Category: HR / Recruiting

Making the best out of your current job

3/7/2019

"I do my job well, then why am I not getting any promotions"

"I do my job just as well, or better than my co-worker. Why is it that my manager always turns to him for...".

If any of this sounds familiar, you should know that you are not alone, and we recommend that you read this article.

Its not all about simply performing your job duties. We all know those common sense things you must do to make a good impression at any job. Show up on time, dress professionally, finish your project ontime, limit absences, thinking about consequences of your actions etc. But these are just the basics. They may ensure you keep your job, but there's more you can do to get ahead. Here are some tips:

Find a Mentor or as Ben Stein says in his article on Yahoo Finance, "Get someone up above you on the ladder. Listen to his war stories. Listen to his boasts. In return, get his advice, get his contacts (contacts are everything in life), get his words to a friend, get him to boost you up the ladder." Ask him for advice on what he/she recommends you do to get ahead

Become Visible. Put Yourself Out There - Staying confined to your cubicle, doing just the basics of your job will not get you ahead. If you really want to move up in your career, get your face out there and make contacts. Seek out people in other parts of your company. Do things you do not have to do. Volunteer to serve on an inter-departmental committee. You will make contacts, learn about new opportunities, and show your commitment to your company and department's vision. Offer to help on a project outside your normal duties that fits with your interests. If you understand where you hope to go in your career, you can identify projects that will help you get there.

Be Reliable. Your manager should always feel they have nothing to worry about, if a task has been assigned to you. If your manager is expecting you to complete a task by next Monday, and you are running into problems, don't wait until next Monday to tell your manager. Tell your manager on Thursday/Friday of prior week issues you are having.

Train, Train, Train. In any career, training helps keep one's skills and stay up-to-date, nowhere is it
more critical than in IT, where new developments are the norm. Training opportunities may be offered through your employer. Even if they are not, its worth spending your own money to develop new skills (this money spent may be tax deductible).

Maintain Positive Attitude A little thing like smile on your face can go a long way. No one likes to work
with people with poor attitude. In order to keep your job, you may not have to go beyond the norm. But if you want to advance, it is best that your superiors see you maintaining a positive attitude, a smile on your face, and steering clear of politics. If you stay focused on the bottom line (success of your project) without stepping over other people, combined with enthusiasm and smile, it will not go un-noticed. Come annual review time, the next promotion may be yours.

Be a Solutions Person Most people have the ability to identify problems. Very few go upto their boss to talk about a problem, and already have a solution that addresses that problem. Having more than one solution to the same problem does not hurt.

Take Initiative Don't wait for your manager to assign you a task. If you see something that needs to be done, and you know you can do it (or its going to be assigned to you anyway), go ahead and bring it up to your manager. Tell him/her that you see a task that needs to be done, and that you would like to do it. On the contrary, do not be 'over ambitious' i.e. do not go ahead and do the task prior to obtaining your manager's approval. It is possible that your manager has some thoughts about that task, or may have already assigned it to someone else (without you knowing). If you take upon yourself to do the task, without your manager's knowledge, this may backfire. So taking initiatives requires some balancing.

And the most important - Be Results Oriented. You were hired to produce results. You can have all of above attributes, but if you are not creating results your were hired for, do not expect to advance. Make sure your definition of results is the same as your manager's definition. If you two are not on the same page, you are not producing results.

I am sure that there are many other attributes to a successful career. I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

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9 Things Great Leaders Say Every Day

10/26/2018

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Saw this article by Bill Murphy Jr. at inc.com and thought is was worth sharing. Some of the highlights of that article below

If you are a leader, manager, or an executive, its always nice to get a refresher on what an effective leader should be "saying"

1. "This is the situation" - People want to know what's going on. Odds are, they'll find out anyway, or worse, fill in the gaps with conjecture...

2. "Here is the plan" - Your team needs to know where you're trying to take them, and how...

3. "What do you need?" - ... people need to know that you want them to succeed... you need to leverage every person's abilities to the maximum extent possible...

4. "Tell me more" - Let people know you're more interested in finding good answers than hearing yourself speak...

5. "Remember our values" - You can't be everywhere at all times... but remind people of your values (of course, that you can actually articulate shared values)

6. "I trust you" - If you can't trust the people on your team, then they shouldn't be on your team. You need to ensure that they understand how much you depend on them.

7. "You can count on me" - If your team can't trust you, then..... So tell them you've got their back, and then work like hell to fulfill the promises you make.

