CNNMoney.com recently posted the Top 50 jobs in America.   Several IT jobs made the top 50 list.   Money and Payscale.com rate the Top 50 careers with great pay and growth prospects over the next 10 year period. 

Information Technology had a great showing on the list with seven IT related positions ranked in the top 50.   Below are the results of the seven positions with their ranking and projected job growth over the next 10 years.    

Ranking            Job Position/                                         Job Growth % 

On List Title                                                      10 year forecast

5                      IT Project Manager                              16%

12                    Software Developer                              28%

17                    IT Business Analyst                              29%

28                    Technical Writer                                   20%

30                    Telecom. Network Engineer                 53%

39                    Computer Software Prog Mgr              28%

40                    Applications Systems Analyst               29%

Just the other week I had a candidate who asked me the bill rate and I responded with a range where I thought would make the individual competitive. Prior to the rate question I had asked him to elaborate on his experience. He provided me with very little feedback, which left me wondering how much depth he really had with the tool.

I indicated that in order to be competitive I felt we need to be around XX. He did not think my number was competitive and went on to chide me on how he felt “Competitive” was a very weak and lame word in itself, that he, ”does not compete” and that he, “provides a highly skilled service”  I wasn’t inclined that day to argue the point, knowing I had another candidate who provided me with a very detailed four paragraphs which clearly outlined his background.  His depth with the tool was evident, and I moved forward with him.

Any client will have limits on pay rates and we always assume that there is outside competition on any given client. A recruiter can give a ball park number which we think would get the client interested. However the client will want a resume and if the resume lacks enough depth on it and the rate is higher than others we will not get the call to have an interview.

Negotiating your rate will depend on various factors which have to be taken into consideration. The first one to consider is location of the project. Every region or city’s cost of living will be different. Will you need to travel if so how much travel expense will you incur for travel and temporary housing.

Duration is another important variable as it has a great effect on the first variable which is location. A longer term duration typically allows for a reduced expense on the travel side as a 6 -12 month lease is usually available versus a monthly rate.

Another consideration is the benefit package. Does the consulting company provide benefits such as Medical, Dental, Short/Long term Disability and 401(k)? What are the premiums for these benefits and how important are these benefits to you.

How many of the skills requested do you have? If you have all the skills required and several of the beneficial skills you are a much stronger candidate.

Will you be able to gain additional skills to improve your marketability in the future? How long have you been out of the workforce is another factor to consider as possible tradeoffs to consider in your final rate.

Eventually the recruiter will ask the salary question and likely not until he has a good idea of your experience with the required and beneficial skills. If you are pressed with the salary range question the subject is open for discussion so offer a range. If you are negotiable on that range indicate that prior to stating the range.

Many times when I ask the compensation question, I am asked about my experience with the client and if I have a feel for what the client may tolerate. Many times we do have a good idea, either through past experience or as is sometimes the case, being explicitly told by the client upfront. However, as the IT industry has hot skills, niche skills and the combination of separate skills, which all must be factored in when submitting a final bill rate to the client. As mentioned previously, typically there are others aggressively pursuing the same position.

Your best bet is to be flexible and talk through the rate question to formulate a number you and the recruiter and hopefully the end client will all feel good about.

Over the years I’ve read tons of articles on what you should and shouldn’t include in your resume.  Each comes from a different industry and point of view.  Not everything is applicable to every industry or position.  As an IT recruiter, I’ve seen a lot of good and bad resumes over the years.  From these, I have compiled a list of tips to help you get your resume from my inbox and into the decision-makers’ hands faster and generally with a higher degree of overall success.

Don’t zip your resume.  

If your resume is really that large that it has to be zipped, then it is an autobiography and not a resume.  I am not impressed that you know how to zip it.  The exercise of unzipping a 2 page resume will not earn you points with a recruiter.

Don’t bold key words in your resume

Have you ever tried to read one of these at length? I may be seeking other words than the 50-70 words that you may have decided are important for me to see.  A red flag goes up that you are an expert at “Buzzword Bingo” and not an expert at those listed.

Don’t list the exact same functions on every job

We do like to see some details, but when you use the exact same, or virtually the same, verbiage on 3 projects we can’t help to wonder what you really did.  Show your wordsmith and communication skills – this is especially important if you are a business analyst or documentation writer. 

Refrain from including a separate Accomplishments section  Listing a whole page of accomplishments should be saved for your annual Christmas list and not your resume.  Tell me about each of them under your actual work experience where they occurred.   Listing them in accomplishment form will only have me asking you to “Prove it.” 

