1st Class Interviewing: Part 1 of 12

How to Write a High-Performance IT Recruitment Job Description

The Job Description is the cornerstone of every effective recruitment process. It serves as a blueprint for every role in your business and collectively, they form a complete operational architecture of your entire organisation. It is that important and an IT Recruitment Job Description requires more detail than others with technical objectives as well as broader commercial role objectives.

It is common for historic job descriptions to be passed on and reused resulting in something that is out of date from the start of the process.

The value to your business of having properly defined job descriptions is huge; by offering comprehensive, organised, and easily understood parameters in the form of a job description to guide the candidate and their line managers clarity for the candidate’s responsibilities and accountabilities. To improve on this, a ‘High Performance’ job description will in addition help to inspire a potential candidate to want the role and to understand how they can enjoy it by mapping out career progression and opportunities

In this blog by Langley James IT Recruitment we will present the essentials required to create a “high-performance job description” designed to increase recruitment results and help with the interview process and employee achievement.

What is a Job Description and What Value Does it Offer?

Put simply, the Job Description, or JD, is the foundation upon which your entire recruitment and subsequent management process is built. It is an extremely important document and well worth significant investment from you in both time and resources to get right. 

Recruitment

A properly written JD clearly describes the role’s purpose, context, core and secondary role responsibilities, and the skills, experiences and attributes required. IT Recruitment requires more specific technical skill and experience requirement. 

A good JD will help Langley James to write an advert and it will attract far more relevant candidates. 

Interviewing

A quality JD gives a clear structure for your candidate interviews and will keep the process honest, it will assist in structuring the questions to help you and Langley James to recruit the best people for your role and  help you to focus on what is important giving you a ready made script to how present the job and opportunity. 

Management

When a new recruit starts the JD will form the backbone of your management plan. Appraisals, KPIs, objectives, goals, training, and progression all stem from an accurate JD to match your expectations with their performance. Getting it right will ensure it serves as a reminder to help you deliver on the promises made during the interview. 

Purpose & Goals

The JD should be designed to attract candidates, the initial purpose of the JD is to pitch the opportunity to prospective candidates in a way that clearly communicates your needs while inspiring them to commit to an application, interview or job offer with a compelling and interesting presentation.

The goal is to create as much candidate interest as possible to ensure your vacancy is high on their wish list of applications.

Knowing that, do you think a job title, a list of responsibilities, and skill requirements is enough to compete with other companies fighting to secure the same talent?  

The Opportunity

The best way to achieve candidate interest is to sell them the benefits of joining your business focusing on what they will get out of the deal. This is what ‘The Opportunity’ really is. The trick is to focus on the likely motivators of your ideal candidate and speak to them directly, matching their needs to your offering, reinforcing it all with your brand values, culture and company story to convince them of your sincerity and authenticity.

Most candidates are looking for the following from their role

• Life and Career Fulfilment
• Power, Advancement, and Responsibility 
• Respect (friends, family, colleagues, management, other professionals)
• Good Health (reasonable stress, positive experience, regular/quality breaks)
• Personal Development (new skills and experiences)
• Family (to look after or to start one)
• Wealth (salary, bonus, benefits)
• Social Interactions (learning opportunities, friends, career advancement, etc)

This is the “what’s in it for me” piece, ensure you review your company and departmental culture and work out how you can deliver on each of these points. 

Tone & Style

Getting the tone right is fundamental when you speak to the candidate you want, in the first person, and appeal to their nature. You will be interested in what happen, rather than passive applications, it is more likely to attract applicants who want the job for the right reasons. Global taxi giant Uber absolutely nail this approach:

Uber Needs Partners like you. 

Drive with Uber and earn great money as an independent contractor. Get paid weekly just for helping our community of riders get rides around town. Be your own boss and get pad in fares for driving on your own schedule. 

Nowhere does the initial JD statement mention anything about Uber as a business or attempts to offer a list of requirements. Instead, it speaks directly to the people they want and clearly tells them what the basic life benefits are in taking the job. 

Key Role Responsibilities & Objectives

This section is simple but very important to get right. Accuracy and concise language it essential, focusing on the core objectives and tasks only. Be sure not to go off on tangents detailing the skills and requirements.

