The job of tech hiring has been almost completely outsourced and working with recruiting agencies has become a necessity. Recruiting agencies can be either a bridge or another hurdle between you and the job you want. If your target market or target industry isn’t dominated by recruiters then you should probably avoid them and rely on more direct methods.

Recruiting agencies can help to get you in the front door, prep you for the interview and help with salary negotiations. This is supposedly the main benefit for you when working with an agency, but not all perform it as well. I personally worked with an agency where I had a 5 minute initial screening call with the recruiter and another 5 minute screening call with the Account Manager and then never heard from them again. Afterwards, I had 3 successive interviews directly with the hiring company. I did all the work of selling myself and negotiated my own salary and in the end they got paid a big commission – for basically passing along my resume.

Bottom line: It is up to you as to how you navigate the world of recruiters. Knowledge is power!

Recruiting agencies are in the sales business. There are many players in the game because there is good money in high tech recruiting. This can sometimes create undesired conflicts and put candidates in uncomfortable situations. Here’s what I have learned, from my own experiences.

How Recruiting Agencies Work

1. When a job is posted on the internet every recruiter in the country (and outside the country) will scour the job sites and resume databases for potential candidates, blast off emails and phone calls and fight for the opportunity to match a candidate to a job posting (hopefully before someone else beats them to it) to make a sale. Sometimes they cast a wide net and many positions are not even close matches, but they are often playing the numbers game with unqualified leads.
2. Think before you share. Avoid putting your home address on your resume or your primary email and phone. Use a dedicated email and phone (e.g. google voice) for purpose of job hunting. Once you post your resume online, expect tons of recruitment spam for years to come. Even though I only posted my resume in 3 major career sites, it eventually ended up in outside databases that generate recruiter spam forever.
3. Every agency is different based on the individual recruiter or company culture they promote. Many are small outfits from just one to a few people, some are medium sized with a local staff and some have offices all across the country or world. Before submitting your resume, visit their websites to learn more about them. Many email blasts appear to be only remote lead finders probably working on referral fees which are really just an extra hurdle between you and a job offer. In addition they may not be authorized to submit your resume to the hiring company which can cause more problems than its worth. Ignore them and stick to agencies you have researched and appear trustworthy and that can provide value to your job search.
4. Bigger is not always better. My experience has been the bigger and more volume a recruiting agency does, the less personal attention they pay to the details and the relationships and, in my opinion, makes them less effective. Many larger agencies are spread across the country and I found it more difficult dealing with multiple people spread across different time zones for a local position. I prefer to target smaller or local agencies that specialize in my target area and are more likely to build better relationships with hiring companies. However, a bigger company has a local office and builds local relationships with hiring companies can work just as well.
5. Facts are fuzzy. Unfortunately until you eventually interview directly with the hiring company, that may be the only time you REALLY find out the true details about the job. When it comes to the job listing, agencies often get the details wrong. Even the hiring companies put out poorly written job descriptions and may add many nice-to-have items that may never be required. Don’t be afraid to apply for a position that you have some skills for but is asking for too many things – many may end up being just nice-to-haves anyway.
6. Many agencies work in teams with the recruiters scouring the internet for candidates and the Account Manager that builds the relationships with companies and hiring managers. Your goal is to get an interview directly with the hiring company, but first you must navigate your way through a recruiting agency, with one or more mini-interviews. The recruiter is usually the first person that will contact you. They will attempt to pre-assess you and your skills before deciding to pass your resume along to the Account Manager and then to the hiring company manager.
7. Agencies are in the sales business. It is the agency’s job to extract your best qualities and sell them to the hiring company. They will represent you before and after the interview and may even help you negotiate a higher salary then you would have on your own. This is supposedly the main benefit to working with an agency, but not all perform these services equally well. They may oversell you to close a deal or they may pass on you after deciding you are not a good match. It is really up to you to sell yourself to them.

Consulting Companies
If the hiring company allows contract or contract-to-hire positions, consulting companies will also be recruiting for the job position. This changes the whole dynamic of your career path, so give serious consideration if this is the route you want to pursue before applying with them. Consulting companies may allow the hiring company to hire you after certain number of months (that they deem profitable to do so) and some want to retain you in their employee talent pool for future contract engagements. You will need to research the consulting company as well as the hiring company and give consideration to such things as when/how you are paid (even between assignments), how expense reimbursements are handled and what benefits are offered and when/how you qualify for them.