Give me some background

Many times technical resumes jump into the deep IT  verbage which I am interested in but I would also would like to see if you can explain how your project supported your previous employer.  Consider your resume as if you were telling it to Grandma, give me a paragraph on what the company does as there is  a good chance I may be unaware of the company or industry for that matter.  Draw me into why your project was significant and what it accomplished.  Most IT projects solve a business problem, enlighten me on what it was.

Formatting

Refrain from tables or a lot of formatting in your resume.  Many times what is aligned when you send it may not be presented correctly in the reviewers system. Also, many recruiters reformat your resume into their template before presenting it to clients, so having to strip out complicated table formatting and so forth can significantly slow down your resume from reaching the client.  Keep it clean and simple!  When in doubt, ask for an example of what the recruiter considers his/her “dream format”.  Unlike those who zip, make my life easier with your format, and this “will” earn you points!

According to a Careerbuilder sponsored report  18 percent of the roughly 2,500 hiring managers surveyed have reported seeing more job seekers try unusual tactics to gain attention in 2009.   Up 6% from the previous year.

Some of the better ones are listed below:

     Candidate sent a shoe with a resume “get my foot in the door”

     Sent a cake designed as a business card to include a picture of candidate

     Dressed as an Easter bunny due to proximity to Easter

     Candidate staged a sit in in the lobby

     Candidate washed cars in the parking lot

My personal hiring experience cannot top the above mentioned tactics.  However, at my previous employer I did come across the most unique resume.  The position I was seeking to fill  was a graphic artist .   The resume was a 5×5 folded heavy stock paper which opened up to five pages.  Each page was a different theme and the writing flowed in random fashion.  If that was not impressive enough, the resume was encased in a wooden frame from which the resume slid out.  The wooden frame was decorated  as well.  The candidate was demonstrating first hand his ability to be creative.

The hiring manger was impressed, however the resume was over 2 weeks old and the position was filled.  The hiring manager definitely would have brought in the candidate for an interview.    

Before trying an extreme tactic you may want to call to ensure the position is still open.   As for the resume, I displayed it on the filing cabinet as it was an attractive piece.

In IT recruitment it is easy to say that it is never the same day twice but last week really seemed to be a diverse week in regards to the technologies I was seeking for our clients at QA Technologies. 

The requests were released on a daily basis and did have a decent time to to complete and with the staggered release they were not all due on the same day so I could keep my recruiting cycle moving and still sound like I had it together when talking with the candidates.  At least I think I sounded that way,, applicants can be too polite sometimes so maybe they just did not want to risk offending me.

It started with a COBOL Developer with a few caveat requests specific with two other technologies which were foreign to me and a lot of candidates as well and also some PL1.  Did I mention it was for 3 months… 

Next was a Filenet Administrator for an upgrade in Filenet, to include a  lot of Java and Web Development and DB2 or UDB experience.

Follow up those two with a J2EE Developer with Websphere experience.  The plus skill was to have previous experience within the business/industry knowledge.

Lastly was the Business Objects, Crystal Reports guru with 3 years of Java and web based development as well as UDB experience.   

The good news is I did have candidates to submit so at least I managed to find resources for the clients.

It seems like we may be hearing some good news on the economic front or the media has been busy with that virus previously known as swine flu. According to Career Voyages, www.careervoyages.gov there are 2 IT related jobs in the top 10  ‘In Demand’ jobs. Computer Software Engineers ranks number 6 and Computer Systems Analyst are ranked number 8.

As a recruiter, when talking about the training of the spouse for someone relocating I am secretly hoping for a Healthcare Professional or a School Teacher.   Nurses came in as number 1 followed by physicians in 3rd place and elementary teachers were number 4 and secondary teachers number 10 on the list.   Since I have shared 6 ‘In Demand’ professions,  I might as well share the top ten.

1) Registered Nurse

2) General and operations managers

3) Physicians and surgeons

4) Elementary School Teachers

5) Accountants and auditors

6) Computer Software Engineers

7) Sales Representatives and Managers

Computer System Analysts

9) Management analysts

10) Secondary School Teachers

This is also handy news for spouses looking to make a career change to make relocating with their IT consultant spouse easier since they will be in demand in the coming years!

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) has really caused a stir in the Benefits area of Human Resources.  HR Professionals have had to deal with COBRA which offers departing employees the ability to continue their current health insurance for many years.  COBRA was complicated enough.  Many companies sprang up to service COBRA and a whole industry was created to administer your COBRA plan to ensure you were in compliance.

