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7 Tips to Start Your IT Career Search

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The start of a new year is a great time to start a new job. This may include changing your career to IT.

Starting your IT career search can be challenging. You may be unsure of which path to take or how to enter the field.

Developing a plan to start your IT career search helps you map the steps to reach your goals. Working with a staffing agency that specializes in IT also can be beneficial.

Follow these guidelines to start your IT career search today.

1. Determine Your Career Goals

Understand the type of IT career you want before you begin looking for roles.

  • Focus on your dream job.
  • Include the type, size, and culture of the company you want to work for.
  • Think about the salary, benefits, and perks you desire.
  • Determine the types of jobs that can lead to your dream role.
  • Focus your search on jobs that align with your career path.

2. Update Your LinkedIn Profile

Show you have the qualifications needed for the IT position you desire.

  • Ensure your contact information, profile statement, and profile summary are current.
  • Include your relevant education, skills, work history, and certification.
  • Request endorsements from previous supervisors, managers, colleagues, and coworkers.

3. Create a Digital Portfolio

Use your digital portfolio to display examples of your work.

  • Showcase how your projects benefitted an employer.
  • Include quantitative results from your work.
  • Demonstrate how your skills can add value for your next employer.
  • Include a link to your digital portfolio in your resume and LinkedIn profile.

4. Network

Set up informational interviews with technologists in roles similar to the one you desire.

  • Connect with relevant IT professionals through LinkedIn.
  • Ask if you can talk for 30 minutes about their job, company, and career path.
  • Develop three to five questions that can guide your IT career search.
  • Determine whether a position may be right for you.
  • Find out whether the technologist knows of any job openings or can introduce you to a hiring manager.

5. Apply for Jobs

Customize your resume to the role you desire.

  • Include your relevant education, skills, experience, and certifications.
  • Share your relevant achievements, quantifiable results, and awards.
  • Use keywords from the job posting throughout your resume.
  • Show you are well-qualified for the position.

6. Customize Your Cover Letter

Your cover letter provides information not included in your resume.

  • Discuss whether you are beginning or changing your career.
  • Explain any gaps in your work experience.
  • Show how your qualifications make you stand out from other applicants.
  • Clarify why you are the best candidate for the position.

7. Practice Interviewing

Engage in mock interviews.

  • Research the company you want to work for.
  • Practice answering interview questions.
  • Prepare questions for the interviewer.
  • Monitor your body language.

Partner with an IT Staffing Agency

Partner with a recruiter from RightStone for guidance throughout your IT career search. Visit our job board today.

Tech Industry Outlook for 2023

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The coronavirus pandemic significantly impacted the tech industry for the past few years. Although the use of technology increased in many areas, such as videoconferencing platforms, it also decreased in other areas, such as the Internet of Things (IoT).

Understanding the tech industry outlook for 2023 provides insight into how your industry and company may be affected. This lets you strategically plan and hire employees in line with your expectations.

Learn about the tech industry outlook for 2023 and how your company may be impacted.

Internet of Things

IoT Analytics estimates there will be 30 billion IoT device connections by 2025. This averages out to be four IoT devices per person.

International Data Corporation’s 2020 Worldwide Internet of Things Spending Guide estimates global IoT spending will attain a compound annual growth rate of 11.3% during the 2020 to 2024 forecast period. This data indicates the steadily growing use of IoT.

IoT devices are popular in the form of connected lights, smart refrigerators, and other items in smart homes. Smart glass, activity trackers, and other wearable technologies also use IoT applications. Urban safety monitoring, traffic and waste management, and water distribution in smart cities use IoT technologies as well.

Security is the top concern for IoT-connected devices. Hacks, data breaches, information leakage, and other attacks are common. Because IoT-connected devices do not come with security features, these features must be added.

5G Networks

5G networks offer faster transmission speed than almost all home broadband. As a result, what used to be done only through computers can now be done with smart devices.

IoT devices can interconnect more smoothly using 5G networks than 4G networks. Also, 5G networks let drones, autonomous cars, and smart cities carry out more complex operations than 4G networks.

Currently, 5G networks are available only in certain countries and areas. Also, greater bandwidth means less coverage and more signal drops. Additional cells must be built to support the network’s high speed. Plus, the networks may be unable to penetrate walls and other materials.

Chatbots

Chatbots simulate conversations with humans. These bots use artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) to provide customer service for companies.

