surprising portion of America’s information technology industry, IT recruiting firms, IT managers, and IT consultants are often impacted by global trends.  The Big Data Revolution, a driving force in creating the plethora of IT jobs that IT staffing agencies have been filling most recently, has been affected pretty heavily by global trends.  Europe in particular has affected the way American IT recruiting agencies and IT contractors experience the Big Data Revolution.

Europe’s main effect on Big Data has been in the way they protect consumer data.  Europe’s laws and policies are, depending on your source, more protective of the consumer than the laws and policies America’s.  Even if you disagree with the sentiment, the method Europe uses to protect consumers is different from US methods—different enough to warrant a dialogue between the US and EU on how to achieve the task of protecting consumers as the Big Data Revolution washes over our respective continents. How does all of this affect IT recruiters Boston and the IT consultants and IT managers they serve?  The way data is controlled, culled, and utilized is changing and will continue to change until the US and EU have more compatible, if not similar laws and policies protecting consumer privacy.  This change will be reflected directly in the tasks that IT contractors carry out daily, the descriptions for  an IT job that technical recruiters seek to fill, and possibly the amount of IT jobs IT staffing firms are given

Generally speaking, IT headhunters, It contractors, and IT managers should not be ignoring the information technology industry news in Europe or any other part of the globe.  It could, and likely will, affect their own jobs.

Dealing with ethical concerns in the Technology Industry

IT recruiters and IT professionals encounter many issues when it comes to finding IT jobs for themselves or filling them for IT managers.  Though it often may not be the most pressing concern, ethics and human rights are inescapable issues in information technology as a field.  Apple is clearly one of the companies that has dealt with human rights criticism most recently, but due to the nature of technology they are not the only ones.  One major factor that makes human rights infractions harder to avoid in overseas factories is the way technology constantly updates and stages large, anticipated release dates.  Every time a new release date is set, a factory tends to require a sudden spike in labor, often resulting in a plethora of workers completing a great deal of overtime hours.

While Apple and others are working towards abolishing terrible conditions in their production, what can IT consultants and IT headhunters do in considering what companies to work with? Ethisphere creates a yearly list honoring particularly ethical companies in a myriad of industries that IT recruiters CA or IT contractors could check before submitting resumes if they have particularly rigorous standards.  When considering a specific company’s ethical track record, technical recruiters and IT professionals can benefit from a quick Google search.  Human rights infringements are, of course complicated matters.  IT recruiting agencies or IT consultants may need to skim a few different articles to get a balanced perspective on exactly how ethical or unethical a company is.  It’s important to note that the search doesn’t have to just be for one’s own edification.  IT professionals in IT job interviews or IT staffing firms in meetings with IT managers or potential clients can definitely display interest in a company with a mention of its stellar ethical record.