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8 New Weapons to Fight the Talent Wars in '08

The current uptick in skirmishes over IT talent might indicate that a full-scale war is heating up for '08. If so, the weapons this time will be different from those used in the last large dust-ups of the dot-com era. “We are seeing a war for talent, and it's been building up for the past three years,” states Dan Reynolds, CEO of The Brokers Group LLC, a Princeton, N.J.-based IT staffing firm.

The current demand for IT talent is being driven by a number of factors, including investments in new projects, a dramatic reduction in the number of IT grads from U.S. colleges and the first of the baby boomer retirements, he states. Whatever the causes, experts note that savvy CIOs, recruiters, headhunters and other hiring managers are trying out new or updated weapons to fight for IT talent. Here are eight that you might want to wield in the coming year.

1. Social Networks. Although recruiters and hiring managers continue to use job sites such as Monster.com and Yahoo HotJobs to advertise for open positions, the use of social networking sites such as LinkedIn is providing employers with “a superior quality pool of applicants,” says William Gomes, director of human resources at Intermedia Inc., a New York-based provider of hosted business e-mail services.

More '08 predictions By using social networks to identify potential employees, Intermedia is “getting a better ratio of qualified applicants” than it would from the throngs of resumes it might otherwise receive from job sites that don't hit the mark, states Gomes.

2. Wikis, Blogs and Forums. Companies are increasingly turning to on the internet communication tools to help engage potential IT employees and generate discussions with prospective new hires. The tools also help to “harmonize” values between employers and would-be employees, says JP Rangaswami, a managing director at BT Group PLC in London. BT Group has at least 70 bloggers, including Rangaswami, who says the company has found that, thanks to the blogs, IT workers “come to us because they've heard of us more and they know what we're doing,” he says.

3. Trying Before Buying. Instead of posting job ads in newspapers or through on the internet jobs services, employers are increasingly turning to other recruitment techniques, such as right-to-hire agreements. In these, an employer hires a professional contracting firm to do the recruiting for it. The employer concurs to hire qualified candidates for a few months with the option of offering them full-time employment later. “I've done this a few times with programmer/analysts,” says Joe Trentacosta, CIO at Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative in Hughesville, Md. The lure of health care and other benefits for permanent workers “plays a key role” in tipping the scales, he states.

4. Global Thinking. “Those who believe the search for [IT] talent is limited to the U.S. are badly mistaken,” says Bob Worrall, CIO at Sun Microsystems Inc. Smart companies think beyond national borders. For example, roughly half of Intermedia's 170-plus IT professionals work in its St. Petersburg, Russia, offices, says Gomes, and the company also finds employees in India and other non-U.S. locations.

5. The Anywhere Workplace. The concept of going to the office certainly hasn't disappeared altogether, but the “where” and “when” of IT work are undergoing some fundamental changes. “It used to be that you 'went' to work everyday, coded away and then went home,” states Worrall.

But today's twentysomethings expect to be able “to connect to work from a laptop on a train or at the beach,” he states. And employers are more prone to accommodate them — to a degree.

“We provide [IT] staff with flexible work hours and laptops, BlackBerries and other devices to help them do their jobs remotely,” says M. Lewis Temares, vice president and CIO at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. “But we still need them to be on campus at various times to support the university's services.”

6. Business Vision. “The tenor of the job announcement has changed,” states Robert Rosen, immediate past president of Share, a Chicago-based IBM users group, and CIO at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases in Bethesda, Md. “There's much less emphasis on technical skills and more demand for people who can help add value to the business.” Of course, IT hiring managers remain hungry for people with strong technical capabilities, particularly hot development skills such as .Net, PHP and J2EE expertise. But it's even tougher to find IT professionals with business savvy or experience managing relationships with business units, says Craig Urrizola, CIO at Saladino's Inc., a Fresno, Calif.-based food distributor.