Chatbots are being used by more businesses than before. These bots serve as responsive, intelligent, conversational agents. They significantly decrease the amount of time and money spent on answering questions and filling customer requests.

Chatbot development is impacted by developments in NLP. As a result, customers may become frustrated when chatbots give limited or repetitive answers.

Chatbots with robust and complex functionalities are costly. Therefore, companies may not have the budget to use them as customer service tools.

The IT Labor Market Will Be Tight

If you need help hiring tech professionals, include RightStone in your process. Find out more today.

Here’s Why Gen Z Is Having Difficulty in This Job Market

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According to a July 2022 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, approximately 41% of graduates aged 22 to 27 were employed in jobs that did not require a college degree. Many of these graduates are trying to find their fit in the workforce or reevaluate their career goals.

The graduates’ decisions to take on low-paying jobs could impact their long-term financial health. This may have economic consequences for the entire United States.

Discover why Gen Z is having challenges entering the job market and the potential long-term impact on the US economy.

The Pandemic and Gen Z

The coronavirus pandemic caused significant setbacks for Gen Z. The pandemic impacted the time in their lives when Gen Z should be making their marks on the world.

The pandemic-related recession caused Gen Z to struggle to find high-quality jobs. Also, the shift to remote work decreased these graduates’ abilities to make professional connections and find careers that match their skills and interests.

Underemployment and Gen Z

Gen Z’s growing underemployment rate means it likely will take longer for the group to generate wealth. Low-wage employment typically leads to a cycle of turnover and replacement. This moves the labor market to an unfavorable equilibrium.

Underemployed workers typically see slow increases in earnings throughout their careers. The main reason is that low-wage employees work in fields that do not focus on skill development for higher-paying jobs. As a result, not having Gen Z work in jobs that require highly developed skills will adversely impact the long-term growth of the US economy.

Teenage Employees, Millennials, and Gen Z

Teenagers are willing to work for lower wages than college graduates. This makes teenage job seekers more attractive to employers than Gen Z. As a result, more jobs have been filled by teenagers than by Gen Z in the past few years.

Employers who were paying higher wages when the pandemic began preferred to hire millennials over Gen Z. Many millennials had more developed skills and work experience than Gen Z. As a result, more jobs were filled by millennials than by Gen Z in the past few years.

Want Help Filling Your Vacancies?

Partner with RightStone for help filling your IT vacancies. Get started today.

What’s New in IT Recruiting?

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According to the September 2022 CompTIA Tech Jobs Report, the IT unemployment rate was at 2.3% in August. The increase from 1.7% the previous month likely was because the overall US unemployment rate increased. Also, large IT companies laid off employees. Plus, many IT employees left their jobs for other opportunities.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) Economic News Release for August 2022 showed 3.97 million available IT jobs. Like the past 24 months, this trend is expected to continue.

As a result, the competition for IT talent should remain tight. Fortunately, partnering with an IT staffing firm can ease recruiting concerns.

Learn more about the current state of IT recruiting and how RightStone can alleviate your IT staffing concerns.

IT Job Openings

CompTIA stated that the IT industry added 175,700 jobs so far in 2022. This is 46% ahead of last year’s job gains.

Job postings for IT roles were slightly under 320,000 in August. Thirty-one percent of these jobs were in artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things, data analytics, and automation software.

IT job postings from January through August 2022 increased by 56% over last year. This shows remote work likely will remain semi-permanent.

Slower IT Hiring

The pace of IT hiring likely will slow due to the recession. CIOs are unsure of how the economic downturn may impact their bottom line. Some businesses stopped hiring and began laying off employees.

An average of 200,000 IT roles remains unfilled due to a lack of qualified candidates. According to the Mid-Year 2022 IT Salary Survey by Janco Associates, Inc., many roles are paying up to 10% higher salaries to attract the best talent.

However, this disparity is causing current employees with lower salaries to find different employers. As a result, CIOs must find a balance between the budget, employee salary increases to address inflation, and the resources needed to attain the technology and bottom-line objectives.

IT Education Requirements

Approximately 20% of IT job postings in July 2022 were for roles requiring 2 years of experience or less. Also, nearly 50% required 3-5 years of experience. Plus, 13% of the positions required at least 9 years of experience.

Many employers no longer are requiring college degrees for some of their IT job openings. Candidates’ skills, experience, and personality traits are becoming more important than their educational background. This increases the candidate pools for open roles.

