4 Tips For Finding The Right IT Recruiter

If you are an IT professional that is interested in advancing your career I highly recommend partnering with two or three Technical Recruiters to assist you with achieving your goals. Some of the most important things to evaluate when choosing a recruiter include; years of recruiting experience, company tenure, the types of positions a recruiting firm specializes in, and recommendations from other IT professionals. 

When learning any skill the more practice you have the better you will be. Every position, client, and candidate combination I work with pose a new set of challenges. This is part of what makes recruiting exciting. The more years’ experience the recruiter has the smoother the process should be. It takes a minimum of five years IT Recruiting experience to truly get a grasp on the technology needed for technical positons and to know how to handle the numerous scenarios that occur during the hiring cycle.

 A recruiter’s tenure with their company will also be a key indicator of their success. Working for recruiting agencies can be tough, so sometimes you will see where a recruiter has moved around a few times to find a good home, but if there have a lot of short stints that are less than one year that is probably a reflection of their performance on the job.

The majority of recruiting firms typically have a sector of business they specialize in. A lot of the national recruiting firms will work with large companies because they have signed agreements to service their accounts nationally. My firm is a boutique style firm that predominantly services local businesses that are small to mid-sized. We work on very few VMS (infamous black-hole for resumes) positions unless we have manager contact. This tends to limit our openings with Fortune 500 companies significantly. Typically you will know what type of work environment suits you best. This is an important factor to consider when choosing a recruiter, otherwise you will receive positions that do not fit for your desired culture and work environment.

One of the easiest ways to find a quality recruiter is to ask the people around you. Nearly everyone in IT has been placed into one of their positions at some point in their career. The best recruiters will have a picture on LinkedIn, a sizable amount of connections, and should have recommendations.   

The best recruiters will pro-actively seek you out and want to discuss your long-term goals. If they don't have an immediate position in mind for you, they will wait to place you at your ideal position sometime down the road instead of pushing you into a position that is not aligned with your long term goals. It is also very handy to reach out to your selected recruiters from time to time to see what the market is doing. What technology is hot? Where are salaries headed for my skill set? What should I learn next? Utilize your recruiter to maximize your knowledge on the market and steer your career in the right direction. Hopefully these tips will help with you locate your ideal career agent.