recruiters to the rescue

With the tight market for tech workers,
staffing and recruiting firms can ease the crunch to find qualified employees.

By Jennifer LeClaire

Business growth drives Information Technology, or IT, staffing, and therein lies the conundrum. Finding IT workers in a tech-driven economy is a challenge for small businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike.
Indeed, there is a bona fide technical skills shortage that has many companies knocking on the doors of IT staffing firms for a helping hand in hunting heads.
Consider the statistics. Executive search and HR firms report that finding and hiring is more difficult than ever before. Executives across the United States agree: 67 percent believe there is a shortage of qualified talent in the market, according to Norwalk, Connecticut-based executive recruiter ExecuNet’s 15th annual “Executive Job Market Intelligence Report.”
What’s more, anticipated business growth is sparking expansion plans, according to an October survey by the Computing Technology Industry Association. Nine out of 10 small- to mid-sized businesses, or SMBs, plan to add new full-time employees in the next 12 months. Some 33 percent plan to add at least one new business location.
“It’s especially hard to find good technology workers these days,” says Jesús Hernandez, systems administrator for RM Personnel, Inc., an El Paso, Texas-based recruiting firm. “Some positions are tougher to fill than others, but the demand is growing across the board.”

A RECRUITING HAND
IT staffing firms can take the pain out of finding qualified technology workers. IT staffing firms come in all shapes and sizes and business models. Some specialize in temporary workers for short-term assignments, others specialize in executive placements. Some work on retainers. Others work for placement fees. But when the head hunting gets tough, companies can count on IT staffing firms to start hunting.
“Recruiters help their clients by staying abreast of the latest technologies and the best places to find IT workers who have those specialized skills,” says David Gomez, president and CEO of David Gomez & Associates, Inc., a Chicago-based boutique executive search firm with a focus on diversity. “The challenge for companies is knowing where to mine those people with industry-specific skills.”
For example, the banking industry may need tech workers with different software application experience than the retail industry, or the insurance industry, or the food processing industry. Understanding the parameters of the position, then, is the first step to finding the appropriate candidate for a specific client’s corporate culture.
“We have a battery of tests we put candidates through to make sure they are skilled in the technologies. We even do some psychological evaluations,” Hernandez says. “So when you call us you can be assured that we’ve taken steps to ensure quality candidates.”
Recruiters agree: Workers with certain skill sets are harder to find than others. And some skill sets may become more difficult to find in the coming year, as workers are snapped up by businesses expanding their use of technology. When CompTIA asked businesses to identify which technologies they plan to invest in over the next 12 months, 29 percent of SMBs said secured data backup, storage and disaster recovery; 24 percent cited IP telephony; 19 percent named server virtualization and consolidation; 18 percent mentioned Wi-Fi, and 13 percent said storage area networks.

THE CLIENT’S ROLE IN THE SEARCH
Although the recruiter does most of the work in the IT staffing equation, client companies still have a key role to play in the search process. Two steps in particular—pre-candidate preparedness and candidate consideration—can make the difference between finding the best and brightest and having to start the search all over again because the wrong person was hired.
During the pre-candidate preparedness phase, it’s the client’s responsibility to prepare a recruiting job order that accurately reflects the company’s specific skills requirements, explains Tony Dvorak, communications manager for Superior Design International, a Fort Lauderdale-based IT staffing firm.
“This is particularly important when highly specialized skill sets are required,” Dvorak says. “There is a direct correlation between the amount of effort that a customer expends generating a precise order and job description and the quality and suitability of the candidates that are sourced.”
During the candidate consideration phase, a company’s hiring manager needs to review the applicants as quickly as possible. With the tight market for tech workers, Dvorak says, many candidates are seeing multiple job offers and the window of opportunity doesn’t remain open long.
The timeline for the search process varies depending on the skill set, the region of the country, the salary, and similar factors. Less technical positions may be filled within a few days; however, recruiters say it typically takes 30, 60 or even 120 days to fill more specialized positions.

UNDERSTANDING THE FEES
What will you pay an IT staffing firm? There are various fee models, including contingency search, contract recruiting, temporary staffing and retained search. Contract recruiters are paid an hourly rate to work within a company to handle the hiring process. This method essentially gives the human resources staff a helping hand during hiring surges.
Contingency search firms are paid only for successful searches. The fees are based on a percentage of the candidate’s starting salary.
Retained search firms work off a retainer. Clients pay all or part of the agency’s placement fee in advance. Retained search is typically reserved for executive level head hunting. The fees for both contingency and retained search firms could be as high as 33 percent.
Finally, temporary staffing firms recruit, screen and pool large numbers of candidates and then assign them to clients for temporary periods of time. The firm typically charges a premium on the hourly rate to cover its costs of searching and screening clients. Considering the resources it takes to find—and screen—the right candidates, many companies are finding value in staffing firm services.
“Finding skilled technology workers remains a challenge. We may look at more than 500 resumes to find a senior architect and only 10 of those might be qualified for the specific position,” Gomez says. “IT job candidates often overemphasize the experience they have. If you don’t understand the landscape, it’s difficult to successfully land the right candidate.”