Software developers and engineers are especially in-demand. There were approximately 148,000 job postings for these roles in July 2022. IT support specialists, project managers, systems engineers and architects, and network engineers and architects also are in short supply.

Roles in emerging technologies or roles requiring these skills accounted for 33% of job postings in July. Many companies began hiring IT professionals through coding boot camps, low-code training, and other non-traditional approaches.

Get Help with IT Recruiting

RightStone can match you with skilled IT professionals to fill your job vacancies. Get started with us today.

What Employees Really Want from Managers

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As an IT manager, your relationship with your team is important. It impacts important issues like employee engagement, productivity, and retention.

Understanding what your employees are looking for from you helps improve their performance. The more effectively you lead your team, the more your employees will do to positively impact the bottom line.

Discover five areas to focus on to fill your IT team’s needs and maximize performance.

1. Personal Interest

Get to know your employees on a personal level. For instance, talk about their families, hobbies, and interests outside of work. Also, find commonalities that you can have more in-depth discussions about. Additionally, follow up to see how your employees’ weekend activities were.

Having casual conversations with your employees shows you care about them as people. It also helps them see you as a person rather than just a manager. This helps enhance the employee experience. The more your team members enjoy their jobs, the longer they should perform their best and remain with your company.

2. Connection

Engage with your employees through individual conversations. For instance, recognize and celebrate each employee’s successes. Also, ask your employees what they feel they are doing well and what they believe they could do better. Additionally, provide constructive feedback to help your employees improve their performance.

Encourage your employees to share what is important to them and what they may be struggling with. Actively listen to what your employees say. Show that you support them. Offer to help as needed.

Enhancing individual connections with your team helps build respect for you as their leader.

3. Acknowledgment of Strengths

Regularly acknowledge each employee’s strengths. Focus on a 3 to 1 ratio when sharing what each employee did well and what they could improve on. This helps provide the motivation to continue to improve their performance. It also increases employee confidence and engagement.

4. Purpose and Impact

Help your employees understand how their contributions impact the company and carry out its mission. Your employees want to know how their efforts help reach the organization’s strategic goals. This shows how your team individually and collectively impacts the business.

Providing a sense of purpose and impact for your employees helps build feelings of belonging and job satisfaction. Your team should remain proactive and engaged while moving toward success.

5. Career Development

Develop a career plan with each of your employees. This shows how they can advance within the organization.

Be sure to offer opportunities to develop the skills needed for promotions. You might do this through training, delegation, or stretch assignments. The more you help your employees grow professionally, the longer they should remain with your company.

Need Help Finding Employees?

Work with RightStone to find qualified employees to join your IT team. Talk with us today.

How to Highlight Contract Work on Your Resume

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The inclusion of contract work on your resume helps show you have the education, skills, and experience needed to be successful in a role. This can help you stand out among all the other candidates.

Engagement in contract work demonstrates your ability to quickly adapt to new environments and begin producing. It also helps eliminate potential gaps between full-time jobs.

Follow these guidelines to include contract work on your resume.

Use a Reverse-Chronological Order

Begin listing your work experience with your most recent position first. For your contract work, include the name of the staffing firm, its location, the name of the company you worked at, your position title, and the duration of the contract. For each full-time job, list the name of the company, its location, your job title, and the duration of your employment. Then, work backward for the past 10 years.

Listing each position helps provide a cohesive picture of your work experience. It also helps hiring managers understand what your background is like.

Another option is to list your contract work by industry. You can organize your work under one heading, such as a staffing firm, to ensure continuity. This helps show the relevance of each position to the job you want.

In either case, clarify the staffing firm you worked for, the companies you worked at, and the contract positions you held. This shows that the staffing firm was your employer and you held multiple contract positions through them. Including the names of the companies you worked at can increase your authority in the industry.

Emphasize Your Accomplishments

Include your achievements for each contract position or job. This shows the value you added to each organization.

Use numbers to quantify your benefits for each employer. Show how you helped each company make or save money or increase efficiency. This indicates how you can provide value for your next employer.

Highlight Your Skills

Point out the skills you gained from each contract position or job. Be sure to review the job posting to determine which keywords and requirements to focus on. Include your skills that are most relevant to the job you are applying for. This helps your resume get past an applicant tracking system (ATS) and to a hiring manager.

