Apr 022018
 

Here is a list of the top technical interview questions that are most often asked by tech employers and recruiters. Depending on the job you’re interviewing for you will be asked about the skills, experience, certifications, competencies, language, processes, systems and tools you have that are a match for the job requirements.

Be prepared to share examples of your skills, as the apply to the job for which you’re interviewing.

Taking the time to match your qualifications to the job description, will make it easier to respond.

Before you head out to a job interview, review the list and make sure that you’re prepared with answers.

Continue reading »

Jan 032018
 
Recruiting and retaining tech talent remains IT’s biggest challenge today. Here’s how companies are coping — and what’s cooling off when it comes to IT staffing.

We’re seeing a number of shifts this year in hiring as technologies mature, new ones emerge and companies work to cut costs by blending full-time IT staff with contract work.

While some see the gig economy as a flexible new way to work, one that appeals to solo entrepreneurs, others see a general consequence of the Great Recession. Either way, the gig economy is experiencing growing pains. And growing it is: 40 percent of the workforce is expected to be part of it by 2020, according to a report by Intuit.

One thing hasn’t changed this year: Recruiting top talent is still difficult for most firms, and demand greatly outstrips supply. That’s influencing many of the areas we looked at, including compensation and retention.

Whether you’re looking to expand your team or job searching yourself, read on to see which IT hiring practices are trending and which ones are falling out of favor.

Continue reading »

Nov 062017
 

 

Discussing skills during a job interview

In a rapidly changing world economy, it’s a question that’s consistently at the top of everyone’s mind: what job skills do I need, and which will get me a job? Hunting for a job requires not only a specific set of strategies and techniques, but also a strong sense of confidence in your abilities. But it’s those abilities – which abilities, specifically – that hang up a lot of jobseekers.

We’ve dug into this very topic before, and provided some insight into which job skills will get you hired. As the economy is constantly shifting and evolving, and churning undercurrents of consumer behavior call for different types of workers creating and supplying different products and services, it can be really difficult to know what employers want. We’re here to be a compass of sorts, and outline a handful of skills that employers are really scouring the labor market for this year, which should give you a leg-up in your job search.

Continue reading »

  •  November 6, 2017
  •  Posted by at 3:39 pm
  •   Comments Off on 5 New Jobs Skills Employers Are Looking For – Sam Becker
  •   Career Success, IT Trends
Jun 262017
 

Not happy in your current job or simply interested in pursuing a new career? Maybe you just want to see what else is out there and you don’t want to get bogged down in the details.

There are plenty of reasons why you might be looking for a new employment, and it doesn’t have to be a tedious process. We’ve rounded up 10 apps that make job seeking a little easier, more interesting and far quicker than ever before.

Continue reading »

Jun 122017
 
A guide to manage both a personal and professional presence on social media.

Your social media presence is a crucial part of your post-college job hunt. In fact, 60% of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates, according to CareerBuilder’s annual social media recruitment survey, and 49% of hiring managers say they’ve found information that caused them to not hire a candidate.

If you’re a new graduate, it’s time to give your social media presence a professional makeover, says Lesley Mitler, cofounder of Early Stage Careers, a career guidance firm that works with recent college graduates.

“[In college] you tend to use social media for fun, but you need to use it to brand yourself,” she says.

Companies want to see someone who lives the words on their resume in everyday life, says Ryan Smolko, associate director of student transition and engagement at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “They’re looking for students to have a genuine interest in their desired profession, and to see them engaging with other professionals and organizations related to that industry,” he says.

Continue reading »

Jan 092017
 

who-would-hire

 

If you’re in the market for a new job, you’re not alone. More than 75% of full-time employees are either open to new opportunities or actively looking for work, according to CareerBuilder’s 2016 Candidate Behavior Study.

You might be more than ready for a career change, but you may not have the skills it takes to get noticed by recruiters. LinkedIn recently combed through its database to find out which skills employers were looking to hire for in 2017, both in the United States and around the world. They found you’re in good shape if your talents lie in statistics, cloud computing, and mobile development, while other job hunters might have to work a bit harder to catch the eye of hiring managers.

To develop lists of the top 10 in-demand job skills, the professional networking site looked at trends in hiring and recruiting from January through September 2016. LinkedIn predicts these skills will also be in high demand in the first part of 2017.