Truth about Recruiting Agencies

1) You Can’t Pick Your Recruiter
A good recruiting agency can help you tremendously, but you can’t just search for the best one and sign up with them. You most likely have to work with which ever one posted the job position that you wish to apply. And if you apply for a dozen jobs that may be a dozen different agencies. The competition is heavy and not every agency can cover every position available. You will often see the same position being advertised by several different agencies, so if this is the case, you may have some choice on which one you choose to apply through.

Many hiring companies have pre-arranged agreements with some agencies and can negotiate exclusive relationships. These agreements can be formal or informal, but may define who is authorized to present candidates to the hiring company. If you don’t go through an authorized channel, your resume may go into a black hole and never be seen. Ensure the agency has a relationship with the hiring company or call the hiring company HR department to verify (if needed).

2) They Don’t Work for You
Recruiting agencies will help you and appear to be on your side, but remember recruiting agencies are working for their client’s best interest, not yours. The company that pays them after you get hired is their client. This is highly competitive business where they want to present the best candidates to their clients as fast as possible – before someone else fills the position and they get paid nothing for their efforts. They are not career counselors and they simply don’t have the time to find a job that’s perfect for you. However, they also may be your only path between you and the company you want to work for.

3) Conflicts of Interest
Remember, they are working for the hiring company and not you. They may have a conflict of interest depending upon if you are the only candidate they are representing to a company or if you are one of many they are representing for the same position. If you have highly desirable skills it works in your favor, but if you are still developing or updating your skills this can be another challenge.

They do want to get paid and may employ methods to give you/them an edge. On one hand they may provide you with inside knowledge about the company or hiring manager that you would never have known applying directly. On the other hand, I have had more than one agency give me a list of questions the hiring manager used to screen past candidates and one even gave me the expected answers to help pass the interview. Yeah these kind of tactics (and worse) really do happen.

Don’t apply for the same position through more than one agency. Ethically an agency should never submit you as a candidate without first asking your permission, but it does happen. Most recruiting contracts stipulate that the employer must pay the first recruiter who submitted the candidate. During the hiring process, if a conflict between two agencies, both claiming representation, develops (i.e. both want the commission), it may cost you the job offer – if the hiring company is unwilling or unable to resolve the conflict. Same situation applies if you submit yourself directly and through a recruiter and you end up with a job offer directly by the company and the recruiting agency finds out. This actually happens more often than you might think.

4) They Have Little Time for You
Agencies deal with numerous openings and prospects and have limited time to devote to every canidate. It’s a little like speed dating. If a recruiter likes your resume and they call you and within minutes want to determine if you are a qualified match or move on. If the recruiter decides they want to take the next step they will pass your resume along to the Account Manager and eventually to the hiring company manager. The recruiter is usually someone that does all the busy work to drive in leads and pre-qualify candidates. Realize that they may have very limited knowledge about technology or the actual job position. Keep technology conversations on a high level and speak in general terms.

You need to be prepared to quickly and effectively communicate everything they need to know about you to feel confident in passing your resume along so you can achieve the goal of getting the all-important job interview. If you fail and the agency decides you’re just not a match, you may have no choice but to move on. Learn all you can from this experience to better prepare yourself for the next one.

5) They Don’t Understand Technology
Most have minimal understanding of technology and on the first phone call they will be assessing your technical skills. They will match keywords on your resume to keywords on the job posting and see if you have X years of experience with skill Y to see how you stack up against other candidates. They will not understand the important nuances of your experience that may make you a better or worse candidate than someone else. They are mostly concerned with the highlights. Yes, this is a terribly superficial way to evaluate a candidate, but it’s a necessary step you have to get through before you can get to the all-important interview with the hiring company.

However, this is an opportunity for you to use good people skills and show you are likeable and set yourself apart from other candidates.

6) This is a Commission Based Sales Business
The tech recruiting field is lucrative business, paying 20-40% commissions on your annual salary. For a $100K salary that could be a $40K payday, so they do want their candidates to get hired so they get paid.

