We Can Code It For You Wholesale

For those of you who may not know, I have been working as a Technical Recruiter for Manpower Professional. I was hired on due to my experiences in working as an IT professional for the last nine years. Manpower has taken a risk hiring me as I don't have any recruiting experience at all, but I have been on the other end of the process as a buying influence for a company using contract employees. I had this role on a number of occasions at EDS.

So what do I do exactly? As my manager says, "You get job orders, and you fill job orders". That's pretty much it. Companies need people, in my case IT people, and I use a number of databases to find them. I conduct company interviews to establish a job/assignment profile, and then I contact candidates to see if they are still looking for work and if there is a match to the position. Initially I thought this would be simple. Companies are looking for people with a certain skill set and all I have to do is find them. I over-simplified this work greatly. There are so many nuances to recruiting. Finding the right person can be a lot of work. Not to mention that there are so many skills sets in IT. Helpdesk, Database developer/administrator, Web developer, Software programmer/developers, and so on. Then you have to determine if the person is interested in short/long term contract work or just wants a direct hire into a company. Then you get them together for an interview. If there is no match, you look for different candidates to fill the position. If there’s a fit then you begin negotiations for bill rates, pay rates, and mark ups. All of this is happening while other contract houses are also submitting candidates. There is a clock running all the time to get the right people in place quickly. It can be stressful, but the people who I work with are experts and know the most amazing tricks to be successful.

Now the payoff for all this research and phone calls (oh, so many phone calls) is that I make money off the placements I make. This is above my base pay. So the incentive to place lots of people is there. The bite is that most recruiters work from a base of contract employees that they use again and again. Establishing this kind of base takes time. I'm fortunate that I was employed by a defunct helpdesk in that I have a a lot of people that I know who are looking for work. My first placement last week was a friend of a former employee of mine at the helpdesk. So I have a good start. The learning curve for me is to create a base with highly technical people who may not have the same IT experience as me. I didn't really work with software developers or network security experts so I have to learn what those skills sets are. The upside to this is that most roles in IT use the same language. So I may not know exactly what they have done, but have a good idea how to ask them about it to see if it's a match with the job opening.

The people at Manpower are the nicest I've ever worked with. They are anxious to teach what they know and help a newbie to place candidates. There is a certain amount of sales involved with this role and the tips and tricks I'm getting from my manager and peers is priceless. It's really a fun place to work. Humor is a large part of the group at Manpower which has helped me to fit in. This helps during the times when I don't know what the hell I'm doing, which being new is a lot of the time. But everyone keeps assuring me that I'm doing well, and I got in the weekly newsletter for my first placement.

One of the nice things about my new job is that there are not a lot of technical people at Manpower. This means I get to help out with some technical questions and make suggestions of a technical nature to help the business. The IT manager at Manpower and I get along well and she can talk with me about the tech stuff which to others sounds like Latin. I am the guinea pig for her to try out new applications of setting because she knows I'll be less likely to hurt myself or others with whatever the upgrade happens to be.

I have to dress professionally every day. The Manpower office where I work is half what they call traditional staffing and half professional staffing. Traditional is just what is means - labor, clerical, and administrative. Professional is executive staffing. My niche at this time it IT, but I also have Accounting/Finance and Human Resources. So, being part of professional means that you have to look the part and set a standard. That means wearing the suits and ties. This is not a problem for me at all. Although I will admit that the speed in which I go upstairs and jump into the smushy clothes is much faster these days.

So there you have it. After six months on the unemployment rolls I've found a job that I really like and that I think I can excel at. As I stated previously this is made possible by the terrific people that I work with. I've been telling friends as of late that I'm happier than I've been in years. I feel like I can really make a difference at Manpower, and make some mad-cash to boot. I wrote to a friend earlier this week that it seems like the universe has smiled upon me, at least for the moment. Hey, I'll take it. Some days now I even smile back.