Tag Archives: IT recruiting companies

Managers: How to Respond to Requests for a Raise

IT managers have a myriad of dreaded conversations with their IT contractors.  Perhaps the most dreaded conversation, though, is when employees ask for a raise.  While IT recruiting firms certainly try to negotiate the best salary possible for IT consultants upon entry of a new job, over time this amount will almost certainly become less than desirable.  Inflation, life changes, and more can cause IT professionals to realize they suddenly would like to be compensated more than their IT headhunters initially got for them.  So how should managers evaluate these requests?

IT staffing agencies may have negotiated salary based on resumes, but raises are based on current performance.  If an employee consistently meets and/or exceeds expectations in IT jobs for a long period of time, the request if certainly worth considering.  Another criterion is if the employee brings a unique asset to the company.  Perhaps IT recruiting companies didn’t suggest him for it, but if an employee has shown a special talent that has benefited the company, a raise might also be in order.  Lastly, an employee’s raise request has should be considered with this lens: have they brought more value to the company than technical recruiters thought they could– either in money and/or in creating a positive work environment?  IT staffing firms certainly try to find the best fit for a company in terms of skills, but if the employee has demonstrated not only a proficiency at their job, but also at making the workplace pleasant and more efficient, their salary is certainly worth raising.

IT’s new Silicon Valley: Berlin

IT recruiters Boston and IT recruiters CA are used to hearing about start-ups from Israel, Silicon Valley, and most recently, Russia.  However, IT recruiting firms and IT contractors will soon be hearing a lot about start-ups from Berlin.

The information technology field has already seen a slow rise in German start-ups for a few reasons.   IT headhunters will be seeing more successful companies and IT jobs coming out of Berlin because like Russia, the city offers a cheap cost of living.  Office space and amenities for company employees keep overhead very low for IT managers at start-ups in Berlin. Like Russia, Berlin is still recovering from an unsuccessful attempt at Communism and like Russia, Berlin is now a hotbed of potential for IT professionals looking to take entrepreneurial risks.  IT recruiting companies should seriously consider brushing up on their German—it might be a necessary skill on the resumes they look at in the future.

Education Strives to Keep Up with IT

In a struggle to keep up with the constantly changing demands of the information technology field, universities are creating new educational programs to create IT professionals ready to participate in the hottest areas, such as Big Data.  IT recruiters will able to select from pools of IT contractors with new degrees in very current areas, like Big Data or social media-oriented marketing programs.

IT staffing agencies will no longer stretch to reconcile resumes with IT jobs that require very specific and very new skills. Cornell is creating, aided by a grant from NY, a school specifically geared towards the skills needed to develop start-ups.  These graduates may well be the CEOs and IT managers that IT staffing companies help to develop teams for.  IT headhunters may also be contacting graduates of Columbia, the University of San Francisco, or many other universities, where programs are being developed specifically to graduate big data specialists.  Whichever new hot area IT recruiting companies are especially interested, they will soon have a specified pool of IT consultants to choose from.

IT Raises its Presence in a Surprising Arena

IT recruiting firms, IT managers, and IT consultants are all still discussing a surprising topic: national policy.  IT staffing agencies and other IT professionals, even those as influential as Mark Zuckerberg, began a heated conversation about H-1B workers several months ago as the nation considered significantly increasing the number of H-1B visas allowed per year.

The debate over how often IT recruiting companies submit foreign resumes versus American resumes for IT contractors has been a problem for years.  IT staffing firms have suggested, with much contesting from American workers, that there simply are too few US candidates for the IT jobs they fill. The new serious moves towards allowing more H-1B’s has simply fanned the flames of a fire that the information technology industry has quietly been burning. The final result of the actual debate may not even interest the rest of the nation outside the IT sector.  What might be the most lasting impact may simply be the entrance of loud, passionate voices from technical recruiters in the midst of political conversation.

How Will the IT Sector Keep Up With Job Demand

How will America keep up with its information technology sector job growth?  Though the market of IT professionals waxes and wanes, its American portion is still problematically low for the amount of IT jobs technical recruiters are trying to fill. (A large portion of American IT consultants seem to disagree with this reading of the market.)  There seem to be two major methods of dealing with this dearth of IT contractors for IT staffing agencies and IT managers: increasing H-1B visa allowances and increasing education for future IT professionals.

The attempts to increase education certainly have drawbacks for IT staffing firms in particular.  IT staffing companies today dealing with a lack of candidates now will have to continue to wait as programs that are mostly targeted at younger students slowly build the IT professionals of tomorrow.  There are also no guarantees that these efforts to motivate young children, especially girls, will even actually yield a greater pool of candidates for IT recruiting companies.

The second effort at creating more candidates for IT recruiting agencies is obviously problematic from a national standpoint.  Are we hurting our own citizens when we allow more H-1B visas, or are we simply enriching our economy and population?  With two major efforts occurring, there are still plenty of drawbacks to be dealt with.  The search for an effective way to get more candidates for IT recruiters continues.

What Happens in IT (Should) Stay in IT

The information technology industry certainly holds a fascination for more than just the IT managers, IT recruiting firms and IT consultants in its borders.  It’s undeniable that IT professionals and their companies, like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook, regularly make the news.  However, the hard lesson that JC Penney had to learn last week is that what works for IT jobs, doesn’t always work in other industries.

