Standing out from the crowd as an IT professional isn't always easy. Here are a few quick pointers that will help you get to become an all-terrain IT Pro.
Nowadays, it is not enough to become an IT consultant, you need to stand out from the crowd to succeed in your career.
Here are a few quick pointers that will help succeed in your career path as an IT consultant.
Become an All-Terrain IT Pro
1#Reach a good level of experience
Cultivating a solid
background at the end of your studies will allow you to differentiate yourself
from candidates who are either too junior or too senior and therefore too
expensive. Five to ten years of experience is usually the sweet spot in terms
of employability.
2# Forget hyperspecialisation
Locking yourself into a skill and mastering it from start to finish may seem like the right way to go in order to differentiate yourself from overly generalist profiles. And in fact, there is nothing wrong with specialisation. It can be a solid career strategy. However, in the world IT —and especially if you are an independent contractor— it pays to adopt a multi-specialization approach. You don’t have to confine yourself to a single language or skill. You should not be satisfied with simple expertise either. Aim for “mastery”. Recruiters will move on quickly if mastery is not conveyed through your CV and profile.
3#Certify yourself
Having the right certification for the right position is a good approach. Certifications worth pursuing include Microsoft certifications, Ninja, Dev Star, and Code Crazy.
4# Soft Skills
Mastering the technical part of a position is not everything. Your personality will also weigh in the balance. Recruiters are looking for candidates who can be at the same time pleasant, knowledgable, committed, brilliant, altruistic, punctual, cunning, eloquent, humble, methodical, polite… Whether it is negotiation or communication, you need to master your soft skills as well. These are the essential soft skills every IT professional should have.
5# Compensation
Sensitive topic, but be realistic with your salary expectations and be ready to lower them a bit is the market calls for it. Especially considering the economic uncertainty brought about by the o pandemic.
Recruitment: 3 major mistakes to avoid when hiring an IT contractor or freelancer: Hiring the wrong freelancers can quickly derail your project...
What are the top 3 mistakes that you should avoid when hiring an IT contractor? Working with IT contractors keeps getting more and more popular in the world of work. And for good reason: including freelancers in your projects can bring great benefits to your whole team.
IT contractors are a workforce that is often very qualified and cost-effective. Especially in the context of a one-off increase in company activity or under special circumstances such as the Covid-19 pandemic. However, hiring the wrong freelancers can quickly derail your project and leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.
Need advice on how to start or develop your freelance consulting business in tech or IT? Need to start a new permanent or freelance assignment? Join Mindquest and get support from our team of experts.
Recruitment: 3 major mistakes to avoid when hiring an IT contractor or freelancer:
1st of top mistakes to avoid when hiring: Not vetting the consultant’s qualifications thoroughly
You need to make sure that a consultant recruited for a particular skill possesses it and in a way that is well-suited to the reality of your project.
To protect yourself against this difficulty; which can cause harm, both financially and in terms of reputation; it is necessary that you thoroughly vet the veracity of the freelancer’s claims and assess the true depth of their technical skills. Start with these questions:
Has the freelancer provided a list of previous relevant projects? Have you verified their references?
Has the freelancer justified their skills with a document or portfolio of any kind?
During the interview process, you must ask pointed questions about the candidate’s area of expertise. It will quickly reveal the reality of the situation.
2nd mistake : Hiring a Consultant who does not align with your company’s values and culture
In order to avoid divergences in operating methods, which can lead to confusion and frictions within the teams; it is preferable to choose a freelancer who aligns with the company’s values. Here, you should pay special attention to the candidate’s softer skills. As these are the ones that will determine how well the contractor fits into your existing team.
The same goes for ensuring that the consultant aligns and complies with legal and confidentiality requirements. Make sure they fully understand your confidentiality policies and non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so that they unknowingly break the contract.
3rd mistake: Setting an inappropriate remuneration rate
The third most common mistake made by companies looking to hire a freelancer is to offer a pay rate that is not in line with market standards. Whether it is higher or lower than what is normally charged in that particular field of expertise and for that level of seniority.
If you set a daily remuneration that is too high; you will end up paying more than what you need to. Plus, your collaboration with the contractor may not be sustainable in the long term.
On the contrary, if you set a remuneration that is too low; you will have difficulty attracting good candidates with a suitable level of experience.
Companies not used to working with freelancers are precisely the ones that usually make these mistakes. Keep in mind that collaboration should be seen from a balanced angle and in a “win-win” relationship. Only then will the collaboration be efficient in the long term.
Embracing AI Trends in IT Recruitment
Lat but not least, the implementation of AI in recruitment practices has the potential to revolutionize how companies identify, engage, and hire IT contractors.
Here’s a closer look at how embracing AI trends can enhance your IT recruitment processes:
Streamline candidate vetting processes.
Analyze resumes for relevant skills and experience.
Predict candidate success based on data analytics.
Enhance decision-making during the hiring process.
By embracing these AI trends in IT recruitment, companies can not only stay competitive but also gain a significant edge in identifying and securing the best-fit IT contractors for their projects.
Mindquest, with its commitment to staying at the forefront of industry advancements, ensures that your recruitment strategies align with the latest AI innovations, facilitating a smoother and more effective hiring process.