Start with the key objective(s). For example, The IT Support Engineer will deliver first class IT services to all users in the business ensuring BAU continuity, reliability, and fast action.  

Then list the most important, day to day tasks that will add up to meet the objectives. Outline the most important responsibilities of the job first. 

Qualification 

With the opportunity piece completed and a well-described vacancy, your interested candidate should be keen to read on and find out if they have the ‘right stuff’ to get the job that they are attracted to. To ensure maximum interest, clarity is key. 

Understand the difference between what you want and what you need and stick to the latter. The easiest way to get this right is to write a list and split it into two, detailing what is truly essential (needs) and what is desirable (wants). Then, split the list again into the following categories:

• Skills
• Experience
• Qualifications
• Attributes

This action is key to ensure candidates can accurately self-assess their suitability while also giving you valuable insight into specific candidate strengths and development areas. 

Remuneration 

We advise that companies are completely open about the salary. Believing vague detail will somehow broaden the number of applicants is a common and costly mistake. In reality, candidates are likely to assume the salary to be low. Further, list every single benefit on offer. If you are unsure on details, find out. These details really do and will make a huge difference and form a key part of “The Opportunity” piece. (Follow our IT salary guides for more information)

Organisation

Describe where the role features in the company organisational structure, who the role reports to, and other key interactions or stakeholders. This helps the candidate imagine being in the role and suggests the job’s importance. 

A Few Final Tips…

• Ensure all stakeholders have some input into your JD, especially if they are part of the interview process and management setup. Failing to do so may result in conflicts of interest and disagreements that will hinder your recruiting process. 
• For obvious reasons – Do not use internal terminology or acronyms. 
• Be realistic in your people expectations think what you need and be specific on IT skills and experience but some things will need to be compromised Langley James will always aim to find you the best person available at the time you are recruiting.  Being inflexible will reduce your options and delay your recruitment success. 
•  Where possible get a colleague to assess the JD before using it to ensure it is compliant with the law. Check for discrimination, gender biases, prejudice, employee rights and employment law and remember this is continually changing. Use a reputable source such as The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development CIPD for up to date advice.
• Reduce the language complexity to make it fast and easy to read. 
• Be clear, open and honest 
•  A powerful, multi-functional job description will help you at every stage of your talent attraction, recruitment and management processes. Langley James IT Recruitment can help you form your Job description, give Langley James a call today to help you find someone worth recruiting for your next IT vacancy.

Once completed, it will pave the way towards the next step: The Agency Vacancy Briefing

An economic boom is on the horizon. Don’t delay your recruiting plans – act now or risk being left behind. 

A little direct? Perhaps, but it is all too common at this time of year for businesses to start planning for the New Year, instead, take action now and start your recruitment campaigns now putting you ahead in January when many more businesses will then begin their recruitment campaigns.

2021 is set to be one of, if not, the most competitive years, when many projects that had been delayed will be caught up with. Morgan Stanley projects strong global GDP growth of 6.4% for 2021 while the excitable mainstream media predicts the start of a “roaring twenties” era for us all. With so many sectors expected to rebound at the same time, never, in modern times at least, has the commercial playing field been so level for so many. Titans will fall and minnows will rise as our riled and turbulent economy starts to settle into a fresh new order. 

The question is, are you ready for the most aggressive commercial race of our age?

Rising National Unemployment Rates Won’t Mean More IT Candidates

Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security believing that rising unemployment means it’s a talent buyers’ market. Sure, if you are recruiting a team of production operatives or account managers, then yes, you’ll be able to simply post an advert and watch the CVs flood in. However, if you are chasing a first-class .Net Developer, BI Analyst, or Cloud Infrastructure Engineer you’re in for a shock. In 2021, demand for niche talent will rise sharply making it even harder to attract and secure the best people. Even if you are not quite ready to recruit, act now, and start the process. Contact Langley James in advance to start building talent pools and setup some early conversations to get ahead of the game.   

