Submit Resume
Submit Job Order
Locations
Submit Resume
Submit Job Order

Tag Archives: IT staffing companies

IT Jobs, Danger and Responsibility: The Story of Pavel Durov

Most IT recruiters and IT staffing firms wouldn’t describe IT jobs as dangerous.  This is, of course, the case, 99% of the time.  Recently, though, IT staffing agencies and technical recruiters have been shown an exception: the wild story of a very dangerous IT job—being creator of Russia’s version of Facebook.

Pavel Durov, a celebrity in Russia on par with Mark Zuckerberg in the US, has recently become endangered due to issues between the government and his company.  While Russia’s own issues with corruption and censorship weigh heavily on this story, there’s another message for IT recruiting companies and IT recruiting agencies: IT is a powerful industry with a great deal of responsibility and power.  As it begins to truly shape our world and deeply affect our politics, Information Technology endows its jobs with a great deal of ethical responsibility.  IT professionals, and by extension, IT staffing companies, are not just coding—they’re deeply influencing the future.

 

Tips for IT Office Parties

As the holidays approach, plenty of IT staffing agencies and IT companies will be having office parties.  These may seem unnecessary, but they’re actually a great moment for you to network with technical recruiters, colleagues, and possibly increase your chances of landing IT jobs in the future.  Here are a few tips from IT staffing firms to help you ace your holiday office parties.

Firstly, be a little more casual and comfortable.  Events like this don’t call for exactly the same manners, dress code, etc as work.  In fact, if you’re too stiff, it will be detrimental.  IT recruiting agencies would recommend relaxing a bit, making a few jokes, and coming in clothes that aren’t quite business professional.

Second, don’t bring your smart phone with you and don’t cling to your date.  IT staffing companies would suggest that the best way to make the most of holiday parties for work is to be fully engaged.  Don’t spend long spans of the party checking your phone in the corner.  Don’t only speak with your date.  Work the room and be social with your coworkers and managers—it’s the reason you’re at the party.

Don’t indulge too much on the alcohol.  It seems like common sense, but it’s worth repeating.  IT recruiting firms would absolutely recommend keeping your drinking to a minimum so you’re fully in control for the whole evening.

 

 

Ace your IT Interviews by Telling Stories

IT staffing firms and IT recruiters are always looking for job candidates who excel in ways beyond just their technical skills.  Having certain skill-sets might make it seem like somebody is a great fit for particular IT jobs.  Howevever, it’s important for IT staffing companies and technical recruiters to be able to present candidates who not only have great IT skills and experience, but are able to demonstrate they’re excellent assets to their teams and managers.  How do you demonstrate to IT recruiting firms, interviewers, and hiring managers, that you’re an asset to the teams you work on and will work on in the future?  Tell some stories.

Tell IT recruiting agencies or interviewers a story about a time you stepped up and owned a process, fixed a problem, or did something else that was out of your job description.  Talk about how this affected your team and managers (positively, obviously) and what you learned from it.  These kinds of stories will demonstrate initiative, follow-through, team-work, and reliability.

Tell IT staffing companies or a hiring manager a story about a time you met somebody’s expectations—before they even expected it.  Maybe you anticipated a manager’s need, headed off a potential problem with a project, or were just prepared for something your team wasn’t.  These kinds of stories demonstrate that you are not only capable of doing your job, but doing it with little supervision.  This is a manager’s dream.

 

Why Use IT Recruiting Firms?

Ever wondered why IT recruiters are useful in your search for IT jobs?  Why not just do the search yourself instead of working with IT recruiting companies?  There are few reasons you should cultivate a relationship with technical recruiters—some of which are not obvious.

Firstly, IT recruiting companies have access to far more job openings than you do as the average job seeker.  Not all job openings are posted publicly.  Sometimes hiring managers have IT staffing companies working on a job that you may not even know exists.  Working with them means you will know about them and be able to apply.

Secondly, IT recruiting agencies have strong relationships with the companies they’re working for.  This means they can recommend you (as somebody whose expertise the hiring managers trust), make sure your resume doesn’t get lost in a stack of resumes, and even fight for you to get the salary or pay rate you want.  All these benefits are hard to put a price on, but they’re very important in a competitive job market.

The Golden Rule for Success in Your IT Jobs

So you’ve worked with some IT recruiters and IT staffing agencies to land your dream job.  How do you excel at your new gig so your boss and coworkers notice and IT staffing companies fight other IT recruiting companies to place you for your next IT jobs?  There are a lot of ways to ensure success, but there is one golden rule everyone should try to follow: Bring your boss solutions, not problems. 

How can you do this?  Make sure you think one step beyond issues that arise or you’re concerned will arise.  IT recruiting firms have an easy time placing the kind of employee who not only notices a problem, but can then anticipate for his boss what some possible solutions would be for it.   Employees who make solutions, not just identifying problems, their focus are easy to manage and work with.  These are the kind of people IT recruiting companies get requests for—employees that make life easier for their teammates and bosses.  Take a shot at this the next time you spot a problem—you’ll be surprised at how well this habit will impact your job performance and career.

 

 

IT Job Hunters: Check Online for Info About Corporate Culture!

In the past, IT contractors have to ask their IT recruiters and IT staffing companies about the corporate culture of the IT jobs they’re interviewing for.  Things are changing now, though.  IT recruiters are no longer the only source of info about a company’s corporate culture—now the companies themselves are posting videos, pictures, and more info about their corporate culture online.