8. "We can do better" - Push your team to a higher standard than they might set for themselves

9. "Let's celebrate!" - Make it a practice to celebrate your wins, both large and small. This can be just to call people out for great work and congratulate them for their milestones

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What value does a good recruiter add

2/2/2018

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Do you percieve working with a recruiter as a 'Value Add' or 'Necessary Evil'?

Like in any field, there are good professionals and not so good ones.

Consider this, when working with a recruiter. A good recruiter should be creating value in your job search process via:

1. Access to jobs that are not advertised or posted
2. In depth knowledge of the client, and company culture, that the recruiter will share with candidates
3. The ability to schedule interviews for candidates, rather than have them lost in a stack of resumes
4. The strong relationships recruiter has built with hiring authorities
5. Recruiter's ability to negotiate the best compensation package or pay rate
6. Feedback from other candidates recruiters have placed with these clients (inside information)
7. Knowledge of the market (who is growing, downsizing, merging)
8. Most job descriptions / requirements are lengthy, and hard to read. A good recruiter has inside knowledge, from experience and relationship with the hiring authorities, and is able to extract 2-3 key requirements from these wordy job descriptions.

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Interview Tips - Preparing for job interviews

12/28/2017

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IIT has posted an article "Before, During and After Interviews". Click here to read the article

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Writing Good Resumes

6/15/2017

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Writing Resumes that Generate Interviews

It may seem like extra work, but have multiple versions of your resume. Create a new version to address the specific job opportunity. Be sure to include specific things in your resume that a job requirement talks about. Then keep track of each version of resume that you submitted.

There are a lot of things that you have done that you are proud of, but if it is not required in a specific job requirement, abbreviate (or completely eliminate) those irrelevant portions of your resume. Do not be emotionally attached to all of your achievements.

Your resume does not need to impress you. It needs to impress your target audience (recruiters and
hiring managers)

If submitting a resume to a recruiter, it is OK if it is long, upto 6-7 pages. A good recruiter knows what a hiring manager wants to see, and he/she may be able to help you with what to keep and what to get rid of

Importantly, do not lie on your resume. We see too many resumes with e.g. 5 jobs, and half the sentences are copied and pasted from one job to another. While it is true that we may do similar tasks in multipe positions, but a copy/paste job is very visible, and a big turn-off for the reader. Be creative, and rewrite the sentences. Remember, efforts put into writing a resume is an investment. Poor investments result in poor returns...

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12 Tips to Screen and Select Temporary IT Staffing Vendors

7/30/2014

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IT Staffing is probably the second or third largest expense in most mid to large size companies (#1 being cost of their internal IT employees). First know the difference… the process for hiring ‘contract/temporary’ staff versus hiring ‘permanent/employee’ staff is very different. Know that a typical vendor will not be an expert at both. Ideally, you want to have 2 separate pools of vendors – one for contract/temporary hiring and one for permanent/employee hiring.

This article focuses on contract/temporary staffing vendors, and may be useful for Procurement and IT departments at all size companies in preparing a RFP for "Temporary Staffing / Staff Augmentation / Contingent Staffing Services". It may also be useful for IT and Corporate Management to learn the Staffing Vendor Selection issues.

From a client perspective – try to understand your vendor's business involving their processes, costs, challenges etc. Once you do, you will be better armed than your competition in order to give your internal departments and vendors relevant data, which will eventually lead to your vendors coming through with the best talent with lower risk.

1. Basic Vendor Screening
   • How long in business (experience counts). Don’t give credit to “individuals” industry experience – you want to know about “company” experience. When hiring temporary staff, company is more important than the individual(s) you deal with. Minimally, the vendor should have been in business 10 years, and gone through a few different economic cycles and recessionary environments.

   • Ask for types of clients they have experience with. Have they worked with clients in an industry similar to yours?

   • Meet some of the vendor staff. See if you have access to vendor’s senior management. Many companies have offshored their initial candidate sourcing. But quality produced by these offshore recruiters is significantly lower than US based recruiters. Are these the people you want to represent your company? What is the turnover among the client facing “account management” and “recruiting” staff.

   • Ask what type of background checks they perform on the candidates. Minimally, they should be verifying US employment eligibility (not hiring illegal aliens) and criminal background checks. See related article “11 tips on hiring and IT Consultant”.

   • Are they adequately insured? Typically, you want to look for Commercial General Liability, Professional Liability (Errors and Omissions), Employers Liability and State mandated Workers Compensation and Disability policies that carry at least $2MM per claim limits.

