This is a company that normally uses online job boards to find their people and they’ve had great success in utilizing some traditional means of finding the employees they need. Why are they interested in FGP Tech now? Well, in a nutshell, they have a tight time frame to fill this position or they’ll be in trouble once the contract gets signed with their client. So they don’t really have the time to post an ad, then sift through all the resumes that they get, then screen the potential candidates, etc. We can find 3-5 A+ candidates within a week for them and they can concentrate on only interviewing those candidates. Not only does it save them some time, but it gets them up and running without taking time away from the other employees who are busy as it is.

Will they use us? I sure hope so. I’d love to be able to service their needs and show them that we are good at what we do. That’s one of the values we provide as a IT Staffing & Recruiting company. I’ll let you know if they do come on board.

Have a great Labor Day Weekend! If you’re on the road drive safely.

I tell you what though. It’s still a bear to find some quality C# and JAVA professionals. It’s a great time to be a developer. So many software companies (and non-software companies that need developers) are coming into this area and they all need top-notch personnel.

With all the C# work that we’ve been doing I finally reinstalled Visual Studio 2008 Express on my wife’s PC (since my PC is way too old and my laptop is dead) and started going through the C# tutorials on MSDN. It’s been a lot of fun for me. Learning all about event handlers, methods, classes, etc. Old parts of my brain are being dusted off and I’m remembering how to code again. I’m probably going to pick up this book – Head First C#. I went to B&N today during lunch to look at the book and I’m impressed. Has all the info that I’m looking for in an easy-to-digest format.  Maybe I’ll become a decent programmer again. Hey, if only to have fun and learn something useful I’m game!

Blog changes coming this week! I promise! No really. For real this time. (I’m finally tired of seeing it looking bad).

BTW, change your Gmail to HTTPS only cause life will get uglier soon.

Being a relatively new person to the recruiting/staffing scene I’m no pro on what’s the best option for you or your company. I can only speak from what I know through my limited experience and from reading and seeing different trends on the market.

Many fast growth companies today are good at what they set out to do – sell a product, services, consult, etc. HR tends to be something that is the weakest part of a growing company (especially smaller companies). So HR functions fall on the owner, or a part-time person, or a couple of people. This can be frustrating cause now those people have to sift through resumes, screens, interviews, etc of a ton of people (with many being way under qualified) before finding that gem to hire.

Larger companies with full-time HR departments almost have the opposite problem. The HR people are so busy with benefits, policies, employee issues, etc. that they don’t have time to look through resumes and do the basic screening and interviewing. When you add a technical position on top of that the HR person really has no clue on how to screen that candidate.

That’s where we offer our value. We do all that dirty work. We sift through the resumes (many horrible, some good). We do the detailed phone screening with those candidates, and if they are local to our office then we bring them in for an in-house interview or go meet them for coffee or something. We do our due diligence so that when we present a great candidate to our client it saves them time and effort. All they have to do is schedule a phone interview and go from there.

When it comes to the contract side of staffing it’s a nice “try before you buy” model. We take the burden of payroll, benefits, time cards, scheduling, etc for those consultants on billing. If the company doesn’t like what they see they just tell us to swap out the candidate. No need for them to fire the candidate. We do it all. After 6 months or so (if it’s a contract-to-hire) that candidate then goes perm with the company. It’s a great win-win for both us as an agency and the company hiring the person.

We know trends in the industry. We’re out there calling candidates all day, talking to companies, researching on the ‘net. Many times we can spot a trend before it becomes huge. We can start building our ‘inventory’ of qualified candidates before they are needed.

We have a pretty quick response time. Many times we can fill a job for a client within 2-3 days depending on the job and who we have available. That’s a great value-add to a company looking to ramp up quickly.

I could go on and on but in a nutshell, you want to use an agency to get the job done right, to find that hard-to-fill niche, to help you make a great hiring decision, to leverage our network and expertise in hiring, and to get back doing the things you are great at and the reason you are in business.

Are our services for everyone? Probably not. Many times a start-up company has great needs but doesn’t have the budget. Sometimes a company wants to get great people but are too cheap to realize that to find great people you have to be willing to pay for them. It’s a candidate market out there right now. Especially in .Net, Java, and Flash technologies. Those consultants are a premium. If you want them,  we can get them, but be ready to pay for them.

Speaking of .Net and Java. If anyone out there is looking for a great gig here in the awesome Upstate. Let me know! I can get you something within days. It’s that hard to find great people.

I’m hoping to get about 10 meetings for this week.

So give me a shout, I’d love to swing by your office and say hello. And drop a business card off. And get a tour of your cool IT facilities.

Oh, my placement from last month started his new gig at Nuvox today. I emailed him asking how things were and so far he’s been buried under that normal orientation and HR paperwork. I’m excited that he’s enjoying it so far (at least from what I can tell from his email). Helping someone find a great gig and improving the quality of their life is something that’s always satisfying.

Lastly, checkout NoiseTrade.com it’s a brand new music site that could really change the way consumers buy and listen to their music. Right now there’s a few indie bands listed and although I’ve not purchased any music from them yet I have been pretty happy with the selections and how everything works.

I’m not affiliated with the site at all but I do know some of the principals involved. Just wanted to spread a little viral marketing love for them.

