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Identifying Top Talent In IT
By Joe Papeo
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-11-27
It's still possible - Even in this highly competitive market.
No reference checks, no technical evaluation, not a single referral, and doesn't come from a pedigree background; but has JAVA on his resume! In the late 90s, this candidate would be placed.
And at the end of the work day we would pat ourselves on the back for what was supposedly considered as doing a great job in identifying an excellent candidate. Fast forward approximately 10 years - welcome to the modern-day job market. Where none of what worked almost a decade ago will work now. So how do you identify the top talent in the market today? The answer may be simpler then one might think.
In truth, recruiters are now being forced to go back to their roots - becoming recruiters again. 10 years ago, someone in recruiting, working on requirements as part of an IT Staff Augmentation outfit may have done well for themselves. Back then, the old way required a recruiter to find someone with some skills - usually not all the skills - for the client requirement. If you came close, you probably made the placement. Today, only the truly exceptional recruiters are still in this business. Recruiting is much more than finding a semi-close match to a requirement.
People may have noticed how many Recruiters from 5 or 10 years ago are not in the business anymore. Most people who called themselves ‘recruiters' were getting easy placements. Then as the industry matured, most recruiters discovered that sitting on a job board, beating another recruiter to the punch and moving on to the next transaction does not work anymore. Recruiting is a process and while this process takes a short time to learn, it takes nearly a career to master. A good Recruiter is always better at the task today than he was yesterday, learning and growing everyday, to the point where he or she can quickly identify the right candidate for the right requirement in a scarce IT job market.
Understanding what candidates to source for
So how can a recruiter become effective at sourcing for candidates? The first and most important step is knowing and understanding your client; going beyond public information such as company news, albeit this information is important as well. This includes such factors as operational procedures and corporate culture. While these items are not something learned immediately, over time, a recruiter or a combined sales and recruiting outfit can learn more about this from everyday interactions with the client , the managers, and current and previous consultants who have worked with them. Learning how to "profile" a client is a critical aspect to providing candidates who accurately match the soft and hard skills required.
Recruiting the right candidate has always been and will continue to be a struggle. However, as you continue, the struggle gets easier. There are many aspects to recruiting the right candidate including networking, referrals, job boards, traditional headhunting and vendor relationships, and even more aspects to identifying the top candidates including reference checks, technical evaluations and effective candidate screening.
Where and how to source for candidates
A recruiter's candidate network is his lifeline and the best recruiters will always have an extensive and trustworthy candidate network. Sometimes, it can take years to effectively build a network but over time, as your network establishes itself, the network will start producing some of the best candidates. When you speak with a new candidate generated from this network, a recruiter must be able to effectively determine if this is the type of person a relationship can and should be forged with.. If so, then a recruiter should have no problems placing them.
Vendor relationships are another tool that can be considered part of your network. A solid group of trustworthy vendors can be a big asset for a recruiter. Like direct candidates in your network, a recruiter must be able to effectively evaluate vendors to determine if their criteria for candidates meet specific guidelines. When they do, a good vendor relationship is an effective piece to a recruiter's success.
While there are other methods for generating candidates, none are more effective than networking. Job boards might work as another means of candidate generation, but knowledgeable recruiters know not to rely primarily on these job boards but to use them as a tool to fill in the gaps in a recruiter's network, whereas no recruiter will always have the right candidate for every position they work on. A simple search on a job board can help in obtaining those additional candidates.
Evaluating the right fit for Candidates
Whether someone is from inside or outside your own network, recruiters must take certain action steps to ensure that the candidate they are presenting is well qualified. Just because the candidate's resume looks good does not mean they are necessarily a good candidate. One action a recruiter must take is a technical evaluation. In my organization and especially from a personal standpoint, every candidate that comes past my desk goes through personal technical interviews, a computer-based technical evaluation or both. A computer-based test is effective because it determines a candidates overall knowledge of a specific technology and is then measured against every other person nationally who has taken that test.
In the case of evaluating a candidate for a specific client position, a personal technical evaluation can be more effective. A major advantage to having a strong candidate network is that you usually have someone working at that client site with a similar skill set. If your company has a significant number of resources at a client site, you may have one of your own employees who specifically works within the group the candidate is being presented to. In this situation a personal evaluation is the most effective evaluation a candidate can receive. Not only can the candidate be evaluated on a technology, but they can be evaluated based on how that technology is used in that department.
Conclusion
When everything is said and done, the more a recruiter understands a candidate, the better. This understanding includes a broad spectrum of factors including the people they associated with, the companies they worked for, how they faired on evaluations, the good and bad things their references said and the better candidates that can be identified. Overall, recruiting is not about identifying candidates, but identifying top candidates.
… and most importantly, identifying top candidates will keep your clients happy at the end.
About the Author:
Joe Papeo is the Recruiting Manager at DATA Inc. and has been working in the IT Staffing industry for 11 years. He has worked at small niche firms as well as large corporations where he has won national awards for his work in the industry. Joe can be reached through the DATA Inc. website at www.datainc.biz
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