5 Challenges That Today’s IT Recruiters Face

Specifying in a particular niche, regardless of the nature of your business, always presents a number of interesting challenges. IT recruiters in particular face challenges related to looking for competent employees to work. There are also the matters of needing the right insurance, having adequate technology to do the job, and finding the right candidate for the job.

Let’s explore these challenges that are unique to the IT recruitment field.

1. Having The Right Insurance To Protect The Company

For IT recruiting firms, this can include general liability insurance in case of charges of advertising injury, personal injury, slander and libel, copyright infringement, property damage, and bodily injury. It can even protect in cases of property damage to property owned by third parties.

Here’s an example where this type of insurance might come in handy: a client might sue you, claiming the code of a contractor you recommended has numerous mistakes, which made it hard for him or her to find work or damaged the company’s reputation. The insurance would pay legal fees for you to defend your company. You also need workers’ compensation.

2. Tracking Applicants Efficiently And Affordably

The fact of the matter is, IT recruiters need their applicant tracking systems to work better, but often have less money to work with. Normally, 35 % of staffing firms spend most of their recruiting money on technology.

Despite, this, half are unsatisfied with what they receive in return. Almost a third—30%—believe the money spent actually hinders them doing their jobs.

3. Finding The Right Candidate For The Job

All recruiting firms face this dilemma. There is an increased demand for contract workers across all industries, but especially in the IT field. Advertising on social media helps. The easier it is for people to know you are looking for candidates with certain kinds of skills, the more likely they are to find you.

Often recruiting firms have a hard time finding candidates to meet a need permanently, so they settle for a temporary worker. Some surveys have shown that partially because of a lower unemployment rate, as many as 65% of companies are having a hard time finding skilled workers. This is truer for IT recruiters, because they are looking for highly qualified people with specific technical skills, such as people knowledgeable enough to write specific types of code, work with specific types of software, databases, and more.

4. Candidate Competition

You may want exclusive rights to present a candidate to a client. One problem is, the client may have applied to work through you and applied directly to the client. A way to handle the problem is to offer more than other staffing firms. Offer more than a client can get on his own.

You should do background checks on all applicants, including their past work performance and injury history and test their skills. Much can be done online. Drug test and interview every candidate thoroughly. You will be ahead of other recruiters if all your candidates are adequately vetted and can provide top-of-the-line work to your clients.

5. Having The Right Contract To Deal With Independent Consultants

If you are going to deal with independent consultants, you will need to have detailed agreements concerning working at third-party sites. Prepare the right kind of clauses in your contracts that will help avoid a variety of legal risks by maintaining certain procedures.

For example, your contract may have to have confidentiality clauses to guarantee that your contractor won’t disclose a company trade secret of your client. This is very important when dealing with IT matters, since sensitive personal and financial information is often involved.

There are a lot of things an IT staffing firm needs to do to provide an adequate service for its clients, and these five challenges are not the only ones faced. Nevertheless, dealing with them can help lead to success. If you would like more information about the right kind of insurance for your recruiting business, download our free business insurance guide or contact us.