Tag Archives: hiring managers

Review: “Invaluable Knowledge: Securing Your Company’s Technical Expertise”

“Invaluable Knowledge: Securing Your Company’s Technical Expertise” focuses on the retention side of technical talent management. Any technical recruiter who has had the experience of placing a highly qualified technical candidate in a high-paying IT job, only to have the candidate leave the position prior to the contract end for a higher salary, more attractive benefits, or any other incentive elsewhere, knows the importance of talent retention. The skill and financial loss creates a void, and an IT staffer who can develop skills to prevent this scenario will have higher success rates than his or her peers in the recruiting industry.

According to Rothwell, one of the secrets to getting top talent in the first place is to agressively recruit from competitors. Once that process is underway or complete, the next essential step to ensure a placement in an IT job is careful candidate grooming. The technical candidate must be technically proficient at a minimum — the rest: killer interviewing skills, attention to dress code, culture fit, language use, and more are the responsibility of the technical recruiter’s coaching right up until the point a candidate enters an interview. Without thorough prepping, an IT staffing expert is setting up his or her candidate to either fail, or miss his or her potential by a slim margin. No technical staffer can afford either scenario, so a careful read of this book will equip the competitive IT staffer for top sales performance.

Technical Recruiters, Are You Getting Enough Sleep?

Pritchard’s “101 Strategies for Recruiting Success: Where, When, and How to Find the Right People Every Time” discusses the technical hiring process, and how best to manage the process of finding and keeping great technical candidates. Any technical headhunter knows that the longer a top technical candidate stays in a contract, the better it is for the IT staffing firm that handled the placement, so the skills to keeping skilled people happy in their position is key. Pritchard identifies two facets to this skillset: a common sense approach and a corporate one. Recruiting assignments can present challenges, and as a former recruiting professionals with over 20 years of experience, this book offers solutions for broaching them.

Topics covered include: techniques for attracting top technical talent, how to engage in proactive IT staffing, how to recruit with diversity in mind, how to match client company needs with technical candidate qualifications, and retention techniques. As noted in the book, retention involves the art of maintaining a strong relationship with a technical candidate throughout the full period of the contract. Allowing the relationship to slip once the contracts are in and the candidate has put in a first day or a first week could be the difference between keeping the candidate for the length of the contract and having them seek employment elsewhere. Learn about contentment in a technical candidate, and how to be instrumental in maintaining it in this insightful read.

Review:”Technical Recruiting Success for IT Firms”

AVID Technical Resources reviews “Technical Recruiting Success for IT Firms” by Dawson.  In the book, Dawson speaks from his high level of success in technical recruiting, and his perspective as a technical staffing consultant. His recruiting techniques involve IT staffing secrets he has identified and developed over time. His check lists offer ways to run through a list of tips, and apply them to each IT candidate, leading to higher placement rates and higher chances of turning technical candidates into working technical contractors.

One challenge a technical hiring manager may face is difficulties maintaining exclusivity. In the competitive IT recruiting industry, other IT staffing agencies may seek to interfere with a headhunter’s exclusive job coverage. Dawson reveals techniques for protecting those exclusive relationships, and turning them into solid placements for good IT professionals. He also covers the art of negotiating rates, a key factor for a technical candidate’s contentment and likelihood of staying in a role on a long-term contract. He closes with tips on managing references, and interview strategies. Pick up this book for a thorough look at a technical recruiters’ task list!

Review: “Trend Watch List Extended – Your World In Their Hands – Converging Trends Driving Your Talent Strategy”

Talent professionals employed in the technical recruiting industry will find Vanderbilt’s book on important employment trends helpful for placing technical candidates in IT jobs that offer a great skill & culture match to the employer. “Trend Watch List Extended – Your World In Their Hands – Converging Trends Driving Your Talent Strategy” discusses how technical headhunters at AVID Technical Resources and other technical staffing firms can best capitalize on the IT recruities strategies that maximize the broader trends being reflected in the job market as a whole.

According to Vanderbilt, workforce strategies centered around changes in the job markets are some of the most key areas that technical staffers can focus in on to increase their performance levels. Vanderbilt terms the intense competition for job placement capital the “staffing war”. She reveals the tactics top IT staffing agencies will need to acquired to acquire and maintain a competitive edge. Recruiting companies that want to stay abreast of the latest technical recruiting trends will want to grab a copy of this book.