Review Your Recruitment Process ASAP

2020 has caused hiring freezes, multi-signature procurement decisions, and cautious, fear-driven process extensions. In short, current business action is slow. Most recruitment assignments that do make it past the ‘sign-off’ stage are faced with increased process stakeholders, extended candidate interview hurdles, and general hesitation. Given what we have discussed above, how competitive do you think your recruitment process is? 

Let’s be clear – you are competing with Hiring Managers with flexible budgets and the power to offer a candidate a job during or immediately after an interview. In talent, short areas such as IT, skill assessments, psychometric testing, and 3+ interview stages are luxuries that will slow you down and significantly reduce your chances of securing your candidate. We’re not saying make knee-jerk, ill-informed decisions. Far from it. Instead, be very clear on what you need, what you’re able to compromise on, invest time into creating a robust, high value but lean interview plan, and prepare to make offers quickly should you need to. 

Plan for Competition with a Strong Offer Strategy 

Before the sign off stage, talk to us at Langley James about the market and local talent competition. In skill short, high demand niche areas, failing to plan for recruitment competition is foolish. Assuming that going back to your management team, post-signoff, for more money is undesirable, pre-empt the inevitable with an offer strategy that includes an ability to negotiate and raise offers. In 2021, competition is going to be fierce.

To ensure your salary budget is in line with the market have a look at our salary guide which we publish monthly, these are the average salaries of what candidates are seeking and roles are advertised, you may need to consider paying more that the average, but we understand that is easier said than done as it may knock out the whole IT department salary budget.

Expect Attack

While you read this, your employment competitors are already plotting to attack the talent market, which will include them trying to entice your staff. They too have powerful recruitment partners with extensive candidate networks and persuasive pitches. Putting off your battle plans until the new year gives them the advantage. By the time you’re ready to hire, they will have already engaged the market and may have already met many candidates some of which may be your own staff. Our advice is to start planning today and start taking decisive action.   

Bottom Line – It’s December 2020 right now with plenty of working days until the 24th so, get ahead of the rat race and meet some candidates while they are available. With digital interviewing, it has never been so easy to put an hour aside to talk, so call Langley James and make a start. You will not regret it.

Give real thought to your existing processes and talk to us about them. They are meant to make your business run smoothly and efficiently so if your recruiting process is slowing you down causing a commercial disadvantage, consider changing it. The process is not law and is yours to change! 

Speed is of the essence. Take action today. 

The Difference Between an IT Contractor Interview Vs Permanent Employee Interview

IT Contractor interviews are different than interviews held for a permanent employee. Generally, line managers will not be carrying out psychometric tests, or second and third interviews. As a line manager, you may only have an hour to assess whether to hire the contractor.

In the interview, the IT contractor is likely to sell their skills, professional contractors are normally well prepared, knowing they have about an hour to win the contract.

As a line manager, you will be analysing if the IT contractor has the right skills, experience, attitude and personality to fit with the existing team and whether they have sufficient skills and experience to warrant their fee.

If a line manager invests time in getting the most out of the contractor interview, and remember that they are not recruiting an employee, they are probably more liking to make more effective contractor recruiting decisions.

 IT contractor interview Questions

Line Managers should consider asking the following questions during an interview with an IT Contractor

1. Talk to me about when you have used these skills in another project, what went right and what could have gone better
2. Give me an example of when you have used your own initiative to make a different to a previous project?
3. How do you feel about working alone or with a team?
4. What is your expectation on being managed?
5. Talk to me about different business cultures you have worked in during previous contracts and what have you done to ensure that you fitted in to the team.
6. Tell me how you ensure you achieve your deadlines
7. How have you made a difference to a project you have previously worked on.
8. How do you ensure you understand the projects requirements fully?
9. Tell me about a time when  a project you have worked on has gone wrong and how you have overcome it.
10. What do you know about this organisation?
11. What do you know about this project?
12. Do you have any evidence of your impact on a previous projects profitability and how it impacted on the business.

