IT professionals face strong competition in today’s job market. The market is saturated with experts and specialists, making it harder for an IT professional to show their unique value to IT companies. The following strategic methods, however, can position an IT professional for great success at finding a new job in a relatively short amount of time.
Primary to finding a new IT job is developing an eye-catching resume — one that stands out from the rest. Today, a “Professional Summary” replaces the old “Objective” opening used in previous years. This allows hiring managers to see the job applicant’s strengths before reading further in a resume.
An impressive professional summary should include highlights of the applicant’s strengths and powerful self-describing adjectives, such as detail-driven, skilled programmer, and quality web developer. In addition to adding a professional summary, it’s important to include any specific achievements gained from previous positions. An applicant’s achievements are a large influence on hiring manager’s decision for selecting a certain candidate.
Since most hiring companies use online job boards to advertise their positions, it is critical for IT professionals to register for the ones hiring companies use the most. Beyond, Monster, CareerBuilder, Hound, JobCentral and Indeed are all websites for which the IT professional should register.
The bulk of these sites allow users to set up automatic alerts for specific searches. For example, if the preferred job is a webmaster position, then an alert would be set up with that keyword, among any other keywords that apply to that type of position. Automatic alerts notify the registered use of new jobs that fit the keywords initially set up in the alert.
After receiving the alert, it is imperative to be one of the first to apply for the position. In today’s job market, hiring managers receive an abundance of applications. The earliest ones received may get primary consideration.
In today’s job market, unemployed IT professionals face the challenge of staying relevant. However, with the use of these simple, yet critical, strategies, the IT job market becomes more accessible to the applicant and creates a higher possibility of becoming employed.