Review: “Secrets from a Body Broker: A Hiring Handbook for Managers, Recruiters, and Job Seekers”

Technical recruiters will find Rey’s book, Secrets from a Body Broker: A Hiring Handbook for Managers, Recruiters, and Job Seekers, packed with valuable tips for personnel management. She starts by revealing two secrets – Secret #1 is “Discrimination is the cornerstone of each and every hiring decision. This is because hiring decisions are personal decisions made by people, and people will discriminate, even at the most subconscious of levels”. Secret #2, she tells us, is “A large percentage of managers who are in charge of hiring have little or no formal training in interviewing and hiring process”. The takeaway for technical recruiters is that hiring decisions may not be based purely on technical credentials.

A technical recruiter specializing in headhunting may see a technical candidates’ resume as an ideal match for an open IT job he or she is trying to place, but the hiring manager may feel differently. Whether the IT position is a remote job, requires an in-person interview, or a series of phone interviews, fit matters. A technical hiring manager wants not just the skill-set, but also someone he or she can respect and work well with. Even for a remote IT job, communication between a hiring manager and technical candidate via email may still play a key part in the project completion process. A hiring manager’s priorities will be affected by bias — as Rey notes in secret number 1, and discrimination for some small imperfection in a technical recruiter’s mind, such as sub-par communication skills may be crucial for a hiring manager’s comfort levels when working with a technical candidate. For this reason, a marginally less-qualified technical candidate may be selected over a standout from a skill perspective, because there is more to the big picture in a role than simply qualifications.

It may seem frustrating to an IT staffer that predicting the success of candidates that seem qualified can seem as chancey as betting, but at the end of the day, that’s the game of the technical staffing industry, and IT recruiters just have to keep their batting averages as high as possible.

Review: “Managing Engineers and Technical Employees: How to Attract, Motivate, and Retain Excellent People”

In Managing Engineers and Technical Employees: How to Attract, Motivate, and Retain Excellent People, Soat discusses techniques technical recruiters can use for attracting strong technical candidates. Outstanding technical professionals seek desirable work environments. The takeaway for the technical headhunter seeking ideal candidates for top IT job openings is to determine what factors technical candidates most often consider to make a given job environment attractive. Using that ammo, a technical hiring manager can execute a smoother recruiting process, from phone screen to successful placement in a technical job. One of those key factors, Soat identifies, is not surprisingly, compensation.

A technical manager’s salary expectations will be specific and within a range, non-negotiable, so IT staffing firms that collect that piece of information accurately up front from a technical candidate will be in the best position to consider viable job matches. On the same note, technical company benefits packages will factor heavily into a technical candidate’s decision-making process. Lastly, Soat advises, top-tier technical talent seeks reputation. Technical candidates want to work for a company that not only has an excellent reputation from a work atmosphere standpoint, but also from a products and services perspective. Technical recruiters and IT staffing firms that know how to assess companies according to this criteria will have a better chance of knowing which IT positions to match top technical candidates with for a lasting fit. IT recruiting in the technical staffing industry is a matter of understanding what technical candidates are looking for, and what the firms that hire them want. Put those two pieces together, and you’ve got a win for technical candidates and hiring managers alike!

Review: “Invaluable Knowledge: Securing Your Company’s Technical Expertise”

Technical recruiters looking to step up their game will want to be sure to read Rothwell’s Invaluable Knowledge: Securing Your Company’s Technical Expertise, a guide to talent management strategies. Technical professionals in the recruitment industry will find the strategies useful for the day-to-day operations of a competitive IT staffing firm. According to Rothwell, the technical knowledge areas involve focus on very specific technical skill sets, so replacing a previously held role — a scenario technical recruiters routinely encounter — can present a challenge. He identifies this phenomenon as the need for “invaluable knowledge”, and discusses how to retain, train for, and transfer this type of invaluable knowledge so that it doesn’t get lost as IT role responsibilities change hands.

The specialist in technical skills is part of the talent cycle, starting with the hiring process, through the training experience, and finally, to the execution of the technical role requirements. The current technical professional filling a given role should fill the position with the expectation that the position will eventually be transferred to someone else, and document and communicate elements of the role accordingly. That way, a technical candidate who takes over when the prior role-holder moves up the career ladder will have a better. Doing so involves developing practical repeatable processes. As any recruiter in a technical staffing agency knows, the existence of repeatable processes is a key factor in successful transfer of responsibility. Talent strategy plays a central role in an IT staffing firms’ approach to technical recruiting, so recruitment specialists will find this book’s advice to be valuable knowledge. Filling IT jobs can have its complexities, and this book helps simplify them. Boston recruiters working in technical staffing companies can take note — as can technical recruiters in any territory.

