Does anyone know of good head hunter firms and/or staffing agencies? Particularly in the IT industry. I've never used one of these before, but I've heard they can be helpful in finding jobs.

[smilie=burgerking.:

What can you do?

I refer to headhunters as pimps. I have experiences from multiple ends of the pimping experience.

For an entry/mid-level job, it's almost never worthwhile to actually pay money to some headhunter to work on your behalf. Instead, you will be dealing with headhunters who work for the people who are offering jobs in various ways. Often, they are functioning as a contractor to the employer who needs the work done. Their loyalties are to who pays them money. Never forget that. You are a tool. Your goal is to be a paid tool.

Most of the pimps for entry/mid-level jobs submit their job openings to places like Monster, michworks.org, and whatnot. There's not some big secret stash of jobs that a given headhunter somewhere hasn't already posted. The idea is to play the buzzword bingo, schmoozing, and squeaky wheel game well enough so that when a given recruiter at a pimp see a job for a particular skillset float by, they will think to call you. But, don't -expect- that to happen. You want to deal with multiple pimps, not just one.

Much as how you should deal with multiple pimps, folks wanting work done will employ multiple pimps to find heads to fill the jobs. You'll see the same jobs being offered by many pimps. It's usually obvious from the common job descriptions, which they get from the ultimate company paying the money for the worker. The first thing you want to do is see if you can identify who's offering the job. Often, that's as simple as a Google search on some key quoted terms in the job specifications. See if you can bypass the pimp and submit a resume to the employer directly. Then, right afterwards, you try to find pimps offering that same job that seem reasonable to deal with. This avoids contention issues if you have two+ pimps submitting you for the same job (which has happened).

What's a reasonable pimp? If they're a contractor pimp, a good way of determining their "reasonability" involves asking "will they tell you your billing rate with the customer" and "does their employment contract have stupid non-negotiable bullshit in it" (which involves their providing a copy of their employment contract -- always get that at the get-go and look it over!). If they are not a contractor, ask them how they get compensated for providing heads. Follow the money.

Beyond the above, going to a pimp may help you with framing your resume, assuming you have a diverse enough body of work where that would matter. Lots of good people write shit resumes, or don't get the concept that they should tune their resume with -each- job they submit it to. The goal of a resume is to get an interview. Once at the interview, the resume gives a roadmap of talking points. You should be prepared to have a few words to say to an employer about every last aspect of your resume.

You can get some good deals with contractor pimps. Like Mxy said, look at the details but in general they're a good way to land an IT paycheck in a tough job market. Many of them offer full benefits and such at a pretty good hourly rate and being a contractor can be a good backdoor to a permanent position.

Here's one that I use if you want to check it out: www.kforce.com

It's just one of a great many and I can't give you a breakdown of how it stacks up against the others. I've been pretty satisfied with it though.

Matt,

If you want to use geerussell's pimp, talk to geerussell and have him present you, so he makes a referral bonus if you get hired. He'll hopefully share a little bit of that with you. :)

With contracting, you want to know how they bill the customer and how that translates into what you get paid and when. Suppose you ask and you find out that you're being billed at, for example, $30/hour and getting paid at $22.50/hour+benefits. Perhaps the customer likes you and bumps your bill rate up to $31.50/hour. Do you get paid more as a direct consequence? If so, how much more and when? It's possible that how they bill the customer is more complicated. Perhaps you would be part of an overall purchased service plan where the pimp gets paid xyz dollars/year for a service contract, that they fill with a semi-arbitrary number of people. Then, you know what you get paid is less directly tied to what the customer pays, and that goes a long way to figuring out how you're positioned. If they go agog and aghast and throw a lot of bullshit about what they can't tell you your billrate even though you'd be working for the same fucking company, then you know your place.

Also, look at the employment contract. Often, they try to assert rights that are patently bogus -- just flat-out illegal stuff. Most of the time, it comes from a cookie-cutter contract that may or may not make sense for what you are doing. Even if it's illegal, it's stuff you want to avoid signing because it's just more leverage to tie you up in court. Any non-compete for >6 months is something you ask to be whittled down to 6 months --see how they respond. Any intellectual property stuff that is overbroad and doesn't pertain to the work you are doing should be limited in scope to work-for-hire. If they refer to an eternally-changing document like an employee handbook, get a current copy of the handbook. See about getting a "handbook as of such-and-such date" clause or some sort of explicit paper/signoff notification of changes.

Be wary of any pimp who rushes you. If they can't wait overnight "for your attorney and family to look it over", then either they're just pushing you so they can collect from the employer, or the employer is such a hothead that you want to strongly consider whether it's worthwhile to deal with them.

I have experiences from multiple ends of the pimping experience.
I want webcam proof.

Unfortunately, only male flesh was involved, both with me as an IT pimp and me having been pimped. It's not worth a webcam, unless you're more fucked up than I think you are. :) I had a hottie I used to work with as part of pimping activities, but only casually and she never worked under me.

Does anyone know of good head hunter firms and/or staffing agencies? Particularly in the IT industry. I've never used one of these before, but I've heard they can be helpful in finding jobs.

[smilie=burgerking.:

I sent you a PM on this.

I did not realize these IT jobs were that hard to come by.