Would you like to find out more about our recruitment service for IT consultants? Post your requirements now, or find out more about our job offers directly on our Mindquest platform!
In the rapidly evolving landscape of IT, hiring and retaining top talent continue to pose challenges for modern enterprises. Also, the ongoing skills deficit, exacerbated by the fast-changing technological terrain, necessitates a strategic edge for IT leaders and HR managers. Therefore, choosing the right recruiting partner remains crucial. Explore our updated tips for selecting the ideal partner to address your current IT talent needs.
Need advice on how to start or develop your consulting business in tech or IT? Join Mindquest and get support from our team of experts.
Choosing the Right Recruiting Partner: The impact of technology
Digital transformation permeates every aspect of modern business, including recruiting and human resources. When assessing a staffing firm, pay attention to how it leverages technology to enhance operations and deliver superior service. In today’s context, it’s essential for an IT staffing firm to embrace technology fully.
Consider advancements in AI tools, which now play a pivotal role in expediting the recruitment process. AI enables swift processing of extensive candidate data, including previous roles, areas of expertise, and preferences. In a field where time is critical, the ability to rapidly match candidate profiles with company requirements is a decisive advantage.
Dedicated Support and Expertise: A Dual Perspective
Most staffing firms traditionally combine client management and candidate identification into a single role. However, the best firms take a dual-perspective approach. One team manages client interactions, gathering position details and requirements, while another team focuses on identifying the right candidate. This separation enhances efficiency, speed, and the overall quality of work. It allows both client management and candidate sourcing to offer more personalized, dedicated support to hiring companies.
In the current landscape, with the increasing complexity of roles and the ongoing talent shortage, the need for dedicated expertise has never been more apparent. Specialized skills required for a position can vary significantly based on the field and seniority. To address this, leading staffing firms structure their teams by specialization, ensuring staff members are proficient in the specific areas of expertise required for a given vacancy.
Innovation through Data and Insights: Adapting to the Current Market
The third piece of the puzzle is data. As it happens
in any other industry, quality insights are at the heart of a successful IT
hiring strategy. Look for recruiters who know how to make the most of the data
they come by with and mine.
Moreover, being in permanent contact with organisations and IT professionals allows the best staffing firms to develop a deep and well-rounded understanding of current industry trends. These firms have a good sense of the challenges and needs driving mid- and long-term goals for clients and candidates. In addition to this, data-savvy recruiters can provide you with a more qualitative level of market intelligence – like the skill requirements and salary for a typical position – from which to derive actionable insights.
Navigating the Dynamic IT Landscape
In conclusion, the challenges of hiring in IT persist, but the strategies for overcoming them have evolved. Choosing a recruiting partner is more critical than ever, with technology, dedicated support, and data-driven insights at the forefront. As the IT landscape continues to shift, selecting a partner who adapts and innovates ensures your organization secures the top-tier talent needed to thrive in the dynamic IT market.
Explore how Mindquest can be your strategic IT recruiting partner.
Find and assembling the right security experts & security team is proving even more difficult than it usually is already.
How to find the good security experts? About a third of the world’s population is estimated to be currently under confinement to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. As a result, businesses across the globe are resorting to remote work to continue operations in those areas where that is possible. This is adding unprecedented amounts of stress to already understaffed IT departments.
CIOs and other IT leaders find themselves racing against the clock to adapt the whole company’s infrastructure to a work-from-home scenario while tackling their biggest concern: cybersecurity. And for good reason – threats are increasing exponentially.
But assembling the right security experts & security team is proving even more difficult than it usually is already.
Security threatsgive no quarter
Hackers are certainly not going to close shop because of a tiny microorganism. If anything, they are using it to their benefit. For instance; phishing emails; were already the most common form of attack experienced by organisations. But the past days have seen a great surge in attacks trying to lure employees into clicking on an email sent by “their boss” or containing virus-related information.
Among the most reprehensible of attacks are those being experienced by health and medical institutions. Not even the World Health Organisation was spared, targeted earlier last month by a false-domain attack aimed at stealing passwords from agency staffers. The situation is so dire that a group of 400 security experts from international giants like Microsoft and Amazon has volunteered to fight hacking tied to the coronavirus.
Yet that is not the main issue. The pressure being put on enterprise networks is quickly revealing system vulnerabilities. And especially for those companies least used to distributed work and that rely too much on local networks. In short, the soaring numbers of employees working from home are finally making most decision-makers aware of what IT leaders have been warning us for a while. The business world’s generalised lack of a comprehensive security policy and employee awareness training.
Although effective measures like VPNs have gained adoption in recent years, problems generated by shadow IT and BYOD remain largely unresolved. Many staffers will be accessing company resources through their personal devices and networks in the coming weeks. Multiplying exponentially the potential points of entry for attackers.
Experts are becoming even harder to find
In turn, this increase in cyberthreats is exacerbating the skill and personnel shortages the security sector was already experiencing. According to a recent study by ISC, the global security industry lacks more than 4 million security professionals. The world’s security workforce would need to grow 145% yearly just to meet the demand for skilled talent.