2. Capacity and Hiring Volume
   • Ask how many consultants do they currently have deployed at clients sites. If you want to be extremely thorough, ask them for some proof (e.g. using 10,000 per month as an average cost per consultant, if their bank statement shows payments of $100K in a month, that means they have approx. 10 consultants).

   • Also ask for a list of new consultants they have placed in the last 12 months. This will help you understand the “volume” of business they do on an active basis. For example, if they have 100 consultants currently, but placed 10 in last 6 months (meaning 90 of them were placed more than 6 months back), that does not demonstrate an “active” recruiting team, just shows long term engagements.

3. Recruiting Process
   • Identify the depth of their process and the quality checkpoints.

   • Ask them types of questions they ask candidates during the recruitment and screening process

   • Ask about their candidate interview process. In IT industry, it is very common for consultants to be located in different states, where an in-person meeting is not feasible. Your vendors should be interviewing these candidates using some video conferencing technology. See related article “11 tips on hiring and IT Consultant”.

   • Ask sources of recruitment (e.g. online job boards, internal databases, referrals etc.). If they are able to substantiate 10%+ hires via referrals, you will have access to candidates not easily available to their competitors.

4. Financial health
   • This is very important as temporary staff gets paid by the staffing services provider, and there are co-employment and other legal issues at stake. There have been cases where you need data from a vendor going several years back. Therefore, you need to deal with a vendor who has good chances of surviving through all kinds of economic cycles.

   • Ask for their Revenues, P&L statement, Balance Sheet etc. A reliable vendor should be profitable, but profit should not be high like 30% of the revenues. Ideal vendors will have profit between 5% to 15% of revenues. Anything less implies “risk” and anything more implies “fat margins”.

   • If you want to be extremely thorough, ask them for some proof. Once again, bank statements can show a lot, but not many vendors will be willing to share this data.

5. Candidate Payment Process
   • Assure and impose process for candidate payments. Regardless of who employs the candidate, the candidate should be getting paid once every two weeks, and no later than once a month. If candidate does not get paid at least once a month, they will leave.

   • In worst case scenario, the vendor should be paying their subcontractors within 5 business days of receiving payment from you, the client organization. (Note: subcontractor is not same as consultant working at your site)

6. Co-Employment Issues
   • What checks are in place, in case a government audit is requested, the client company does not end up being recorded as candidate’s “employer”. There was a case a few years back, when Microsoft fought a battle with government entities on this issue. You want to assure that you are taking appropriate measure to protect your company.

7. Markups and Costs
   • Understand the vendor’s markups and costs (i.e. how much do they markup after all their costs). Know about vendor costs, as each vendor has different structure. Some vendor offer health benefits / paid vacation etc, whereas others do not. Regardless, there will be some costs such as employment taxes, workers compensation and other state mandated statutory costs. Ask them for breakdown of these costs. When doing this analysis, keep in some IT candidates you hire will not be employed by the vendor you deal with, but another subcontractor (which is acceptable and encouraged - see related article “11 tips on hiring and IT Consultant”). Typical markup are in the 25% to 50% ranges, depending on benefits, costs and other variables.

8. Industry affiliations
   • Is the vendor affiliated with an accredited industry staffing association? If yes, you have some confidence that they are aware of trends, laws and best practices. If they are not, you should ask yourself “why”. Why is this vendor not willing to invest in themselves?

   • Ask for technology vendor partnerships e.g. IBM, Oracle, Microsoft etc. While this is not critical, it will help you understand the vendor’s specialties. If they are associated with some technology vendor as a partner, ask if candidates have access to exclusive learning material and training provided by these industry partners

9. Timesheets and Invoicing
   • Ask about their timesheet collection / time reporting and invoicing process. If you, as a client, already use an internal time reporting application, ask the vendor if they will accept this data, which will remove the headache of consultants working at your site of by filling out multiple timesheets.

10. Temp to Perm Conversion
   • Ask the vendor of their policies regarding hiring their consultant as your employee. You should be aware that many times the consultant is not directly employed by the vendor you are dealing with, and the vendor may have “non-solicitation” clauses with their subcontractors. Don’t impose Temp to Perm conversion, as that will limit access to good talent. But it is important for you to know what you are getting.

11. Vendor Pool
   • Ask about their experience when competing with other vendors. Ideally, you as a client, depending on your company size, would want to have between 5 to 25 active vendors. If you have less than 5, you may not be accessing a large enough candidate pool, and if you have more than 25, your vendors are not very motivated to work in an environment with excessive competition. You need to find a balance, and need to work with a vendor that has experience in environment such as your.