If you’re up for an IT job, ask your IT recruiting agencies if they know about any online info about the company’s corporate culture.  It’s worth looking into this info for yourself so you can decided if the company is a place you could be happy.  While corporate culture is often mentioned secondary to the actual job description by IT recruiting firms, it’s still very important.  IT staffing firms that can place people in jobs they love and corporate cultures they love, find the most success and longevity in the placements.  This is because happy workers have been proven to be more loyal and productive workers.  So don’t hesitate to ask your technical recruiters if there is info online about the corporate culture of companies you’re interviewing with.  This information is important!

 

IT Jobs Are Now Offering Bring Your Parents To Work Days

Particularly in the world of information technology, ‘Bring Your Parents to Work Day’ has caught on.  IT recruiters have noticed that over 50 companies and organizations in the US are now holding their own days when parents can come in and see their children at work in their IT jobs.  While having your parents tag along to your IT job would have once been a huge issue for IT recruiting companies and indicated a serious lack of professionalism to technical recruiters, this is no longer the case….depending on the company and IT recruiting firms.

There is obviously IT staffing firms that will always see Bring Your Parents to Work Day as a highly unprofessional convention.  However, some IT recruiting agencies and companies see this kind of event as a way to market themselves and to allow parents to finally understand their high tech jobs.  It’s also likely the prevalence of Bring Your Parents to Work Day is made slightly more popular by the way millennials tend to be closer to their parents than previous generations.  Researchers have noted this about millennials for a while, and it would be hard to say this observation doesn’t have any influence on IT staffing companies and the companies and organizations that hold Bring Your Parents to Work Day.

 

 

Don’t Make this Mistake at Your IT Job Interviews

IT staffing firms and technical recruiters will almost always prep you for the technical questions you’ll face in interviews for IT jobs or what you should wear.  However, the best IT recruiters can’t prepare you for how to milk every question in an interview.  The good news is this is a skill you can learn on your own, without the help of IT staffing agencies or IT recruiting firms.  Here are some tips on how to use every question of a job interview to highlight your own skill-set and experience, wow your interviewer, and make sure you’re the kind of IT contractor that IT staffing companies can place over and over again.

Ever had a question about experience or skills you don’t exactly have?  Don’t just answer no in these instances.  Take that moment to do a few things.  Firstly, suss out what the interviewer is asking about.  Do they want to know about a more general skill you do have or a kind of on-the-job experience (like ‘dealing with difficult coworkers or clients’) that you could easily suggest is similar to something you already do or have done?  You don’t have to go overboard, but really examining the questions they ask you and thinking about what they’re looking for in a candidate will make you look very hirable.  The best candidates for a job don’t just take its description at face value.  They also try to parse all the nuances of a job and figure out what success at that job looks like.

Once you know exactly what the interviewer is looking for, try to make a (graceful) connection here to showcase skills and experience that you have.  You may not have exactly the experience or skill the interviewer is seeking, but you might have something similar.  Highlight this for your interviewer.  Doing this will ensure they really see your full value as a candidate.

 

IT’s Next Best Employees: Veterans

IT recruiters and IT staffing firms tend to see plenty of resumes from recent veterans, but not all of them value the military experience.  While there plenty of IT staffing companies that do think about it, not all technical recruiters understand how military experience translates to most IT jobs.  Though the skills can be different, sometimes this is a good thing.  IT recruiting companies and the companies they work for are starting to realize that military experience can translate to special skills that not all IT contractors have.

This trend isn’t currently growing fast enough to accommodate the number of unemployed veterans in the US.  However, the good news is that it will likely grow in the future.  The military relies on technology more and more every day.  Soon IT recruiting agencies will be able to see a plain link between the jobs IT professionals have done in their military past and the civilian jobs they’d like to be considered for.  In the interim, it’s up to IT staffing agencies to be creative enough to start to see how well veterans are often prepared for civilian IT jobs.

Could You Do an IT Job From Home?

IT recruiters all over the US are pretty familiar with one request when it comes to IT jobs: IT professionals very often want the option to work from home some of the time, if not all the time.  IT recruiting agencies certainly do get their fair share of jobs that allow at least some flexibility to work from home.  However, technical recruiters can’t just fill these jobs with anybody.  IT recruiters search for somebody with some particular skills and a set-up at home.  This is what IT staffing firms will look for if you want to talk about jobs that allow you to work from home.

Firstly, IT recruiting firms look for a proven ability to work with little-to-no supervision.  This is might seem simple, but it requires real discipline and problem-solving skills.  IT staffing agencies need to know that the people they submit for work from home jobs will be able to stay on track with their work even if they don’t have their boss checking in every 5 minutes.  They also need to know that these people can direct their own work, solve problems on their own, and generally save their bosses the burden of having to do much managing.

Secondly, IT staffing companies need to know that the people they submit for work from home jobs have a good setup to get their work done.  A home office is optimal, but not entirely necessary.  However, childcare arrangements are necessary.  Workers need to be able to focus entirely on their jobs, and childcare will almost always conflict with this.

Lastly, IT headhunters are looking for people who will make themselves available to their coworkers, clients, managers, etc.  Working from home requires a lot of independence, but the best employees who work remotely make themselves easily accessible for work questions.  Being physically absent from the office is no excuse for being difficult to reach—in fact, it makes this quality all the more imperative.