The State of the Tech Vendor Market Today

Welcome to the first instalment of the TechNix blog offering useful and poignant insight into today’s tech vendor world and helpful advice for employers and job seekers alike. How to select and motivate a recruiter to help you to land that dream job you’ve been coveting will be covered. Advice for employers on best practices with third-party recruiters and candidate interviewing is coming up too. There will also be discussions about interesting tech industry people, technologies and other products that may impact us or grab our attention. This blog is a centralized resource for recruiting tips, product reviews and industry news for the tech vendor professional. I hope you find it a worthwhile read.

Where are we now?
The good news is that the tech vendor industry is on a solid uptick and consequently, the current hiring marketplace for tech vendor professionals is quite robust!  The dilemma facing the high tech professional today is all about unrealistic expectations. After the whack the economy took in 2008 and early 2009, tech professionals need to review their standards for job excitement, challenge, career advancement, and salaries. Due to the recent economic downturn, expectations need to be kept in line with reality, somewhat lower than they were several years ago. The reality is, yes, we have undergone a major change that affects business opportunity in these areas and it’s going to take time to get back to the way it was. The tech market, while less damaged than the financial marketplace, was also rocked by the downturn. Tech professionals must now understand the state of the nation and lower their expectations accordingly.

Another reality we face today is that there are many IT sales and technical professionals who would like to move onwards and upwards but are stifled by the lack of solid opportunities and too much competition for the available jobs. Many professionals have suffered “career wounds” as their employers were forced to downsize and the survivors were asked to carry extra loads with no extra pay. People took on the jobs of two or three others and morale suffered. There is a lot of pent-up demand for job opportunities out there at present which means good jobs will be highly competed for and more challenging to land.

The good news is that there are a few more economic optimists emerging of late and the prognosis is for further recovery, albeit a slow one. There are loads of good positions coming available from employers who’ve survived this downturn are all the stronger for it. The tide is beginning to turn and I see the North American marketplace becoming quite active again.

Undoubtedly, the recruitment landscape has changed since the rise of the Internet and the proliferation of job boards. In fact, volumes of applicants have made web-based job applications an exercise in frustration, both for candidates and employers. Studies have shown that employers fill about 10% of their openings via Internet postings. It’s tough to get noticed in a sea of email candidates. What generally happens is that one gets lost in the black hole and is unable to verify even the status of their application.

As an alternative, independent recruiters are still a very good bet. Why recruiters? Because the top headhunters got that way through a combination of professionalism, solid networking, and getting results for their clients. Top recruiters usually work for the best employers and will present you in the best light possible, providing you with the highest leverage available. Independent recruiters still generate a large percentage of tech job placements. With their extensive networks, they can be your best possibility for getting your particulars in front of the right hiring authority at the right time. One of the big challenges, with all of the active job seekers, is to grab and focus the attention of the most effective recruiters, specialized in your industry.

How does one grab the attention of the recruiters? As recruiters seem to be in hyper-drive, burdened with details & candidate applications and too few hours in a day, this can also be a challenge. There are no guarantees that a recruiter will find your next dream job but there are ways to improve your chances of that happening. My next few blogs will offer advice on how to select a recruiter and how to effectively market yourself to a recruiter.

Ted Nixon

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