12. Post-Sale Follow Up
   • What is the process of vendor follow ups, after they place a consultant?
Good vendors should have a process for consultant and client follow ups, like 30-day, 6 month, and one year? In addition, senior management should meet with you at least once a year, with quarterly in-person meetings with your account manager.

To summarize, identify the pain points of your current job. If having inadequate IT staff is amongst the top 3 reasons of your current challenges, you need to invest time in forming, screening, developing and maintaining relationships with the right staffing partners.

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11 Tips on hiring an IT Consultant

6/30/2014

39 Comments

In the last two weeks I had 6 conversations with our current and prospect clients who discussed their challenges when hiring an IT Consultant. There was one clear theme. They all 'interviewed' the submitted Contractor candidates for technical skills, focusing on the technical nuts and bolts. But 5 out of 6 had poor experiences with the performance after the consultant was on-boarded on the project. Does this sound like you?

You've screened them for Technical, Business and Interpersonal skills. But are you done? There are many other steps you should be considering, including

1 - Do you check how many layers of vendors are there between you (the client) and the actual individual who will be performing services for you. I feel the number should be 1 or 2. I've heard some of my clients voice that the number should only be 1, to which I disagree. No one vendor has access to all Consultant resources, and they frequently work with subcontractors with certain niche skill sets. These vendors have invested time and resources into building a realtionship with, and screening from a large pool of subcontractors. So if you believe that the layer number should be only 1, you may be missing out on a larger talent pool available through the vendor's subcontractor network.

2 - Did you do only conduct Phone interview? We've heard stories of "Bait and Switch" i.e. a client interviews a candidate on the phone, hires the candidate, but a different candidate shows up on their first day. I understand that there are issues interviewing candidates who are located on the opposite side of the country. My in my experience, video interviews using free technology like Skype has proven beneficial. You may use Skype video + telephone simulataneously (disable Skype audio, or putting your PC speakers down), to improve the interview experience. There are other 'pay for' solutions available for video interviews. Which one you use is less important than using one.

3 - Did you give them an Online Technical Test - Again, I have heard stories of "Bait and Switch". One candidate takes the online test, and a different candidate shows on their first day. Considering the scenario that the candidate may be located on the opposite side of the country, what are you supposed to do? I personally like interviewing candidates and asking them questions for which there are no online tests. I talk to them about my project, and explain to them one particular issue I may be having. I look for their thought process, mastery of overall subject. I give them points even if the answer to the problem is incorrect, as long as they show their mastery of the subject matter. Why? I feel anyone can Google any question, and find the correct answer. What I am looking for is not the correct syntax for a line of code, but their ability to understand a problem, and then their thought process on their approach to solving the problem

4 - There have been some projects where my needs were to screen candidates for the 'syntax'. In this case, Id did a screen share with them - and showed them our code. And them I let them control my PC. What I was looking for was to see how quickly they can grasp the code. Then I asked them for suggestions on improving the code. I felt this process assessed their critical thinking, and problem solving skills.

5 - Where's their immediate family / spouse / children etc. Does their spouse work? What I learnt was most of us are not single and have some attachments to some people in our lives. I've noticed that when you remove people from these attachments, and the distance is large, there is turnover. So this is something I am always curious about

6 - Don't waste time on Reference checks - I feel 7 out of 10 candidates give references of people who will give them good references. So if you want to ask a reference "How were they at their job" expect an answer "Great". While I still see a value of reference checks, but getting accurate references can sometimes be very difficult. Sometimes insisting on this has resulted in me loosing some good candidates, where my competition hired that resource before I could finish reference checks. So if I have a need to check references, and I absolutely can't do without it, I would look at employers/projects where a candidate may have worked, and do my independent investigation on the candidate, calling people from my personal network, rather than relying on a reference provided by a candidate.

7 - Impose minimum wage rate to the actual assigned personnel working on your site. If the vendor tells you a bill rate of $100/hr. but is paying the assigned personnel $25/hr., you can bet that you will not have that candidate working at your site for too long. The candidate will soon find another opportunity that pays them a fair market value. Most consultants are fairly well educated about their market value, but sometimes circumstances lead them to 'accept' your assignment, only to see them leave within a couple of months. So I like to see in my contracts that the assigned personnel is getting paid a fair market value, which could vary between 40% to 80% of the bill rate (depending on layers, and whether you are hiring a Deloitte consultant or an IIT Consultant). I wouldn't impose on vendors a number like 80%, but different vendors have different costs. But sometimes I do ask them about their costs, and what percent of bill rate goes to the assigned personnel. My vendors work hard, and they deserve to make a living, and as long as I get a fair rate, I just want them not to abuse the assigned personnel.