Along comes ARRA and HR and Benefit providers alike are scrambling to ensure they are compliant with the new legislation.   For a involuntary discharge, ARRA will pick up 65% of the COBRA premiums which is a large savings to the Employee.  The Employer will then claim a tax credit for the amount of premium. 

The other feature of the act which has created a stir is that there is a retro active time period which ads to the scramble.   HR now must go back to Sept 1, 2008 and decide if the employees absence was “involuntary”

If you outsource your COBRA functions your provider will assist you in this effort.  If not it is likely your Health provider may have sample letters to adjust to make sure you are in compliance. 

I have a feeling ARRA will be a stimulus package for the COBRA outsourcing providers in the market place.

Federal Contractors and their subcontractors will need to enroll in the E-Verify program starting May 21, 2009.   E-Verify compares information on the I-9 form (required form for all new hires in an organization to prove eligibility to work) with 425 million records in the Social Security Administration’s database and 60 million records in Department of Homeland Security. Beginning May 21, 2009 Federal contractors and subcontractors will have to ensure all employees on the Federal contract have been run through E-Verify and begin the process of using E-Verify for others joining the organization in the future even if they are not on the federal contract. More information about the usage of E-Verify can be found at  http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=4ee4be0cbcf90110VgnVCM1000000ecd190aRCRD

The process looks pretty simplistic, but does require your company to initially enroll and select the category which bests suits your organization.

Last week I had the opportunity to Shadow a Principal at a public elementary school. As an HR Professional I am curious what others do for their source of income and public education is something everyone should learn more about as we are all paying for it

I started the day in the lunch room as over 250 lined up for breakfast . I stood in line and greeted as many kids as I could and after explaining my role was to “Shadow” the Principal I asked what each of them wanted to be when they grow up. I had several who wanted to be Professional Wrestlers as in WWE. A couple in teaching and healthcare professions, a car salesmen, a veterinarian and a host of other non IT related professions. Even the HR profession came up with a big goose egg.

The day was not completely lost on the IT front. I was participating in a counseling session with a student and the principal complimented the student on how creative he was, how smart he was. So I jumped on the chance to see if the student had a penchant for IT I asked if he liked working with computers, he said he did. I asked if he knew any languages, he replied “I know English and a little Spanish.” I did not falter and redirected my question with a better phrased question, “What types of computer languages do you know, like .Net, Javascript, any HTML or ColdFusion.” He answered that he did not know them yet We talked about a graphic design artist with his art skills and how web design was a hot skill and one that lended itself to creative aspects. He appeared to be engaged in the direction of the conversation and I hammered home that he would have to do well in school and college if he wanted to pursue the IT profession.

Later in the day we touched base with the student and he had turned his day around. I told him to come see me in 10 years after school. He asked what a position like that would pay. I quoted a lot higher than the current marketplace, but wanted to hook him on the profession and staying in school.

I guess I will find out in about 10 years if I was successful in steering the young lad to IT!

I recently had the privilege to be a guest speaker  for the Human Resources Association at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.  During “question & answer” a student  shared a recent frustration.    As an applicant for a position, he felt the Recruiter had really strung him along, providing a lot of false hope and otherwise misleading feedback.   His frustration brought up a valid topic that I have encountered time and time again.   There are a lot of Recruiters out there who view candidates as disposable commodities, throwing even common courtesy towards these candidates out the door.     Since this is sadly as much the norm as not, as a Recruiter it is easy to shine simply by providing timely and truthful responses!  Who would have ever thought!!

Recruiters are human, and granted its no fun giving candidates bad news, but it is a disservice to all concerned when timely feedback is available and not shared.  Be it good news, or bad.   

If you are a candidate a good question to ask to the recruiter is what time frame he/she may have feedback on your resume or what has been this organizations previous track record on responses.  This way you have established the rules of when it is okay to inquire again.

As a recruiter many times the client is unpredictable, slow or just plain and simple blowing off our requests for feedback.   It is a fine line to not push over the apple cart but many times our candidate will have other options and we cannot hold a candidate indefinitely.    I have had a good response with a short email stating, “I don’t have anything to pass along but I am not nervous about the timetable as it has only been “x” amount of days since submitted.  Are you still interested in the opportunity?”

Enacting a few common courtesies by all, will go a long way in creating a more enjoyable and productive flow of events, win or lose.  If this opportunity doesn’t pan out, all concerned will be more apt to work together again.