DACS General Meeting
January 2011
Meeting Review:
Jobs and Technology—presentation by John Barry

By Andy Woodruff

An interested audience greeted John Barry for this talk about information technology (IT) jobs and how to get them.

John is the founder and owner of ITech Consulting Partners (Newtown, CT) that has been placing candidates in contract and permanent IT jobs for the last twelve years. Prior to founding the business, John had worked as an IT professional himself. He sees his business as an “IT staffing partner” or, in more detail as written on his website, “an organization of experienced information technology and business professionals, who provide resources to help clients define, develop and implement successful IT solutions through contract and permanent placements.”

John started his talk by considering current trends in IT employment. He has noticed an increase in full-time employee hiring in 2010, as compared to 2008 and 2009, as shown in the chart. He has also seen an increase in companies’ use of contract-to-hire options.

John continued his talk with hints toward finding a job. He repeated the classic advice of “network, network, network … all the time”. He said the best time to network is when one is employed. “You want a large network—build it while you are employed. And tell people when you are actually looking for work.” He advised practicing one’s “elevator speech”, i.e. the few sentences that one uses to describe one’s work to a stranger on an elevator.

He reminded us of the new technologies such as smart phones (including iPhone and Android), tablets (including iPad and Kindle), and social media (including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn). He made several suggestions regarding these new technologies. The job candidate should—

• use LinkedIn for professional networking, and join pertinent groups within LinkedIn (such as geographic, technical or functional groups)
• consider upgrading one’s skills to include development skills in these new fields
• review the privacy settings in Facebook: “Be careful of what you share—current and potential employers may view your profile!”

Several audience members asked questions. One person asked if employers discriminate in terms of age. John said that they are not permitted to discriminate in this way, but he recognized that some companies do indeed do this. He suggested that many companies are interested in the typical “energetic and passionate” qualities of a younger person—so candidates of all ages can help themselves by exhibiting these qualities.

One highly-qualified person asked if he should reduce the amount of experience that appears on his resume, in order to avoid scaring off possible employers. John warned him not to lie in a resume, but he said that the candidate does not need to highlight things that might not help his chances. One can legitimately say that one has “20+ years of experience”, even if one actually has 30 years.

John gave us some hints about how to use recruiting agencies. He suggested that candidates should get set up with two or three recruiters, after asking each recruiter for a list of the companies that the recruiter represents. He warned us never to let a recruiter send a resume without our knowing to whom the resume is going.

John’s PowerPoint slides for this presentation are available at the DACS Downloads page.

John can be contacted at ITech Consulting Partners, telephone (203) 270-0051.