8 - Ask candidates if they have any planned time off / vacations. This area is sometimes overlooked. Imagine hiring a consultant, who has a wedding planned right when you have your major roll out planned.

9 - Honestly identify who you 'really' are - Is your company a Tier-1 player, Tier-2 player etc... hire a consultant at the same level as you.. Lets say you are Google or Apple, then you can afford to hire a Tier-1 consultant. But if you are not, and want longevity in assigned personnel, get realistic about your expectations. I feel you can hire mediocre people, put them in a good environment with excellent processes, and receive 'superior' work. So invest in your process, culture and environment, and hire personnel that are a good fit. And in many circumstances, superstars are not a good fit in various environments.

10 - Don't hire friends / family / close referrals.. They are hard to fire.. I don't think I need to comment more on this subject

11 - Give interviewed candidate a takeaway question, and ask them to email you back with a response (don't propose a deadline) (see how soon they respond, and look at quality of their written and their analytical skills further)

I am sure there are many other ideas out there, to improve this process further. Do you have one?

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Wages across various professions - Wall Street Journal blog referencing US Department of Labor Wage Data

4/2/2014

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Checkout this interesting article on WSJ (published 4/1/2014) by clicking here.

Below are some of the lines that I found interesting

The average U.S. orthodontist earns $196,270. The average CEO makes $178,400.
One out of every 17 jobs in America is held by a retail salesperson or a cashier
Of the 10 largest occupations, only registered nurses earn more than the national average for all occupations
Operators of nuclear-power reactors earn an average of $78,410 annually

While interesting, I am not sure how "relevant" this article is. The data seems to include people working all over US, in companies of all sizes. I think, a more relevant article would show data by regions (e.g. NYC, Long Island, Upstate NY, Western NY etc.), and have breakdown by employer industry and employer size.

Another observation - "One out of every 17 jobs in America is held by a retail salesperson or a cashier". Considering "online shopping" is replacing "mall shopping", this should imply that retail sales jobs at brick and mortar stores are shrinking.... Doesn't this mean fewer after-school jobs for my kids and their kids? I guess that my kids will be forced to work in an office environment, processing online retail orders, instead of interacting face to face with a real customer in a store. So does it mean that future generations are going to grown up with inter-personal skills that are not at par with my generation.... My guess is yes as I already see kids "prefer" to text/tweet than talk... So long to the most popular line that 75%+ resumes include today "Excellent communication and inter-personal skills", to be replaced by "Excellent tweeting and texting skills" ;-)

What do you think?

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State of Job Market for IT Consultants - January 2014

1/30/2014

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Happy New Year. We are optimistic that 2014 will be a good year, for both job seekers and employers.

While the market conditions are improving, in our opinion, the pendulum of "client market" Vs. "candidate market" to stay evenly balanced. While Dot Com days were "candidate market" and recent recession between 2008-2011 was a "client market", last few years have been better for job seekers, positioning the IT job market to a more balanced state.

Based on data we have seen, flow of job openings and conversations with our numerous clients, it appears that 2014 will see a slight increase in hiring for IT jobs in the Northeast US.

So what does that mean for you?

Consultants / Job Seekers

Number of available jobs should grow. January is typically a 'planning' time where clients are creating project plans and budgets. This begins to translate to actual job openings beginning in February.
Rates / salaries for 'commodity' skills sets are expected to remain flat, compared to 2013. Certain 'non commodity' skill sets may see slight increase.

Employers:

Selection of available candidates will go down.
Time that candidates will stay available on market will reduce.
Cost of hiring / salaries / consulting rates will be flat to modestly higher

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NYS OGS posts On-Boarding Data/Results of 1st 50 HBITS Task Orders

3/2/2013

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NYS OGS posted on their website On-Boarding Data / Results of first fifty HBITS (Hourly Based IT Services Contract) task orders.

This data indicates that IIT was one of the TOP performers. To view this data, click here

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<<Previous

Making the best out of your current job

9 Things Great Leaders Say Every Day

What value does a good recruiter add

Interview Tips - Preparing for job interviews

Writing Good Resumes

12 Tips to Screen and Select Temporary IT Staffing Vendors

11 Tips on hiring an IT Consultant

Wages across various professions - Wall Street Journal blog referencing US Department of Labor Wage Data

State of Job Market for IT Consultants - January 2014

NYS OGS posts On-Boarding Data/Results of 1st 50 HBITS Task Orders

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