It recruiting companies and IT contractors are well aware of the test first, tweak later ethos of the IT world.  This strategy crashed and burned, however, as former Apple executive Ron Johnson attempted it in J.C. Penney’s attempt to restore itself to glory in the retail world.  Though IT staffing companies might have easily recognized Johnson’s intentions to beta test various marketing strategies, the pace of retail simply did not support them.  Technical recruiters might also have found Johnson’s radical changes to Penney’s inventory very familiar.  But, what works in a business that changes at the pace of the internet doesn’t always work in stores full of huge shipments of retail that move at a much, much slower pace.  Radical changes are fine when they can be retracted or will become relevant in a shorter period of time.  They are not fine when applied to an industry like retail that must operate at a much slower pace. While Johnson attempts to re-orient himself as he recovers from a JC Penney ousting, IT staffing agencies are taking note: what happens in the IT world should stay in the IT world.

Job Hopping in IT

IT jobs are certainly not meant to be proverbial lily pads.  However, in a tough economy with an even tougher economy behind us, IT recruiters and IT managers are exercising more leniency towards so-called “Job Hoppers.”  While IT staffing agencies would not consider resumes full of short stints ideal, they are far less likely to simply throw them out than other industries might be. IT recruiting companies know that with a dramatic start-up bubble, and of course its dramatic burst, in our past some IT consultants are likely to have at least one or two short blips of jobs on their resumes. Additionally, with contracting being much more common in information technology, short blips also are far more welcomed by technical recruiters than perhaps in any other industry.  While IT staffing firms are likely to be more accepting of erratic resumes, IT contractors need to be able to properly explain the brevity of these jobs.  Suggesting to IT recruiting firms that one has left a job quickly because of boredom or to seek out more earning potential will raise some red flags.  Suggesting to IT headhunters, on the other hand, that a job was short-lived because the company was, will ameliorate their image of oneself as employable.

Why the IT World Is Obsessed with Yahoo

Why are IT recruiters and IT consultants obsessed with Yahoo’s moves?  IT staffing firms and IT consultants, along with most other IT professionals, seem fixated on most, if not every move that Yahoo and its new CEO Marisssa Mayer make.

Mayer’s Telecommuting policy sparked a nation-wide debate by IT recruiters CA to IT recruiters Boston.  IT recruiting companies couldn’t stop talking about Mayer’s initial appointment.  And now as Yahoo acquires Summly and other start-ups, IT staffing firms are just continuing the conversation.  Of course IT recruiting agencies are generally concerned with the goings-on in Google or Facebook, However, Yahoo has ignited the information technology field’s interest in a special way.

While there could be many reasons IT headhunters can’t look away from Yahoo and Mayer, the answer could largely be that Yahoo is not so different from the America right now.  After a devastating fall from grace, Yahoo and America are attempting to pick up the pieces.  And with a very strong symbolic and real correlation between the two, IT staffing agencies are waiting with baited breath to see if they can successfully put themselves back together.

IT Recruiting by the Numbers

IT headhunters would certainly pinpoint generations X and Y as controversial generations to hire for IT jobs.  There are plenty of prominent complaints IT recruiters get about generation X and Y IT professionals.  However, the generation IT staffing firms have a hard time getting a consensus on is actually the baby boomer generation.

Plenty of IT recruiting companies hear highly conflicting opinions on baby boomer IT consultants.  Some IT managers praise baby boomer IT contractors for their work ethic, their ability to set and achieve goals, and their easy acceptance of authority and rules.  On the other side of the coin, IT staffing agencies can encounter plenty of negative arguments for baby boomers for IT jobs.  Some IT recruiting firms hear that because of baby boomers illustrious resumes, they are too costly for IT companies.  IT headhunters also hear arguments that completely nullify experience anyways, in a world that is full of break-neck paced change.  In addition to these conflicting points, there are also varying views on how late a company would like to invest in an IT professional’s career.  No matter the source, the opinion on baby boomer IT consultants is bound to be a complicated one.

Team-Building in the IT World

The information technology field has always been open to new business practices.  One of the newest growing trends is group exercise classes as team-building tools.  IT recruiters and IT contractors have become aware of more and more companies that offer classes likeCrossfit in-house and out of the office.

IT staffing firms hear a mélange of good and bad feedback on these classes as team-building exercises.  Since the trend is growing, there are of course plenty of IT consultants who tell IT recruiting agencies how much they love the classes and the effect they have on their teams at work.  IT staffing companies are certainly also hearing some negative responses from IT professionals on exercise classes as team-building tools.  Some people have suggested to IT recruiting companies that intense exercise classes like Crossfit are not appealing to them.  Thus they are left out of the activity, effectively making a team-building activity one that actually divides.  Others object to team-building exercise classes because they have their own workout routines and classes they are already dedicated to.  These people tell IT staffing firms a similar message: these team-building activities divide them from the team.

Because IT recruiting firms are getting mixed reviews, the jury might still be out on the effectiveness of exercise classes in IT jobs. One thing is for sure, though: they certainly get a reaction from employees.