“While some skills expire every couple of years, our data strongly suggests that tech skills will still be needed for years to come, in every industry. Now is a great time for professionals to acquire the skills they need to be more marketable,” LinkedIn career expert Catherine Fisher said in a statement.

Continue reading »

May 092016
 

Robot Boxing.jpbFor all the jobs that machines can now do — whether performing surgery, driving cars or serving food — they still lack one distinctly human trait. They have no social skills.

Yet skills like cooperation, empathy and flexibility have become increasingly vital in modern-day work. Occupations that require strong social skills have grown much more than others since 1980, according to new research. And the only occupations that have shown consistent wage growth since 2000 require both cognitive and social skills.

The findings help explain a mystery that has been puzzling economists: the slowdown in the growth even of high-skill jobs. The jobs hit hardest seem to be those that don’t require social skills, throughout the wage spectrum.

“As I’m speaking with you, I need to think about what’s going on in your head — ‘Is she bored? Am I giving her too much information?’ — and I have to adjust my behavior all the time,” said David Deming, associate professor of education and economics at Harvard University and author of a new study. “That’s a really hard thing to program, so it’s growing as a share of jobs.”

Some economists and technologists see this trend as cause for optimism: Even as technology eliminates some jobs, it generally creates others. Yet to prepare students for the change in the way we work, the skills that schools teach may need to change. Social skills are rarely emphasized in traditional education.

“Machines are automating a whole bunch of these things, so having the softer skills, knowing the human touch and how to complement technology, is critical, and our education system is not set up for that,” said Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, where he studies education.

Preschool classrooms, Mr. Deming said, look a lot like the modern work world. Children move from art projects to science experiments to the playground in small groups, and their most important skills are sharing and negotiating with others. But that soon ends, replaced by lecture-style teaching of hard skills, with less peer interaction.

Work, meanwhile, has become more like preschool.

Continue reading »

Apr 252016
 

San Francisco’s booming technology sector is a pretty great place to make a living if you’re a man. Men hold 82% of leadership positions, on average, at Google GOOGL -1.02%, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the industry’s biggest companies. And they don’t have to concern themselves with that pesky gender pay gap. Men with bachelor’s degrees or better in Silicon Valley earn over 50% more than their female counterparts.

Luckily, the Bay Area isn’t the only place for women in tech to grow successful careers. Financial technology company SmartAsset analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data to come up with a list of the best cities for women in the tech sector. San Francisco didn’t crack the top 15.

SmartAsset looked at four metrics across the 58 largest cities in the country: women as a percentage of the tech workforce; the gender pay gap in tech; income after housing costs; and three year tech employment growth. 

Continue reading »

  •  April 25, 2016
  •  Posted by at 9:32 am
  •   Comments Off on The Best Cities For Women In Tech Aren’t On The West Coast – Clare O’Connor
  •   Career Success, IT Trends, News
Feb 152016
 

Looking forIf you’ve heard talk about a “skills gap” in the labor force lately, it was likely in reference to the short supply of potential employees with the right technical skills. But another kind of skill is in even greater demand.

Employers are increasingly seeking employees with so-called soft skills, or baseline skills, such as writing, communication and organization.

A recent study from job market research firm Burning Glass Technologies analyzed 25 million online job postings from more than 40,000 sources over the past year and identified the most sought-after skills.

“We tend to focus on technical skill requirements, but the reality is employers are very vocal about the need for people to have foundational or baseline skills,” said Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass. “Even in jobs that are really denominated in technical terms, it’s still very important to employers that people have the right soft skills.”

Continue reading »

Feb 082016
 
Average salary increased to $87,000 in Kansas, according to survey
Kansas increased by almost 20 percent compared to 8 percent nationally
U.S. tech workers earn more: $96,000 on average

Tech Worker Salaries in KS

While the average worker’s salary has stagnated for decades, tech worker salaries continue to boom and nowhere are they rising faster than in Kansas, according to a new report by Dice, a career site for technology professionals.

The average salary in Kansas increased 20 percent between 2014 and 2015 for tech workers, according to the report, the second biggest increase in the nation behind North Dakota.

Continue reading »

  •  February 8, 2016
  •  Posted by at 2:51 pm
  •   Comments Off on Report: Kansas Tech Workers See Second Largest Salary Increase in Nation – Oliver Morrison
  •   Career Success, IT Trends, News