7. Pumped Up Paychecks. OK, this one isn't new. But as part of the whole supply-and-demand continuum, it's an old weapon that's back.

With fewer qualified IT professionals available, particularly in hot markets such as Silicon Valley, companies are doling out larger offers. For example, Intermedia's offers to new employees in the San Francisco Bay Area are 20% higher than they were a year ago, says Gomes.

8. Imagination. Compensation continues to be the biggest factor in the recruitment and retention of IT professionals, but perks such as the option of telecommuting, flexible work hours and opportunities to work for socially-conscious organizations are top-of-mind for many younger IT workers. And sometimes an imaginative approach can make the difference between snagging top talent and losing it to the massive bucks.

For instance, IT professionals who work at the National Aquarium in Baltimore typically earn 15% to 30% less than peers who work elsewhere in the city, states Hans Keller, chief technology officer at the aquarium. But he tries to offset that with other perks. One of his network engineers spent two weeks on a research trip on the Amazon River last January. Other perks are closer to home. “I have two people on my staff who dive into the tanks and feed stingrays each other month,” Keller says. “That's not a typical assignment for a systems developer.”

How to Use Social Networks to Find Gigs by Mathias Meyer

I have the capability to see through you. You read the headline and think “MySpace”. Far from it. It's true that social networks are all the rage these days. Each day a number of new communities pop up on the scene. Some are for fun, but some can be quite useful, especially for the job-seeking freelancer.

MySpace for some is only a place to hang out, chat, be friends with hundreds of bands, or just have cool-looking personal pages. For others MySpace is a place to get new gigs. I know many people who've gotten new jobs through it, and I'm pretty sure that some of you could tell similar stories.

Without passing judgment on any of them, the platforms I'd keep my eye on are LinkedIn, FaceBook, and especially for European freelancers, Xing (formerly known as OpenBC). The latter is my main platform for business networking. Since my focus is on the German market this works out pretty well for me.

FaceBook became an attractive new source when it expanded outside the student world. I can't say for myself that I've gotten a gig through it as I mainly use it to stay in touch with my international friends, but you just never know. Proposal Kit

The most widespread of them is probably LinkedIn, especially when it comes to business networking.

All of them are based on a simple idea: you know people, and they know other people who might need your services. You've probably already gotten a gig through a friend who knows a friend (and so on) in your career. I know I've. Social networks make this even easier and offers much more than just an introduction.

Let Clients Find You

The good thing about social networks is that clients can actually find you. They’ve the capability to search for skills they need, can limit the search to a specific area, and so on. They can find you through the people you know or through the people they know. They have the capability to find you in specialized groups, discussions or while browsing through a random person's contact. The important thing is: they can find you without any effort on your part.

What can you do to increase the chances of a potential client stumbling across your profile? The first thing is to represent yourself accurately. List your skills, include them in your profile. List your current projects and what your tasks were. Don't push it though. Endless list of tools, programming languages or general buzzwords make you look like someone who is desperate to make contact. And frankly, those lists are almost always far from the truth.

Select the right keywords for your skills. When someone looks for a Ruby on Rails developer you don't want to be missed because you assumed it would be obvious you wrote Rails. If you try to put yourself in a laypersons shoes it should help you come up with some good keywords. If in doubt, ask your mum or anyone tech-illiterate what they'd type in if they were looking for your services, and work your way up from there.

Most social networks offer groups for almost each topic and industry. Everything from programming (and all the glorious topics related to it) to making cupcakes will be available. They're a great place to meet people, though in my personal experience there are some that are nothing more than infighting and resumes disguised as discussion. If there’s a genuine discussion in which you can learn or share your expertise than certainly participate, otherwise don't waste your time.

Find Clients

A social network isn’t only a place to show off, it's also a place to publish your needs. While you need gigs, your next client needs certain skills. In the same way clients can look for you, you can search for them. You don't have to do it all the time, but keeping an open eye for people looking for your skills can't hurt, right?

