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Andrew Gabriel

In article ,
writes:
Have just been made redundant from my job in IT and am finding it hard
to find another.

Even the 1st line and 2nd line jobs now want you to have an MCSE.

One option is to go and get an MCSE, but then there's the lack of a
degree, and the lack of 3 years feeding and caring for a server farm
which aren't so easily rectified.

I also suspect the lack of interest in me may be due to the recruiters
being able to work out my age from the fact I took O'Levels rather
than GCSEs

I've done lots of IT recruiting as a manager, so I'll tell
you what's important to me when looking for someone. It might
help you with your technique if you know what's going on behind
the scenes. However, I'll warn that most recruiters are thoroughly
incompetent, never having been trained to do it, and the successful
candidate is often little more than a random choice because the
employer doesn't know how to select the best candidate.
(I'll also add that in my current role I don't do recruiting,
before people start pointlessly sending me CVs...)

I create a job description, which will (amongst other things) list
the skills required for the role and the level of each skill.
The skills list is passed to agencies to match against the people
they have on their books. From that I get a list of CV's, in theory
filtered against my requirements, but in practice about 1 in 10 of
the CV's I get from most agencies really do match. I take each CV
and score it on a spreadsheet against each skill, weighted so the
mandatory skills get higher scores than desirable skills. I'll aim
to look for about 4 people with the best scores to interview, but
in practice I often don't actually find that many and have to
interview fewer.

At this point I'll say that qualifications almost never feature on
my list of requirements. I know that's unusual because agencies
sometimes come back and ask if I missed them off accidentally.
However, I'm usually looking for experienced staff, and hence I
only care about their experience. (If I'm looking for inexperienced
staff, such as to bring in to a graduate recruitment program or a
sandwich course year, then that's different, but not relevant here.)

So, for candidates which get invited to interview, there are two
things I'm looking for. Most important -- am I sure they will fit
in to the existing team and keep it working smoothly? There's no
way to gleen this from a CV, it's all down to how they come across
at interview, and I will put specific questions designed to see
how they have worked in teams in the past. This is much more
important to me than their skills; missing skills can usually be
learned, but hiring someone with the wrong personality to fit in
can't be fixed. Secondly, do they have the skills they claimed on
their CV. IME, about 1 in 3 interviewees will make it past both
these checks, and I only make an offer if someone does. The cost
of recruiting the wrong person is enormous; it's very many times
their salary, so that's a mistake you need to avoid as a recruiter.
I will sometimes do a second interview (although it's not always
necessary if the process is followed correctly), and I always make
sure someone in the team also interviews a final candidate (and of
course HR will interview them too in most companies).

So, now you know how it works, what can you do?

You need a well written CV - there's plenty of advice around on
how to do that. Key things - make sure you include all the
keywords which identify your skills. These are sometimes searched
for by computer. Make sure your CV is concise and to the point,
with the key bits up front. Give your CV to someone to read, and
without telling them in advance, stop them after 90 seconds. How
far did they get? Have they got a good grasp of your key skills,
or have they only discovered you were born in London and went to
a junior school in Wales? Do they know what _you_ did (important)
or what the company made (usually irrelevant). Don't lie on your
CV - you won't believe how obvious that is at interview (if the
interviewer knows what they're doing). If you have a long career,
don't try and cram in everything you've done. More recent
experience is more important, plus things that are particularly
relevant to the job you're applying for (you don't necessarily
use the same CV for all job applications).

The CV is really just to get you to interview. There's an
important method for short circuiting this though, and that's
networking - making use of your network of friends and former
work colleagues. As a recruiter, a personal recommendation is
worth far more than any CV, so get linked to your former
colleagues through services such as linkedin.com so you don't
lose contact. It's often stated that most successful applicants
made the initial approach through their network, not through
agencies. (You still need just as good a CV though.)

--
Andrew Gabriel
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