ITCareerCoach Training - Coaching » downsizing http://www.it-career-coach.net How To Take Your Career To The Next Level Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:09:27 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 How to Tap Into Magical Hiring Powers http://www.it-career-coach.net/2011/08/18/how-to-tap-into-magical-hiring-powers/ http://www.it-career-coach.net/2011/08/18/how-to-tap-into-magical-hiring-powers/#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:28:09 +0000 ITCareerCoach http://www.it-career-coach.net/?p=3269

Tapping Into Your Magical Hiring Powers

Tapping Into Your Magical Hiring Powers

As a Career Coach, I come across questions or discussions from job seekers “looking for recruiter who can get them a job“.

From the way these statements are worded, it seems that all it takes for the job seeker to get a job is finding a recruiter with magical hiring powers.

But, is it really true?

Do recruiters have hiring powers and how much of the success or failure of the job search depends on the recruiter’s magical hiring powers?

In this post, I will clarify the recruiter’s role and show you how to tap into the magical hiring powers available to job search candidates!

  1. Recruiters Are Gatekeepers

    Recruiters, staffing agencies or placement services simply screen and then forward resumes to employers / clients.

    A placement service will forward your resume to the client / employer if you have performed jobs in the past related to the job posting.

    If the employer is picky about resumes or complains about the quality / number of job candidates, the staffing / placement service will raise the requirements for submission.

    But keep in mind that recruiters do not exclusivity to job postings in a broad sense because you can always forward your resume to employers, have a staffing agency do it for you or do both.

  2. Recruiters Are Lie Detectors

    Generally speaking, many recruiters in the Information Technology (IT) industry do not have a technical background.

    They have not worked with or used the tools listed on your resume / job posting and cannot really say whether you are qualified or not.

    So, what they do is check your resume to see if it will pass a very basic, unsophisticated lie detector.

    Recruiters want to know such things like: where you have worked, what titles you held and whether you are eligible t work for the client.

    Note: when working with recruiters, take the extra step of convincing them that your resume and background is a good fit, because they may not be able to tell the difference!

  3. Can Staffing Agencies Claim Exclusivity?

    Generally, employers will use multiple staffing agencies and then use their own internal hiring team to narrow the pool of resumes down to a few candidates who would be interviewed or hired.

    An Employer may also decide to be discreet about the hiring process and use only one staffing agency.

    But even in this case, the staffing agency does not make a hiring decision. All the placement service can do for you is forward your resume to the employer.

  4. Who Makes Hiring Decisions?

    In all cases, it’s the employer’s internal hiring team / manager that makes the hiring decision and not the placement / staffing agency.

    Recruiters do not have magical hiring powers and you cannot base your job search on claims of exclusivity by a recruiter.

    Remember that the job search process is a democratic process and that you, the staffing agency and the employer all participate or play active roles in the process.

Discover Magic In A Law Of Numbers

One of the most important laws in the hiring process is the law of numbers.

This law says that “the more resumes you submit and job interviews you take, the greater your chances of getting hired!”

The law of numbers gives you magical hiring powers because the more recruiters, staffing or placement agencies you submit your resume to … the greater are your chances of getting hired.

So, my advice is, don’t look up to recruiters, staffing / placement agencies instead, look-up to yourself by tapping into your own magical hiring powers!


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]]> http://www.it-career-coach.net/2011/08/18/how-to-tap-into-magical-hiring-powers/feed/ 1 #3 Success Principle: When It Comes To Experience, Beggars Can’t Be Choosers http://www.it-career-coach.net/2010/01/07/3-success-principle-when-it-comes-to-experience-beggars-cant-be-choosers/ http://www.it-career-coach.net/2010/01/07/3-success-principle-when-it-comes-to-experience-beggars-cant-be-choosers/#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:17:52 +0000 ITCareerCoach http://www.it-career-coach.net/?p=2753

Beggars Can't Be Choosers

Beggars Can't Be Choosers

One of the bigger issues facing IT professionals is: “the challenge of building experience“.

This challenge exists because employers still require experience for hiring, even when you need their jobs to build experience!

It’s the classic Catch-22: “chicken or egg which came first challenge” that may be solved through internships or full-time jobs.