Review: “Breakthrough Technical Recruiting”

Ford’s Breakthrough Technical Recruiting offers IT Recruiters & Technical Hiring Managers advice for navigating the IT headhunting process. Ford speaks with authority from his own years of supervisors’ experience as a former recruiter, armed with technical recruiting strategies that led to high placement rates. Finding and identifying highly qualified technical candidates is a challenge Ford is familiar with and can provide perspective on across a variety of industries. His IT staffing secrets are priceless for the IT headhunter looking to step things up a notch, or for IT recruiting companies in the Boston area and beyond. His lucrative tips will serve IT staffing firms well.

Ford delves into interviewing strategies for technical recruiters that will help cut through the fluff and determine which IT candidate interview answers reveal stellar potential or a second or third-place contender. As every technical recruiter knows, generating viable leads is a cornerstone aspect of the IT staffing industry. IT recruiting companies need well-developed telemarketing tactics, and this book provides insight into this side of the business. Recruiting firms will find this book a valuable source of IT staffing information that will serve IT headhunters well over time.

Review: “A Beginner’s Guide to Technical Recruiting” by Prabakaran Murugaiah

What does a technical recruiter starting out for the first time in an IT Staffing Firm need to know? According to  Prabakaran Murugaiah, author of “A Beginner’s Guide to Technical Recruiting”, a lot. Murugaiah warns technical recruiters in-training that the big picture in the IT Staffing industry and in technical headhunting is changing at a rapid pace in 2011 (when he wrote A Beginner’s Guide), and beyond. The takeaway for technical recruiters starting a career in IT Staffing is that more experienced technical recruiters mentoring rookies may not have all the answers. It’s up to the protege technical recruiter to educate him or herself on the industry changes that are happening in short order.

Technical qualifications are no longer everything. Technical skills are still, as ever, center stage, but technical employers place a high value on other skills as well. Those skills include communication ability, company environment fit, and personality type. A fast-paced technical environment will look for different personality types in their IT candidates than a smaller, less rushed company atmosphere will. A Beginner’s Guide keeps technical recruiters abreast of culture changes like these in the staffing industry, and offers advice for technical recruiters looking to best take maximize the power of this industry knowledge.  IT candidates qualified on all skill facets important to technical employers are easier for technical recruiters to spot after reading this book. Read it today for practical technical recruiting tips!

Personality Testing for Technical Recruiters & Employers

Technical recruiters at AVID Technical Resources know that personality determines more than just what movies you like or what type of music you prefer. Personality tests, possibly the most famous of which is the MBTI test; the Myers Briggs Personality Test, allow employers to predict a candidate’s potential fit for a specific job using their psychological profile. It might seem counter-intuitive at first — how can something as subjective as a personality shed light on something as fairly objective, like how much a candidate’s level of experience qualifies him or her to perform specific duties? While a personality test won’t tell technical recruiters or employers how well a candidate with Java on his or her resume can actually perform when the timer or the pressure’s on, it can reveal the changes of a good candidate/employer fit.

Fit matters to employers because they’re invested in a specific company, with a unique culture and coworkers who belong to a team. A resume tells technical recruiters and technical employers part of the story, but careful employers want the other piece of the puzzle to be in place also – fit. Anything that’s important to an employer is also important to a staffing firm partnering with that employer. A technical candidate may see a technical job opportunity as a chance to reach career goals, or stay within an industry he or she likes. It may even be a chance to switch industries into an area that interests the candidate. In this way, the candidate may be the victim of a little tunnel vision, failing to take into consideration the big picture for the long term. The right job is more than an opportunity, or the label of the ‘right’ industry for the technical job-seeker. It’s the chance to take a first step up a long ladder of rewarding challenges, and if personality conflicts are going to do in the candidate from the start, no one wins. Employers need to reinstate their search for technical candidate with the right technical skills to fulfill the demands of the role their company needs, and and technical candidates are on the job search again. A better approach is to acknowledge that personality plays a big role in a company – how good of a team player a technical candidate has the potential to be depends to a large degree on the amount of common ground coworkers share.

Technical candidates may be asked to take a personality test for an interview, but they may find taking one on their own just as useful for their job search as it is to employers. A personality test can give a candidate data regarding his or her levels of extroversion versus introversion, and open up job possibilities not previously considered. It could give a candidate clues on which industries are likely to be the best match, or what personality types he or she should look for in potential coworkers when interviewing. You know what? Those Myers and Briggs…they may have been on to something.