IT Contractor and their Communication Skills

During the interview, a line manager will also establish if the IT Contractor has strong communication skills. The main factors they will look for include;

• Do they have good eye contact?
• Do they answer the question that was asked or do they go off on a tangent?
• Do they listen or do they justify what they want to say?
• What is their body language saying?
• Do they ask questions that are relevant?
• Do they use silence?
• Is the contractor skilled for the position? Can they achieve what we need them to?
• Can they work on their own and use their initiative?
• Are they likeable and will fit into our organisation’s culture?
• Are they clearly focused on project delivery?
• Do they have good communicate skills?
• Can they offer some added value, more than the other candidates, which could help give the organisation an edge?
• Do they try hard to understand the project requirements, by asking lots of questions?
• Do they seem keen and a hard worker and prepared to get really stuck in?
• Do they appear to be genuinely interested in the project?
• Are they a positive person who will motivate others or a negative merchant of doom?
• Are they a good listener?
• Do they know anything about our business/organisation and the market sector?
• Is the contractor commercially aware?

A good IT contractor will have the same checklist to work through from their perspective and will be trying to reassure the interviewer that they are the best person for the job.

What sends alarm bells ringing?

As a line manager, you will be likely to recognise during the interview that the contractor might not be the right person for this particular contract, or that they might not fit in with your organisational culture. Common warning signs include:

• The IT contractor focuses too much on how the role would be good for them rather than the client
• The IT contractor does not really address the organisations problems or explain how their skills and experience will solve them
• The IT contractor may exaggerate or boast.
• The  IT contractor is a bad listener, talks too much, and doesn’t directly answer questions
• The IT contractor interrupts the interviewer 
• The IT contractor has obviously not prepared for the interview and lacks understanding
• The IT contractor demonstrates a lack of commercial awareness 
• The IT contractor lacks interest in the organisation and project and demonstrates poor knowledge.

Making your IT Contract Recruitment decision

IT contractors that have long term successful contracting careers will also have good selling skills in addition to their core expertise. 

At the end of the interview, an experienced and prepared IT contractor will normally ask for the business and attempt to close the deal, assuming of course that they want to work on the project.

As a line manager if you are not ready to make a decision at the interview you can schedule a time to get back to the, however, remember that a good contractor, even in depressed market conditions, will almost certainly have other options. So, do take time to deliberate over the decision, but do not prevaricate.

Once the contract offer has been made, the negotiation stage begins once again preparation is very important.

Langley James IT Recruitment has been established since 1999 and specialises in recruiting IT Contractors throughout the UK across all business sectors contact Langley James on  0207 788 6600  

Act Now to Retain Your IT Staff Before its Too Late

As we race towards the end of a somewhat eventful 2020, we’ll soon be bracing ourselves for the annual surge in people all over the country reflecting and deciding to change jobs. Twice a year, in January and September (ish), people return to work following a break with new-found and ambitious plans to further themselves and their careers. With less than a month to go before Christmas, here are some immediately actionable IT staff retention ideas highlighting what to address before it’s too late. 

Work-Life balance

Although it may be frowned upon by some employers, it should come as no surprise when people say they would prefer to work only standard or flexible hours so that they can spend more time focused on other commitments.

It can be easy for employers to overlook the bigger picture – a poor work-life balance will not only impact employee but their spouse, family and many other aspects of their life. According to the Mental Health Foundation, over a quarter of employees in the UK feel depressed due to their work-load, and a further 58% feel irritable because they struggle to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Workload plays a significant part in employee satisfaction and ultimately can influence an employee’s decision on whether they stay or leave. Projects are often time-oriented, do not assume that if an employee continues on with tasks beyond scheduled working hours that it is because they love their job and want to be there, which of course can be the case, but not in all instances. A feeling of pressure will profoundly impact upon an individual and force them into working beyond their contentment. If an employee is showing signs of stress and continue working beyond what is expected of them, then perhaps it is time to discuss with the individual ways to manage their time more effectively. 

“The Job wasn’t what I expected”

This is the age-old tale of someone who has taken a job with certain expectations, and has been left feeling disappointed, or worse, misled when the role they undertook was not as it was expected to be.

As a recruitment agency, when we ask why people are looking to move, a large number respond with “the job didn’t meet my expectations”. Often the problem is that the job description that was presented to the employee doesn’t match the role. The ambiguity of a role prior to an employee starting with your company can be far more critical than you would anticipate. People place a large amount of trust in the employer to provide them with the most accurate depiction of what they will be undertaking as part of their new role. Often it can simply be that the employee has misunderstood the job role, however, sometimes the employer has deliberately misled them into a job.