Get Help with Your Job Search

Partnering with a recruiter from RightStone provides you with resume and interview coaching and other job search assistance. Get started by visiting our job board today.

How to Deal with Difficult People at Work

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You are likely to come across a difficult coworker at some point in your IT career. This can happen to anyone at any company. How you deal with the coworker depends on your personality and the support you receive from colleagues, coworkers, and leaders. The sooner you take action to handle the issue, the sooner you may start experiencing results.

Choose among these suggestions to help you effectively deal with a difficult coworker.

Focus on Yourself

Make sure your coworker truly is causing a problem and you are not simply overreacting. Perhaps you commonly experience a similar issue with the same type of person or behavior. Or, maybe you see a pattern in your interactions with coworkers. This may mean you have a hot button that easily is pushed.

Talk with a Colleague

Find out whether a trusted colleague is noticing or experiencing similar issues with the coworker. Ask for an objective observation about the issue. If your colleague agrees that the problem exists, discuss some ways to professionally address it.

Meet with the Coworker

Discuss the issue with the coworker who is creating it. Use “I” messages to focus on your experiences of the situation. Explain the impact their actions have on you. Remain pleasant and agreeable during the discussion. Try to reach an agreement about one or two positive actions to engage in going forward.

The coworker may not be aware of their actions or how you feel about them. They might agree to consider changing their pattern of interacting in the way you described. Or, the coworker could decide not to do anything differently.

Point Out the Coworker’s Behavior

If you do not feel comfortable talking privately with the coworker, use humor to publicly address their behavior. Perhaps you can salute your coworker after an interaction. Or, you might place your hand over your heart to show that their words wounded you. Then, ask the coworker to consider using more positive words or behavior going forward.

Follow Up

Focus on whether the coworker’s behavior gets better, worsens, or does not change going forward. Determine whether a follow-up talk may make a difference. Focus on how badly you want to make peace with the coworker and keep your job.

Talk with a Manager

Determine whether you want to discuss the coworker’s behavior with your manager or the coworker’s manager. Be sure to write down notes clarifying the issue and how it impacts your productivity. Plan to participate in follow-up discussions as well.

Limit Your Interactions

Spend as little time as possible in situations that may involve interacting with the coworker. Avoid working with them on projects, voluntary committees, and other circumstances whenever you can. Transfer to another role within the organization if possible.

Find a New Job

If the coworker decides not to change, work with RightStone to find a new job. Here is a link to our job board.

How to Focus on Diversity & Inclusion in Your Recruiting Efforts

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The more diverse and inclusive your company is, the more competitive it is. The blending of team members from different cultures, genders, and backgrounds provides greater innovation, problem-solving, and goal attainment than working with more homogenous team members. Your diverse team is better equipped to provide different viewpoints and develop unique ideas than a homogenous team. This elevates collaboration, engagement, morale, and retention. These are reasons why diversity and inclusion need to be priorities within your organization.

Implement these tips to make your recruitment process more diverse and inclusive.

Focus on Your Leadership Demographics

Analyze the leaders occupying the top roles in your organization. Determine whether they reflect the demographics of the communities you serve. Include what your leaders’ succession planning pipeline looks like. Think about whether this involves women and people of color. You want to hire and promote employees in these two groups to line roles and executive positions as much as possible.

The more women and people of color you have in revenue-generating and decision-making roles, the more your company will attract and retain diverse candidates. Offering employee resource programs and other sources of support for these groups increases your level of inclusivity.

Reduce Unconscious Biases

Train everyone involved in your hiring process to uncover and modify their hidden aversions to specific types of candidates. These biases mostly are shaped by individual experiences and typically result in wrong assumptions.

For instance, use gender-neutral language in your job descriptions. This includes the omission of words such as “supportive” or “aggressive.” The former tends to attract more female candidates, whereas the latter tends to attract more male candidates. Avoiding gendered words typically attracts a more balanced number of female and male applicants to your job openings.

Include in your job description only the necessary skills and qualifications for the role. Whereas women typically apply for a position they feel 100% qualified for, men typically apply for a job they feel 70% qualified for. Listing only the most important skills and qualifications increases the balance of female and male applicants for your position.

Eliminate the names, schools attended, and other personally identifying information on the resumes you receive. This causes your hiring team to focus on the skills, experience, and qualifications of your applicants when deciding who to interview. Women and people of color are more likely to be contacted and potentially hired by your organization, which increases diversity.