I didn’t have access to a PC while out due to my laptop being dead so I was only able to check my Gmail from my phone (Gmail Mobile rocks btw) and do some Twittering as well. I will say that a surfing the web from a WAP enabled phone is horrible. It’s great for getting small tidbits of news or something but most sites out there are not WAP optimized and it’s still woefully slow.

I think a mobile phone being a killer ‘net device is still a bit out there.

I’m busy unpacking and following up on clients and setting up meetings. The new place is a good bit closer to home which is really nice. I’ll try to take some pics and get them uploaded to show ‘em off.

Now off to a GSATC lunch! Yum!

It might not happen till I get back from the 4th. Headed out to visit some of the wife’s family up in PA and DE. Should be lots of fun. I get to go fishing (hopefully!) and maybe I’ll catch something worthy of taking a picture of…

This week is a short one for FGP. We are moving to our new offices about 2-3 miles away. Great for me as it’s about 3-4 miles closer to where I live. That translates to about $250.00 a year in gas savings (based on $3/gallon). I like closer.

Our new digs are going to be awesome. I’m going to try to take some pics and post them down the road.

Well, off to hit the phones and go meet a few potential clients today. Gotta pay the bills!

Things are going well. Been very busy recently. I have a couple of candidates that have been POCO (Presented to Company) for potential interviews and one has a telephone interview this afternoon. Hopefully things will go well! I can just taste the placements!

Got some other changes coming down the pipe, but more on that later. Just wanted to throw out that teaser. hehe

Had a great lunch with one of the other recruiters today. He works in a different department and specializes in finding great talent in the Medical Device industry – namely engineers and such. Pretty niche market but some cool stuff and definitely a market for great talent. We hit our local sub shop (think Jarod!) and got to talk business and life while munching on good food. It’s nice to talk to other recruiters and help one another. Sometimes you need some downtime with a coworker to encourage, motivate, and more.

So if you run a medical company and need some great talent, give David Morgan a call!

Well, off to make some reference calls! Catch ya later!

Secondly, slow clients. This business can move fast. It can move slow. I have a coworker that found a candidate today and the company wanted to interview the candidate this afternoon. That’s fast. Me on the other hand, I get a great candidate and the client does one interview and then tells us the process is on hold till May. Argh! Then for another search I’m doing I also find a great candidate (I only find great people..not good. ) and the company still hasn’t called to interview the candidate after almost 2 weeks! Argh! This is frustrating to me as a recruiter because I might lose my candidates to another firm or job. Frustrating for the candidate because they are expecting to get an interview but are stuck in this waiting period. Come on people (clients)! You hire us to find great talent and present them to you. Don’t dilly dally around and take your time to setup interviews. It’s unprofessional and a waste of everyone’s time.

Ok. I’m done with my little rant. Thanks for letting me ramble a bit.

Onto good stuff with Google. I’ve been trying some creative searches in Google recently and have had some pretty good success in finding resumes of passive candidates. For example, try this search – filetype:doc “insert title here” you’ll probably get a nice page list of resumes with the title you are looking for. It’s a great way to find some passive people out there besides using the traditional CareerBuilder/Monster/Dice system.

Got any good search tips? Feel free to post ‘em here!

I really enjoyed meeting quite a few new folk and exchanging business cards (aka networking). It was nice to be among people passionate about entrepreneurship and bringing it to the Upstate. I’m planning on being a regular to these monthly meetings in the future and after hearing what is coming down the pipe for the forum this should be an exciting year!

Tomorrow night is the GSATC Tech After Five event. It will be my first tech networking event with the GSATC and I’m excited about the possibilities to network with new people there as well. I’ll post some thoughts on that event on Thursday hopefully.

Well, lunch is done (Yay for turkey and honey wheat bread!) and I need to find a great Sr. Systems Administrator. Why is that when I find a great person, they’re not willing to relocate to this area? Such is life I guess. Makes it more challenging and fun (I hope).

One of the things that I did find out was that I wasn’t using our ATS (Applicant Tracking System) software to it’s full extent. I was logging my calls and screens but I wasn’t categorizing them properly. That issue has been resolved and I’m now working on making sure my entries are categorized better now. Hopefully when it comes time for my Quarter 2 review things will look a lot cleaner.

I have a few more searches I’m working on as well. One is for a Network Architect with solid Cisco and CLEC/IXC experience. There are a ton of Cisco-type Architects out there, but the ones with really good CLEC experience have been a little tougher to find. I’m excited about it though because it’s a challenge and I feel like I’m hunting some elusive prey.

Still need to improve my marketing side. I’ve been calling on companies and leaving voicemails but haven’t had too much luck cracking into new companies so that I can help them out. Gotta keep being persistent without being annoying! One exciting thing I discovered today was that through one of the recruiting websites that I like to read and network on, I was able to find a good contact for one of the companies that I have been trying to get into. The recruiter at this company actually contacted me first and through our emails I was able to network a little and add her to my network. Hopefully this will open the door for me to help out and find some great people for them!

Over all I’m still enjoying everything. Every day is a learning process and as I’m networking on recruiter/search type sites I’m finding a lot of great advice from seasoned professionals and realizing that this is a great career to be a part of. I can’t wait to look back in a couple of years and see how things are! Maybe I’ll even reference this post.