However, don't fall into the habit of just collecting people. Having several hundreds (or even more) people in your network doesn't mean you're in for an endless supply of new projects. Your network isn't stale, it's constantly changing, refocusing and rearranging. People get new jobs, they meet new people, they've changing needs or work on new projects. Social networks can be a great way to stay in the loop with what's happening, but a massive network requires a great deal of care and attention. The more people you've on your list the more massive the chances of you missing the important information in between all the noise. So you might want to keep it to a level that you can handle.

Networking

And now for the main advantage of social networks: the networking itself. Traditional networkers spend a lot of time caring for the people in their networks. They send emails or call each now and then just to see what's up. They play golf with the people in their network.

It took me a while to comprehend why networking is important for freelancers. Your network consists of people. People who have their own networks – who know other people, and who know you. When these people know you, your skills and the way you deal with others and their problems, they know that when they have a problem of their own, be it a job or just a favour, they have the capability to count on you.

The same is true the other way around. When you've a job you can't deal with yourself, when you need a specific skill, you spread this information in your network. You spread the word and contact people who fit the profile. There's no guarantee that one of your contacts will be available, but here's the kicker: they know other people who might fit.

That's the beauty of networking, and that's also why you as a freelancer need to have both clients and people you'd normally think about as competition in your network. Doing someone a favour might result in a favour in return.

A social network is a valuable tool when used appropriately. Try to focus your networking on one or two and keep it up to date. Care for your network, expand it, keep in touch with the people in it and it might turn up new opportunities for you. I know it did for me, even through something unlikely like Flickr.

For many, the begin of a new year means the start of a new job search using the world wide web to research employers. For up coming college graduates in particular, it is opportunity to get a head begin in getting their careers of the ground using on the world wide web resources. At the same time, many employers are also researching potential job candidates through Google, Myspace.com and Facebook.com and what they are finding could be used as reasons not to hire you.

A current poll conducted for Careerbuilder.com showed that 26 percent of hiring managers admitted to using the Internet to perform background checks on job candidates. A further 12 percent admitted to using social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com as a screening tool.

For many college students, social networking sites such as Facebook.com and Myspace.com are a core part of their cyber profile used for networking. However, many students are surprised to learn that their candid and sometimes sexually explicit photos and the details of their drinking and dating lives in their profiles can negatively affect their job search. Those disparaging comments, risqué photos, inappropriate language and lewd jokes posted on their profiles could be viewed as a reflection of their character by a potential employer.

According to an HR director, people should carefully think about their potential audience and the impression they may have based on your photos, personal thoughts, and ideas posted on the world wide web. “We were in the process of extending an offer to a great candidate, until his myspace.com page was brought to our attention. He had a great resume, went to an elite school and had impeccable references. However, our review of his myspace profile highlighted his recreational drug use. This made us immediately reconsider hiring him,” states an HR Director for a financial services company in Toronto, Ontario. “Our company is very conscious of client relations and our public image and we could not risks this candidate’s background being taken as a reflection of organization."

A current poll of Resume Solutions student clients showed that over 60% of the respondents were unaware that their profiles on social networking websites could be viewed by potential employers. This is surprising, despite the increased media attention focused on employers reviewing Myspace and Facebook prior to making hiring decisions.
Prior to staring a new job search, it is suggested that job seekers perform a Google search on their names to find out what a potential employer might read or see about them on the web. If any questionable content is discovered, that is content you would not feel comfortable if an employer or your parents view, then request that the site’s webmaster remove it immediately. Questionable content might include nude photos, slanderous comments or those drunken photos from your Cancun vacation. Keep in mind you might encounter resistance in getting the content removed, however, you can let them know that they might be affecting your future job prospects and you might have no choice but to seek legal recourse. For that information, totally you can't have removed due to lack of control, construct a plausible answer to counter or explain away to a hiring manager.
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