Advice for IT Body Shops
Do you look at your candidates? Do you interview them at all before presenting them to IT shops in need of staff augmentation? That’s a rhetorical question…the answer is clearly “no”. By not doing that, you not only waste my time but you give your organization a bad name. In fact, I quickly get to a point where I don’t even want to open up a resume from one of these so-called “consulting organizations”. Ah, but I must…see this is State Government and we’ve got rules. Yes, so I will read them but I don’t have to like it. And so here I am, blogging out of frustration in hopes that someone will read this, learn from it an stop wasting the time of IT managers.
So what are the common mistakes?
1) First and foremost very few of these “consulting organizations” take the time to learn what it is we do. If they knew that they’d very quickly learn that our shop is a consulting shop in and of itself and that we have standard rates we charge our customers. That said your proposed bill rate has to be lower than ours and you don’t even have to ask me what those rates are because this is state government…they are published on the Internet for the world to see. Good thing is I can quickly dismiss these…but it’s still sad that they even reach my desk.
2) Proof the resume yourself. As a “consulting organization” you should have a good feel for the candidate and what they bring to the table. Would you hire them? Would you hire them for the bill rate you are asking for? I can tell you one thing, broken English on a resume is a far too common mistake. If the resume isn’t written in complete, understandable sentences what are the odds that they can speak in complete, understandable sentences? Yes, believe it or not, our developers actually have to talk on the job…some even have to talk to customers.
3) Buzzwords can actually hurt a resume. If I see things like Web 2.0, AJAX, Struts, EJB, SOAP fifty times on a resume my eyes begin to roll back in my head and lose feeling in my legs. Every single resume I get is hitting the most recent buzzwords so instead of differentiating yourself you are actually drowning yourself in the sea of forgettable resumes.
4) Get the Geek Factor. I’m really interested in how interested you are in technology. Do you geek out in your free time? Do you contribute to any open source projects or belong to any IT-based organizations? Have you given talks at IT conferences? Have you mentored entire teams on a new technology? Do you blog on IT relate topics? If not, how are you different from all the other resumes?
5) Do you fit? This is State Government…do you have an government experience or have you worked for a company that provided products and/or services to government? Have you worked in an organization that is structured like ours? If not, how are you different form all the other resumes (see the common theme?)
6) Can you talk the talk? I can read a resume and in 30 seconds I can tell if you have the technical skills and experience. But can you actually communicate well verbally? There are probably more shops out there than I care to acknowledge that just need a body to bang out code but our organization thrives on collaboration. If you can’t hold a conversation and make yourself sound interesting then why should I hire you?
7) Was the candidate double submitted? How about triple submitted? Yes, I’ve even seen the same person come across my desk from as many as four different “consulting shops”. That’s just plan stupid. Stupid on the part of the candidate and stupid on the part of the company. Sure, I don’t doubt that candidates may lie about having had their resumed submitted through another place but they need to make it clear to them that odds are when that happens you are automatically out of the race. In my last round of candidates I had no less than four candidates submitted by at least two companies. One good thing, though, is I find out how the bill rates compare. When they are double submitted and I see a $10/hr difference on a bill rate I do take mental notes. Good for me…bad for the body shop.
I’d like to conclude that resumes get no more than about 30 seconds on my first scan. I use my initial scan to find the resumes that very quickly stand out. Then I spend the rest of my time reading those in detail. I can’t imagine this is much different from other IT managers and if that’s the case I simply want to ask why send me something that can’t stand out? It should be noted I could quickly take any of the candidates I recently received and regardless of their experience I could make it pass my 30 second scan. Why can’t you?