The recruiting business is a numbers game. Number of emails sent result in number of screenings which result in number of interviews which result in job offers which result in a final sale – candidate hired. Sometimes, even if you are a marginal match for the position or the position isn’t the best match for you, they may tend to oversell you to the client and push you to apply anyway – to get interviews. Interviews are how they get their foot in the front door and build relationships with hiring company. Recruiting agencies promote that they can find the best candidate to fill the companies open position. However, in reality, if a hiring company is sent three people to interview, they may just pick the “best one” to fill a position instead of interviewing dozens over many weeks. It’s a numbers game and they can’t get paid if they don’t send candidates on interviews.

However, again you can use this as an opportunity. Even if the job is not the best fit, you can use the opportunity to hone and practice your interviewing skills. And you never know you may be pleasantly surprised and find out it’s a great fit after all.

Summary

You can’t always choose the agency you work with, but you can choose what you do with the situation you are given. Recruiting agencies also face many challenges working with various hiring companies and candidates, so I’ll concede this business can be difficult on both sides of the recruiting process. Do your homework before applying with an agency and don’t do anything or make any agreements that make you uncomfortable.

References

Here are some additional viewpoints from others.

Playing the Third-Party Recruiter Game
http://dataeducation.com/playing-the-third-party-recruiter-game-t-sql-tuesday-093/

What You Need to Know About How Recruiters Get Paid (And How It May Affect Your Job Hunt)
http://chameleonresumes.com/need-know-how-recruiters-get-paid-may-affect-job-hunt/

Why Recruiters Are Bad For Your Career
https://www.brandonsavage.net/why-recruiters-are-bad-for-your-career/

How a Tech Recruiter Can Help You Get Hired in Your Dream Job
https://skillcrush.com/2016/04/05/how-a-tech-recruiter-can-help-you-get-hired-in-tech/

11 Tips for Working With IT Recruiters
https://www.cio.com/article/2377612/careers-staffing/11-tips-for-working-with-it-recruiters.html

As a follow up to my article Anatomy of a Successful Troubleshooter, I began thinking about the habits that I have found effective when troubleshooting. I was trying to coach a teammate with troubleshooting and put together this catalog of what I have found valuable that could qualify as effective troubleshooting habits.

Problem Management and Root Cause Analysis

Problem Management and Root Cause Analysis are vast subjects, but I think it can be boiled down to: performing troubleshooting more effectively and creating measurable results.

Here are some key takeaways from this topic:

• Reactive Problem Management is focused on finding an immediate work-around
• Proactive Problem Management is focused more on finding the root cause and prevention
• If we can properly identify a problem and understand it then we can probably do something to prevent it from occurring again
• Often the first problem identified is not the root cause and we must continue to explore and dig deeper (this is the fun part)

There is a lot written about these topics from a management perspective, which talks about various barriers and challenges. However, we don’t need management committees to tell us how to get results; we just need to continue to improve our own troubleshooting skills and use good judgement.

When particular problems arise, we know performing some Root Cause Analysis can produce valuable information. This is where we discover how it works, how to fix it, why it is the correct fix and most importantly prevent it from reoccurring. For this investment, the worst case is that we learn something new; best case we are able to produce measurable improvements.

Effective Troubleshooting Habits

Filter and Corroborate Advice you Find

During a google search, you will may be lead down many wrong paths and solutions may be either wrong or don’t apply to your situation.  Sometimes I find that an error that has over a dozen possible causes and a dozen proposed solutions. Read carefully and do not blindly implement them one-by-one until one works (see avoid brute force methods). You’ll be more efficient in resolving the problem (and also not risk introducing additional problems) when you take the time to filter and critique you’re reading. Before implementing a solution, keep reading until you discover enough about the problem and the various solutions to make an educated choice of action. Try to corroborate advice from more reputable sources.

We have to consider that the solution to the problem will be the result of connecting several different clues that can only be found when examining them together and not individually. In other words, if we look at one symptom and find a solution to that symptom we may not necessary have found the correct solution our specific problem. All aspects must be correlated and examined together to discover the eventual correct solution.

The internet is also notorious for giving bad advice and selling it as good advice or even a best practice. There are many reasons for this. The poster’s complete situation may be specific to their environment or undisclosed factors that may not apply to you situation.  Sometimes the solution applied to older OS or SQL versions that now is either incorrect or doesn’t apply today. Try to find sources relevant to your versions or configuration. Attempt to verify that the symptoms in their solution are the same symptoms you are observing and are coming from the same source problem. Look for posts where there is some common agreement and eliminate the fringe cases that probably don’t apply to the situation.