Emphasize Your Employee Resource Groups

Include throughout your recruitment process information about the resources you provide to support your employees. Details about your employee resource groups (ERGs) and other inclusivity programs show you care about your team members from all backgrounds. Knowing that all employees are valued members of your organization helps attract and retain diverse talent.

Want More Diverse IT Candidates?

RightStone has IT professionals of different backgrounds ready to fill your business needs. Contact us today.

Happy Employees Are More Productive

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As a manager, are you aware of the link between your employees’ happiness and their productivity levels? Studies show that happy employees work harder, collaborate better, and accomplish more in less time than unhappy employees. As a result, you should do what you can to encourage high levels of happiness among your team.

Learn how employee happiness levels impact productivity and what you can do to increase both.

Elevated Performance

The University of Warwick conducted a study where participants were given either 10-minute comedy videos to watch or drinks and snacks to consume to help them feel happy. The control group received nothing. The participants then were given tasks to complete.

The results of the study showed that the happier participants were 12% more productive than the control group. The participants who increased their happiness levels before completing the tasks performed at a higher, more accurate level than the participants who did not.

These results demonstrate that having a positive frame of mind elevates work performance. Happier employees are more likely to show up each day and give their best efforts. They also are less likely to experience high levels of stress or burnout.

Increased Efficiency

The University of Oxford conducted a study that tracked call-to-sale conversions, attendance, and customer satisfaction for call center employees at a British multinational telecommunications firm over a 6-month period. The employees self-reported their level of happiness each week.

The results showed that the happy employees were proven to be 13% more productive than the unhappy employees. The happy employees worked faster, made more call-to-sale conversions per hour worked, and more closely adhered to their workflow schedule than the unhappy employees.

These results demonstrate that employees with a positive emotional state can finish more work in the same amount of time than employees with a negative emotional state. This means you should do what you can to promote happiness among your employees.

Steps to Increase Happiness

You can take action to increase the levels of happiness among your team members. For instance, model professional behavior at all times. The more you interact with others in a respectful manner, the more likely your team members are to follow your example. Also, provide fair compensation. Your team members deserve to be rewarded for their contributions and results. Additionally, give constructive feedback in real-time. Your team members need to know what they are doing well, which areas they need to do better in, and specific ways to improve their performance. Plus, acknowledge your team members’ accomplishments with bonuses, raises, and promotions. This motivates them to continue to perform their best and accomplish business goals.

Need to Increase Your Team’s Productivity?

Talk with RightStone about adding a member to your team. Get in touch today.

Leveraging a Staffing Firm During High Unemployment

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Over the last year, the U.S. has watched the unemployment rate take some deeply worrying turns. Although unemployment is now bouncing back slowly, the consequences of mass layoffs and upended industries are still making themselves known.

A staffing firm can be a valuable ally during times of turbulence, including this period of high unemployment. Here’s why working with a staffing firm could be the right business decision for your company.

Staffing Firms Hire Faster at a Lower Cost

With more people out of work, more talented candidates are on the hunt for a new role. As a result, you’re more likely to see a deluge of applications for every open post, which complicates the hiring process.

Staffing firms are more adept at sorting through large applicant pools, including greater numbers of unqualified applicants. They also have existing talent pools that they can leverage to shorten the time from job advertisement to hire.

In short, staffing firms have the resources to shorten the time to hire and manage hiring during high unemployment while staying on budget.

Staffing Firms Help Manage the Risk of Hiring

High unemployment often coincides with a difficult business environment in which organizations need more staff, but the associated costs can be a risk.

Staffing firms can work with you to fill contract roles that allow you to get the help needed without committing to permanent roles with benefits. Temp-to-Hire can be a smart option if you see the need extending in the medium to long-term, but your tolerance for risk is low for the short term.

Additionally, recruiters have a keen eye for the hiring process. They’re better able to find you better quality Temp-to-Hire or contract consultants, which add value to your business and are more likely to turn into long-term partnerships when the time is right.

Get Started with Hiring Experts

High unemployment grants businesses access to more talent with less competition, but these periods of instability rarely leave businesses themselves unscathed. Working with a strategic partner to manage your talent pipeline can ensure you mitigate risk and stay on budget while also ensuring you get the help you need in the office.

Get in touch to learn more about RightStone nurtures consultant and client relationships to find the right fit every time.