The shortage of skills impacts some of the most critical roles within IT security. Such as those related to identifying threats or patching and updating vulnerable systems. However, the deficit is more acute in areas tied to rapidly emerging or evolving technologies. For instance, and in this WFH crisis more than ever, security in multi-cloud environments is key. Unfortunately, few organisations have dedicated cloud security experts or proper encryption protocols for their data in the cloud.
Not surprisingly, the cost of security expertise has also become a problem as the lack of skilled talent drives wages up. And so the vicious circle goes.
Hire or outsource?
With everyone battling over the same security experts. Defining a solid talent strategy and identifying the right partners can make the difference; between a multi-million breach and your department’s success.
Regarding your talent strategy, you first need to decide whether you want to expand your team or rely on the temporary help of consultants. If you had been planning on bringing more people on board for some time, this might be the perfect time to create new permanent positions or fill vacant ones.
On the other hand, calling on a freelancer will most likely allow you to speed up the selection process and provide a quicker response to the crisis. Working with an independent contractor can also help you secure exactly the skills you need at a more competitive cost. As the freelance talent market tends to be more agile and flexible.
No matter which option you are leaning towards, don’t hesitate to seek the guidance and help of talent experts. Time is of the essence in the cybersecurity wars. Partnering up with the right IT staffing specialists will not only allow you to access the best talent; it will help you secure it before another company closes the deal.
The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. How to manage your activity?
AI for recruitment. AI penetrates all areas and promises tremendous gains in efficiency, speed and performance. There has been a lot of media buzz lately around its recruitment applications. What long-term impact will AI have on the staffing industry? Used well, these new technological tools will allow recruiters to focus on their added value and; paradoxically; make the recruitment of the future more human.
AI promises in automation
For the past twenty
years, we have witnessed an ever more extensive and efficient automation of the
recruitment processes. These developments are built upon extremely complex
analytical models. Defining and anticipating the skills that the company needs,
identifying the most suitable talent and ranking candidates based on precise
job criteria are processes that require taking into account many variables.
Moreover, through its ability to consider contextual elements as rich as they are varied, artificial intelligence promises to make this level of automation a reality. In a field like IT recruitment, where time is of the essence, being able to quickly match candidate profile with company requirements is a decisive advantage.
Artificial intelligence in IT recruitment
In the recruitment of IT freelancers, for example, AI makes it possible to process very quickly huge volumes of data linked to the profiles of candidates. Previous gigs, areas of expertise and preferred sectors, years of experience… But also exogenous data such as the candidate’s place of residence and travel times. AI also makes it possible to analyze the quality and interest of the positions offered. Helping identify the types of projects that are most promising in terms of career development.
Furthermore, considering elements linked to quality of life or to the characteristics of the offer maximises the chances of success of an investment; by making it possible to identify profiles with high potential and that are likely to be interested in the mission.
AI for IT recruitment: Towards an uberisation of recruitment?
AI’s capabilities are making great strides in matching supply and demand. Hence the emergence of fully automated solutions, of players who “platformise” recruitment. Which bring about a vision of recruitment as an almost exact science.
This vision would like technology to replace human appreciation entirely; thus putting an end to the recruitment profession and replacing it with ever more sophisticated and intelligent algorithms.
But this vision is implausible. Recruiting is not just a science, it is also an art.
IT recruitment: the human touch
In recruitment more than in any other field, the human being occupies by definition a central role. Soft skills, matching the values and culture of the company, and compatibility with other team members… They are all key factors for a successful placement. As much as the level of education, years of experience, references or results obtained in a technical test. And yet, these are all parameters that an artificial intelligence can never assess as well as a human.
Even more so when we talk about recruiting for high-level positions. It is hard to imagine choosing a CIO or an Innovation Director via a fully automated process. Neither the candidate nor the company would subscribe to it.
From artificial
intelligence to augmented intelligence
It is really a
question of going beyond the dialectic “all digital vs. all human”.
Recruitment professions must integrate AI and make the most of it as a tool for
human decision-making. And thus allow the business to refocus on its true added
value.
AI involves a real qualitative leap, reducing the risk of error and saving unprecedented amounts of time. AI will certainly replace humans on certain tasks, but mainly in repetitive and boring tasks. It increases the performance of the recruiter by allowing faster and more targeted searches. And thus optimizes time and communication with the candidate. Far from dehumanizing the relationship, AI, on the contrary, allows us to focus even more on humans.
Artificial intelligence for recruiter: the next level
This is good news for recruiters. These new tools will allow the profession to gain new levels of recognition, with richer and more interesting daily tasks. Also, it will give us the ability to understand the needs of the company in terms of skills. To create a stronger connection with the candidates. As well as to understand the aspirations and constraints of each party involved.
It is also and above all good news for candidates. Because recruiters will be able to devote more time to them and offer them a better experience. Firms will be able to enrich their service offer with more support. Especially in the key stages of onboarding and taking of office of the selected candidate.
It is, therefore, the human-machine association, the combination of artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence. That will revolutionise recruitment and put people back at the heart of the processes. We may no longer be talking about Artificial Intelligence, but augmented Intelligence.