However, internships are getting increasingly competitive (Read More …) and employers are still insisting on handson experience before making job offers.

Why Internships Are Hard To Get

For a while, internships helped provide the missing handson experience to IT professionals learning new skills or transitioning careers.

Now internships are hard to come by because employers are refusing the burden of hiring or managing interns. And here is the reason why:

  1. Productivity: interns need to be managed by experienced employees meaning that productive time will be lost to employers.

    Productive time is lost when experienced workers have to show interns the ropes, supervise or assign work to them.

  2. Risk: employers are unwilling to invest in interns because they are more likely to fail at completing their assigned tasks or duties.

    There is also the added risk of redoing the work done by interns when it fails to meet expectations!

  3. Money: employers hesitate to pay interns because there aren’t sure of the immediate economic benefits and they refuse to hire unpaid interns because unpaid interns also cost money and time to supervise or train!

How To Build Experience From Scratch … Without A Job

The challenge facing those that fixate on getting experience through internship programs or full time jobs is that of becoming stumped … when they can’t get either.

Really, when it comes to getting experience, the key is to stay flexible, creative or open minded because full-time jobs and internship programs are getting harder to come by.

How To Build Experience From Scratch By Keeping An Open Mind

  • Focus on Smaller Projects: don’t fixate on finding big projects because you are more unlikely to get big project exposure with little or no experience.

    Start with smaller projects first, because that is where your current background, skills or experience is likely to be needed or appreciated.

  • Build Up Experience Gradually: don’t expect to get a ton of experience in a short time. Instead, spread your efforts at building experience over a longer period of time.

    Overtime, the cumulative effect of all your project based work will begin to show and you will be rewarded for your hard work.

  • Don’t Fixate on Money: don’t be too picky about your income when you’re still building up your experience because the ticket to getting paid more money is more experience!

    Start by building your experience first and then work towards a better compensation afterwards!

  • Don’t Think Too Highly of Yourself: don’t be looking down on smaller projects because you’re thinking they’re beneath you and don’t be fretting over the size of your role, task or opportunity either!

    Always put your best foot forward and build up your experience at every turn. Because that is how to ensure that you qualify for bigger projects or even a full time job!

  • Stay Flexible, Creative and Open Minded: be on the lookout for experience building opportunities that don’t fall under traditional internship or full-time jobs.

    For example, you may signup for unpaid, volunteer work or start your own consulting business (yes, you can consult on almost any subject) or register for Hands On IT Career Training (click here for more information)

Expect that you will always be learning new skills or transitioning careers because of the constantly changing face of technology.

Understand that staying open minded will help you discover more ways to build handson experience without a job or an internship program.


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]]> http://www.it-career-coach.net/2010/01/07/3-success-principle-when-it-comes-to-experience-beggars-cant-be-choosers/feed/ 1 How To Recession Proof Your Career http://www.it-career-coach.net/2008/02/06/how-to-recession-proof-your-career/ http://www.it-career-coach.net/2008/02/06/how-to-recession-proof-your-career/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:22:14 +0000 ITCareerCoach http://www.it-career-coach.net/2008/02/06/how-to-recession-proof-your-career-part-1/

Recession Proof Your Career

Recession Proof Your Career

Is the US economy already in a recession?

Will the weakened US economy affect the global economy leading to a recession in Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia and perhaps other international markets?

Should you really care about a recession and how it will affect your career, job or income?

How About A Refresher Course On Recessions?

If you do not quite realize what a recession looks like, perhaps you can do with this refresher on the last recession to hit the US economy in 2001.

In the beginning, no one seemed to be quite sure that the recession was going to happen. Some pundits felt that the US economy will perhaps weaken but not really experience a full blown recession. Other experts felt that the economy was already in a recession. Then all of a sudden all the pundits and experts and news media outlets seemed to be screaming in unison, we are in a recession!

Fortune 500′s Laying Off Employees In The Thousands

Fortune 500 corporations where laying off employees in the thousands! There where daily announcements of job cuts leading to tens of thousands of full-time employees hitting the streets with their last pay check! Smaller businesses could not be out competed too! If you read your local newspaper, you will see the same daily roll call of local employers laying off workers.