• Be careful of being led down a wrong paths that won’t work
• When too many possible causes, keep researching to eliminate ones that don’t apply
• Corroborate advice from more reputable sources
• Don’t risk introduction new problems by implementing solutions not understood
• Attempt to verify the proposed solution matches the symptoms associated with your problem
• Filter and eliminate fringe cases that don’t apply

Observe the Obvious

Sometimes the clues are right in front of your face and it just takes stepping back to see it.

EXAMPLE: One time I was troubleshooting an FTP problem with a vendor. I logged on to their FTP server and confirmed our process had uploaded the files, but they were having issues with their back-end processes that were picking up the files and claiming that we were not sending the files. I noticed in the same directory the files we uploaded on their server they had these large files labeled ftp_activity_log. I opened one and found their back-end software was logging API communication failures in their own logs that they never bothered to inspect.

Correlate the Clues

Sometimes it takes someone saying has anything else changed today? It helps discovering what else has been going on recently with your network and servers with other teams. But don’t use this just to point blame at another team without actually finding a clue and taking the time to actually investigate further. Armed with preliminary information you can begin to ask intelligent questions of other teams in a cooperative resolution focused manner.

EXAMPLE: One day an application that involved 4 SQL clusters all starting failing. The application lead spent half a day on the phone with vendor troubleshooting to no avail. Later in the day I was inquiring with the busy application lead. I didn’t get much information but the little I got, I started inspecting things myself and found in the application error logs the problems all started during lunch hour. I remember during lunch getting a call from our SAN engineers that were moving drives on a different cluster to the new SAN and had to recreate the MS DTC resources on the cluster. I went to the cluster and found the DTC service was not properly configured for remote access. When I fixed that everything started working with the original application again. The application lead and vendor were unable to make this connection because it didn’t look outside their scope.

Avoid Brute Force Methods without Prior Inspection

In an effort to just make problems go away and move on, don’t just fire off service restarts or server reboots without even looking at the problem. It is important to fix problems quickly, but collecting key data while the problem is occurring and testing your theories is also important to determining the root cause (especially for reoccurring problems). When you fail to collect key data beforehand you can sometimes erase evidence or be unable to examine the problem afterwards.  Sometimes mysterious problems are just solved with a simple service restart or reboot, but if the problem is reoccurring this is a primary opportunity to learn something new and rise above the average troubleshooter.

• Don’t just fire off service restarts or server reboots until you have inspected the problem
• Collect data beforehand to make it easier to duplicate or troubleshoot later

Get a Fresh Perspective

Sometimes you need to stop thinking about something to see it more clearly. When you spend too much time on a problem your efforts become less effective and have diminishing returns. Sometimes you are troubleshooting a particularly evasive problem over many hours. Get up take a break and do something different. Verbalizing the problem or drawing it on a white board helps and solutions become more obvious when explaining to someone else – then BAM – something you weren’t seeing before comes into the picture and you’re back on track. Don’t be embarrassed to be wrong with your assumptions, we all go through a similar process and have similar blocks. It helps having colleagues that can help each other when you get stuck.

A similar topic is brainstorming. When developing a new solution (or solving a problem) after spending many hours, I frequently find solutions come to me after taking a break and when I revisit them with a fresh perspective (an ah-ha moment that leads me in a new direction).

Document and Improve

After the troubleshooting is over and the fires are put out,  take time to review the situation. The best time to document something is right after you developed it or just fixed it when all the details are still fresh in your mind.

Documentation

After troubleshooting something, it will usually come up again in some fashion. I can’t remember every detail I troubleshooted months ago – heck sometimes s week ago. And remember, someone else might benefit from the knowledge you gained, so you can be a hero by sharing it. Create a Visio diagram, write a procedure document, write a wiki or blog article, etc. Share it with your peers and incorporate their input.

This extra step requires investing a little more time, but it also reinforces what you learned. When you start to document what you learned you gain a more complete understanding of the subject.

Identify Things that Could be Improved

During your troubleshooting you may discover systems or processes that need to be upgraded or improved. I want to make things more efficient which in turn makes mine and others jobs easier. This may mean putting in some automation task or suggesting a system or process improvement to management.

What habits have you found useful?

