Tag Archives: IT Recruiters Boston

Coming to an IT Company Near You: More Women

IT recruiting agencies, IT consultants, and the information technology industry as a whole has long decried its lack of women, especially in powerful positions.  Recently, however, it seems as though strides have been made towards actually doing something about this problem.  IT recruiters and IT contractors will certainly recognize the name Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s hyper-visible CEO who recently ended Yahoo’s telecommuting policy.  IT staffing companies are also likely to know her friend and fellow female tech executive Sheryl Sandberg.  Sandberg’s feminist manifesto brings a new perspective that is particularly relevant to technical recruiters and the IT professionals with whom they work.

The charge to bring more women into IT jobs  isn’t just coming from the top, though.  Various programs are being promoted and implemented in schools to make Math, Science, coding, and programming more popular amongst young girls.  IT recruiting companies may not yet see an increase in resumes from women, but a solid investment in future generations of female IT professionals is certainly equally important.   Hopefully the combined current efforts of these various feminists will inspire even more women to make themselves available to IT recruiters Boston, IT recruiters CA, and IT recruiters NY.

Bridging the Gap: IT Recruiters For All Ages

The information technology field, being relatively new as a professional field, is particularly inundated with generations X and Y.  It is also inundated with the problems that generations X and Y can cause in the workplace.  IT recruiters Boston to IT recruiters CA agree that generations X and Y certainly approach work and the workplace in different ways than their boomer generation counterparts.

There are many examples of disparate views IT recruiting companies see between generations as they attempt to fill IT jobs.  For instance, IT staffing agencies know from experience that while baby boomer managers tend to have experienced the workforce in only one or two companies, generations X and Y don’t operate on the same sense of a strong loyalty between company and employee. IT staffing companies also know that generations X and Y will/have already begun making more moves in their career field than baby boomers.  This means that IT job interviews can be especially fraught with tension as interviewers see vastly varied resumes that they do not expect.  It is the role of the IT recruiting agencies to help mold the resumes and the IT managers’ expectations to something closer to the middle.  IT managers can be persuaded to have more realistic expectations of a generation X or Y candidate, while IT staffing firms can coach IT consultants to understand and work harder to meet the expectations of a baby boomer IT manager.  The best asset technical recruiters can have in a market with two largely clashing sets of generations is to know how to bridge them and their expectations.  Happy generations X and Y and baby boomer IT professionals make for happy clients and candidates.  And happy clients and candidates make for very happy IT headhunters.

Change in the IT World: Necessary and Risky

Facebook’s changes this week certainly haven’t gone unnoticed by IT recruiters or the rest of the world.  While analyses on the details of these changes vary, the consensus seems to be one that the information technology world, and thus technical recruiters and IT consultants, have long understood: Change is key to staying relevant, but it needs to be done with caution.  IT recruiting firms and the IT professionals they work with often seek the balance between change and prudence in their work.  Frivolous change, change done solely for the sake of meeting technology’s break-neck pace, can meet loud criticism.  And loud criticism can mean the demise of a person or company’s reputation—at a break-neck pace, of course.

Marissa Mayer at Yahoo has also been struggling with similar issues.  As IT staffing firms and IT contractors watched her call all Yahoo employees back to work, they also saw the criticism pour in.  The results of Mayer’s change are yet to really be seen, but the consequences of shaking things up have certainly already manifested themselves and Mayer’s reputation has taken a hit.  Of course, not everyone is as visible in their actions as Mayer and Facebook, but the lesson for IT recruiting agencies and anyone else in the information technology field is just to make change cautiously.  Even when the industry standard requires IT recruiters CA to IT recruiters Boston to make change quickly to remain relevant, these changes are still subject to equally quick criticism.

IT Recruiters Rocking Out– and Networking in Austin

An IT recruiter and a music lover walk into a bar.  No, it’s not a joke, it’s happening in Austin this year– over and over again– at the highly-anticipated music festival South by Southwest.  While South by Southwest (often lovingly referred to by insiders as SXSW) the festival has become an increasingly popular haven for IT recruiting firms and IT consultants.  New technology is being marketed in the midst of what used to be a particularly grassroots musical festival, making it suddenly surprisingly relevant to the IT recruiting agencies across the nation, from IT recruiters CA to IT recruiters Boston.  IT staffing firms will find not only the place where indie artists like Bon Iver got their starts, but their next IT jobs or IT contractors to fill them.

SXSW 2013 will likely feature plenty of 3-D printing-oriented businesses for IT staffing agencies to peruse, as well as some involving space travel and wearable electronics.    IT recruiting companies may want to leave their nice briefcases at home, though.  No matter how much the information technology field is invading it, SXSW is still a gritty music festival at heart.

Americans Aren’t Convenient to Overlook in IT Field

Recently the news has noted quite a bit of American opposition to the H-1B reforms, especially in the information technology industry.  IT contractors have been alleging that technical recruiters already have a track record of favoring alien workers over American workers to fill IT jobs (even when they should not be).   IT staffing firms, they say, will only overlook American IT consultants more as H-1B reforms take place.