No Jobs for Highly Skilled Workers

The recession got so bad, that even highly skilled and highly qualified employees with post graduate degrees couldn’t get jobs. The news media was awash with news on how the middle class and the white-collar workers could not even get job interviews.

Salary and Wage Cuts

Some of the fortunate white and blue collar workers who still had jobs after all the job cuts and layoff announcements, had to stand in line for salary cuts. Freezes on wage increases and benefits beame common. Vacationing was a taboo word and as if that wasn’t bad enough, the senior, experienced, highly-skilled workers where being offered an option between either working for entry-level wages or getting the dreaded pink slip.

Dog Eat Dog Market

I recall recruiters telling me horror stories of how they would put up a job advertisement and get 500 resumes of highly skilled and qualified people within 24 hours contrasted to how they used to get a few weak resumes per week for their job postings. The irony of the situation, was that the mailboxes of hiring managers and recruiters got filled up within hours of putting up a job posting. Hiring managers and recruiters who couldn’t deal with the flood of resumes literally had to abandon checking their voicemails and inboxes for other covert (black ops) methods of hiring.

An Employers Market

The job market situation worsened as those employers who could still hire, realized that they literally had the whole employment world at their fingertips. Then things got really ugly as employers start getting really picky about resumes, credentials, qualifications, experience, level of expertise and level of technical training of job applicants. I recall the horror story of a techie who had to contact about 10,000 employers to get 2 job interviews and one job offer.

How To Protect Yourself From The Next Recession

Hopefully, you get the picture now. The point of these horror stories is that, yes you should care about the ongoing debate between pundits and experts about whether the US economy is in the beginning or middle of a recession.

The big question is really “what should you do immediately to protect yourself and your loved ones from a national or perhaps global economic recession?“

Here are a few tips recession proofing your career:

  1. Become A Highly Skilled Worker Now

    In a recession, the unskilled technical worker is obviously more at risk than the skilled technical worker. While the highly skilled technical worker may get downsized to a lower paying job, the lesser skilled technical workers are the weakest in the tech food chain and are the ones most at risk of losing their jobs.

  2. Take Your Technical Training Now

    Now is the time to take your technical training and not in the middle of the recession when jobs are difficult to get. First, when you take as much technical training as you can, you reduce the chances that you will be laid off because technical training increases your competitiveness.

    Also, it is much harder to pay for your technical training if you are laid off and in the middle of a job search than while you still have a job and an income. What typically happens to laid-off workers in a recession is that their first instinct is to cut down their expenses and cost of living including out-of-pocket training costs. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really help them because this is the time when they really need to be competitive.

    Note: some employers get picky in a recession and will question your judgment by asking you why you waited until you where laid off to take your technical training seriously.

  3. Polish Your Resume Now

    Now is the time to take your resume and update it with all the latest and greatest technical skills (recruiter speak for cutting edge technology) . If you are in a computer programming career, now is the time to master the latest versions of the most popular software development languages (I have listed them in my “how to learn programming book“).

    If you are a business analyst, now is the time to ensure that you have learnt and mastered full life cycle software development practices. Whether you a tester, project manager, quality assurance analyst, data analyst or database developer, now is the time to look outside the windows or confines of your day to day job and ask yourself the question, “what critical skills am i lacking on my resume?” or “how do I take my career to the next level?.”

    For your sake and the sake of your loved ones, do whatever it takes to gain the critical, leading edge skills that you need to take your career to the next level and then put those skills, experience and training on your resume now, so you are not caught in the deadly grip of a recession.

    Don’t forget to polish up your technical interviewing and job hunting skills and finally do whatever it takes to look after your employer or clients now and they will be more willing to look out for you when you need their help.

Current Training Opportunities

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About The Author

My name is Kingsley Tagbo and I?m a technical expert living in Saint Louis, Missouri. I write about the training, coaching, mentoring and personal development of software development professionals including business analysts, computer programmers, testers, project managers, web designers, data analysts, report writers, software developers and other information technology professionals .

My firm, Exacticity, performs software development consulting and training for clients throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. If you are in need of software development help or training, click here to contact me.


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