To prevent your employees from making a move, take measures to ensure that they have a clear picture of what is expected of them. If you have a resentful employee, address it now before the situation becomes irreversibly toxic.    

Training and Development 

If someone is feeling dissatisfied with their ability to complete their duties due to lack of knowledge, satisfaction levels will suffer and you are likely to lose them from your team. Providing training and development at work poses great benefits to both you and the employee. It is crucial in keeping your employees engaged while, at the same time, benefiting you with duties and tasks being completed to a greater standard. Enhancing knowledge through the appropriate training will increase confidence, and ultimately help you to retain staff. It will give the employee the opportunity to address weaknesses and to improve on those weaknesses before they make the decision to leave on their own accord.

The bottom line – ignore these things at your peril. It can be easy to miss the red flags, especially if you have a large team, however, staff job satisfaction is an emotional issue and requires an emotional, empathic response. Best advice would be to assume that everyone might be dissatisfied and to explore everyone’s situation equally. Tackle it now and you stand a good chance of cooling your staff’s motivations to leave. 

Soft Skills gaining importance in IT Recruitment

Adaptability is a priority in IT Recruitment…

IT Recruitment experts have been persuading employers to weigh a candidate’s soft skills over their hard skills when recruiting. Employees can learn technical skills on the job, while things like collaboration or creativity are often more challenging to nurture.

Employers’ priorities have changed. Maybe it took a pandemic to finally prioritize soft skills.

Leading up to the pandemic, soft skills were always a factor for recruiting decisions, but they were not essential requirements. Traits like adaptability and flexibility have always been requested in a candidate, but not necessarily compulsory.  

In this current market, employees who are not adaptable or flexible, open to frequent changes in priorities, and can demonstrate a history of that, are not being offered the job!

In today’s new paradigm, flexibility, strong communication skills, and the ability to adapt as working conditions evolve are the most important qualities a candidate can have. This is a shift in priorities that we at Langley James IT Recruitment are seeing across many sectors.

A survey carried out in July 2020 of 700+ recruiters on everything from how they were using their time during COVID-19, to whether or not they were on a hiring freeze. The results demonstrated a resilient picture during this crisis. When it came to skills prioritised in recruiting, over 60% of respondents agreed that they will need to recruit employees with skills that were not necessary pre-pandemic. These included: 

• Adaptability (68%)
• Communication (60%)
• Technology proficiency (58%)
• Resilience (47%)
• Change management (28%)

 Why are these skills considered “new” by recruiters in 2020? Experts have been practically screaming this to employers for years to prioritise such skills.

Maybe it took extreme external pressure to change old habits and priorities. With Businesses across all sectors are facing new levels of uncertainty, we are seeing soft skills come into their own. The challenge going forward, though, will be how to screen for them.

The Impact on Screening

Perhaps another reason why recruiters have been slow to prioritise soft skills is that these skills can be tricky to measure. Employers need to standardise screening for soft skills through a mixture of behavioral interviewing and automated assessments during their hiring process to help recruit managers address and measure capabilities accordingly. Here are three best practices we at Langley James IT Recruitment have found can help:

• Apply empathy. It’s important to screen for adaptability, but you also have to show candidates your business is adaptable and empathetic, too. While the pandemic has resulted in a plethora of candidates to the market, that doesn’t mean recruiting will be easy. Most employees want to feel safe in their place of work and know that their employer will look after them if they get sick.
• Apply behavioral interviews. Communication is part of daily work, and the best way to know if a candidate has good communication skills is to understand how they handled situations in the past. Behavioral interviewing allows you to do just that and role-play to understand those experiences.
• Apply automation. Automated assessments allow for reduced bias and the ability for recruiters to cast a wider net. 

It is difficult to predict whether the prioritisation of soft skills will become normalised after COVID-19, . The workplace is changing and the things that make people human —  empathy, creativity, resilience, and emotional intelligence — will always remain the greatest assets as employees.