While the issue is obviously very complicated, IT recruiting firms obviously do not intend to overlook all American candidates, and very often are presented with a dearth of them.  IT headhunters follow the laws regarding H-1Bs and puts as much energy as possible into finding American workers because it’s in America’s interest and in IT recruiting agencies’ best interest to do so in terms of business.  IT staffing agencies can save a significant amount of time and money if they do not focus their efforts on IT contractors who require sponsorship. The hours, energy, and fees  IT recruiting companies might have to spend with immigration attorneys, clients, and job candidates are certainly not desirable when IT staffing Boston can find American workers who don’t require any of that. IT jobs, like the rest of the field, tend open and fill quickly, so time is of the essence to IT staffing companies.  All across the country, IT recruiters Boston to IT recruiters CA know that an American candidate is much easier to place in an IT job.

Cyber Warfare: Suiting Up for IT Battle

One niche area of information technology that IT recruiters are working with is Cyber Warfare.  While the name might connote violence, IT staffing agencies are actually filling IT jobs that require either defending or attacking networks.  Often attacking networks comes down to finding and exploiting software flaws, while defending them requires the opposite: finding and fixing software flaws.

IT recruiting agencies face a surprising dearth of qualified IT professionals when searching to fill these IT jobs.  IT staffing firms are coming up short in finding IT consultants to fill Cyber Warfare jobs because the skills required tend to be fairly specialized and to be especially well-honed with experience.  Since Cyber Warfare has only really begun to grow as a sector since circa the Bush Administration, the pool of experienced IT contractors that IT staffing firms can cull from is understandably still quite small.  The field is also understandably concentrated in particular areas.  IT recruiters Boston or IT recruiters CA, for example, are far less likely to come across IT consultants with Cyber Warfare skills and experience than technical recruiters in D.C. and Virginia.

Simply put, for IT professionals looking to make themselves more appealing to IT recruiting firms, it’s never been a better time to polish one’s technological combat skills.

Looking to Russia for IT’s future?

American IT recruiters, IT recruiting companies, and IT consultants are already aware of the impact that the EU’s approach to information technology on their own market, but some are just becoming aware of Russia’s influence.  While IT recruiters Boston and IT recruiters CA especially have been seeing the plentitude of talent from Russia for a while, the American information technology industry is beginning to slowly grow some relationships with its former cold war enemy.

While the cold war seemed to illuminate incompatible differences between the US and Russia, IT professionals are finding some very compatible strengths between the two.  Russian training in programming and engineering provides some impeccable skills (the same ones IT recruiting firms are already coming across in immigrants), while American entrepreneurialism provides the financial risks and growth that make successful companies. Currently, the cheapness of operating in Russia leaves many of the IT jobs in questions for Russian IT recruiting agencies to fill.  However, IT staffing companies in America may soon be finding themselves filling IT jobs that have grown from collaborations between MIT and the Skolkovo University or the Russian branch of Microsoft.  Though the Russian market is still slow to allow start-up growth, IT staffing agencies would not be ill-advised to start learning how to say at least “zdrast-vuy-tye”—“hello” in Russian.

Tardiness in IT– Not So Straightforward

The IT job board, Careerbuilder, conducted a recent survey on tardiness to work illuminates some interesting trends, but it doesn’t tell the whole story for the nuances of what is acceptable in terms of tardiness for jobs in information technology. This year, the survey reports, over a third of hiring managers surveyed had to fire an employee for being late.  In the IT field, IT consultants tend to be doubly responsible in their jobs for tardiness—they report to their IT managers, but they also are technically reporting to IT recruiters Boston, too. If they are fired for lateness, IT contractors are not only losing their own IT jobs, but possibly losing future business for the IT staffing companies who placed them.  This, of course, could burn that bridge for the IT consultant, making IT recruiting agencies reluctant or simply refusing to work with him/her in the future.

Though technical recruiters and IT managers both would certainly prefer uniform promptness, the sheer variety of roles for IT professionals dictates a wide range of lenience for tardiness. The severity of the consequences for lateness definitely vary from role to role.  For instance, a programmer, who works more independently and in a “backroom” capacity, wouldn’t likely cause much of an issue if he was late for his company or his IT staffing agencies.     A help desk role, on the other hand, which is very visible more “front of the house” would certainly hurt his and his IT recruiting firms reputation if he was constantly late and holding up any trouble shooting operations. The permanency of an IT professional is also a factor.  IT contractors hired on a temporary basis (and requiring payment both for their own work and the IT headhunters’ fee) are far more vulnerable to scrutiny than permanent hires.  This scrutiny obviously includes tardiness.

One factor that seems pretty universally irrelevant throughout the IT staffing industry is the reason for tardiness.  Too much of it is always a problem, whether it is because one is busy putting a raincoat on their concrete duck or due to traffic.

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.

H-1B’s Might Drive Change for IT Recruiting Companies

It might be January, but today feels more like Christmas Eve to the information technology industry.  As a bipartisan group of senators are set to present a bill that will increase the H-1B cap (and increase it again, depending on the demands of the market), IT recruiting firms, IT managers and IT contractors are waiting with baited breath.  IT jobs are very often sought-out by immigrants in need of H-1B’s and IT recruiters Boston and IT recruiters CA will likely be affected with the rest of the technology market if the bill is passed.

In addition to a general strengthening of the industry, IT headhunters are likely to see a surge in foreign applicants’ resumes for technical jobs if the bill is passed.  Previously, technical recruiters and IT consultants alike tended to count on the number of H-1B’s evaporating quickly.  This bill may change the game for IT recruiters San Diego as IT jobs become more open to immigrants and as companies reap the more indirect benefits of the bill.  Even if the bill does not pass, it marks considerable progress toward a bill like it passing one day in the future.  Whatever the result, IT staffing firms are sure to remember this day for a long time.