I recently found myself coaching a teammate with troubleshooting advice, but it seemed like no matter what I offered they were unable to improve their situation or correct bad habits. It seemed like it just wasn’t in their DNA. So, I started to wonder if they had the right stuff to become successful in this career. This made me curious if there were core traits or qualities that make someone a good or poor candidate for an IT career?

I have worked with many different IT organizations and over my career, I have seen IT staff start out and move up quickly and onto better careers in networking or programming or management in a short number of years. And I have seen IT staff become stagnate and seem to never advance.

I view troubleshooting like being a detective solving a whodunit mystery. It is a process of uncovering digital clues and attempting to connect the dots and find links to a plausible root cause. Tracking down and following up on these leads helps us arrive at an eventual resolution – cracking the case. I believe this is both an art and science.

What is the Right Stuff?

First of all, you have to be able to think logically and analytically. If someone doesn’t have this basic foundation to approaching and solving problems, it can become very difficult.

Over the years, I have observed two common qualities of successful IT professionals that are easy to spot: curiosity and passion (or at least strong interest).

If you don’t have passion for technology and what you are doing, it is much harder to stay interested or advance and earn more money. Have you ever noticed non-IT people that struggle with computers lack patience and therefore have low curiosity? They get frustrated easily and demand it just work (pounding fist on the keyboard).

Problem solvers are curious people and usually enjoy a challenging task. They are often found tinkering or experimenting to gain a better understanding. They want to know how it works and why it works. The secret to being a successful in IT is being able to figure things out – which seems directly driven by the quality of being curious and passionate.

Being Able to Figure Things Out

A study was performed about 30 years ago with beginner and expert Unix admins. It was performed again more recently and interestingly produced the exact same results.

A written test was given to both beginner admins and expert admins and the scores found that there was very little difference in the results between the two groups. This lead to the question (humorously), why do we pay so much more for expert admins when objectively they didn’t test any better than a beginner admin?

For the second test, they put the two groups in front of a computer and asked them to solve problems given to them. The results showed a dramatic difference. The experts were able to accomplish amazing things that beginners struggled with. This lead to the conclusion, that experts were clearly better at figuring things out.

I heard a real life recent story where a company fired all their top paid programmers and retained only all the junior programmers. Someone thought this was a brilliant financial decision to cut costs. It’s no wonder this company soon went out of business.

In my opinion, this classic experiment demonstrates that memorizing things (or passing a test) isn’t a good measure of skill. It has more to do with knowing where to look and skillfully connecting the dots and using good judgement in your execution. Skill only comes with wisdom and experience. But, once you develop these skills in one area, they do carry over and build upon new technologies you learn.

Every single job I have been hired at, I have been asked to learn and master new things that weren’t part of original job description and never screened for during the interview. It’s just the nature of the job in IT, we are continually asked to learn new technologies and troubleshoot things we have never done before. And, it’s no surprise, when we do we acquire new skills in the process. I think this key quality – ability to figure thing out – should be better identified during the interview process and given more weight. Instead hiring managers create  check off boxes of specific technologies or skills you already have against the job description (I could fill another whole article on the topic of better IT hiring practices).

Can I Make Things Better?

Another quality successful troubleshooters have is a desire to improve the systems with which they work. When you are troubleshooting are you looking for a quick fix to make the problem go away or do you look for an opportunity to learn?

Sure, sometimes we have to fix the problems quickly and don’t have time to look back. However, have you ever implemented a fix and didn’t really understand why it fixed it or understand if it was even the appropriate fix or if it may create new unforeseen problems?

It requires extra investment on our part to research an issue more deeply, but the extra time spent will pay dividends in the long run. This is where we discover more deeply about how systems work, why it is the correct fix and prevent it from reoccurring. And sometimes we discover a better way to do things or make our systems just work better. This is where we build our tool kit of best practices.

Sometimes an improvement can become a new project which needs to be presented to management. This creates more work – but that’s a good thing, right? If you don’t want to improve systems for your company and enhance your skills, then you are probably not reading this article either.

Benefits of making things better?

• Create measurable improvement or efficiency of a process or routine
• Learn something you didn’t know before (blog and share what you learn)
• Expand your knowledgebase and skillset making you more valuable
• Make recommendations and implement changes that save time and money
• Become a more valuable asset to your company

Coincidently, these are also long-term benefits that help advance your own career.

What qualities do you think make IT professional more successful?
What qualities have been helpful in your career?