Today’s reality…

How often do you open LinkedIn and observe extremist posts of  IT consultants and recruiters complaining about each other? In one side, you have consultants complaining about the lack of feedback from recruiters and on the other side, you have recruiters complaining about the lack of collaboration and engagement from consultants. Obviously, the world is far from perfect, but fighting against each other is not the way to go. IT Consultants and recruiters need each other.

Recruiters have access to projects through clients, and consultants have the talent that clients need, both sides need each other to do business.

 

The IT market landscape

In the last decades, big clients (such as banks and telecom operators) started to outsource and/or externalize many parts of their business in order to reduce their fixed costs and present better results to their shareholders. The outsourced areas of their companies included their IT departments.

Due to the externalization of IT in big clients, the IT sector saw massive growth. IT companies that provided consulting, staffing, outsourcing, nearshoring, and recruiting flourished and, currently, they represent around 80% of the job offers in the sector.

This shift towards a more “flexible” market also transformed the companies’ human resources. Today, instead of recruiting a new employee from scratch, the big client prefers to hire an external professional that is already working on their teams.

Like it or not, Outsourcing, Nearshoring and Staffing companies in the IT industry are here to stay, and they will be a part of the future, this is the game, and the market players have to play by the rules and not against them.

 

Complaints from both sides

The list of complaints from both IT consultants and recruiters sides is extensive:

On one side, the consultants complain namely about:

• The lack of feedback from the recruiters,
• Recruiters not being transparent in the offers,
• Lack of attention to the consultant’s needs,
• How the recruiter only replies once that he is interested in the candidate, and then stops responding to emails and phone calls.

On the other, the recruiters complain about, for instance:

• The lack of engagement of the consultants,
• Poor CVs that need to be redone by the recruiter in order to match the needs of the client,
• The consultant’s refusal to provide the CV in an editable version,
• The consultant’s refusal of job offers at the last minute after the interview with the client.

Of course, both sides are partially right. However, they are also partially wrong.

We must take into account that during the recruitment process there is a third element that takes the decision to close the deal or not, which is the client. When a request is made for a consultant to reinforce the client’s team, usually the client request it as very urgent, but when he needs to take a decision, he often refuses to give an answer.

It should also be noted that the life of a recruiter is more complicated than it seems. He has, often, an enormous list of tasks to do on a daily basis, namely:

• Human resources,
• Respond to customers,
• Interviews,
• Accompany consultants to clients,
• Negotiate contracts.

 

Why fight when you can collaborate

IT recruitment is based on a win-win business model, everyone has to win. Only win-win deals can last long. If a consultant has a deal that is unfavorable to him, it will only be a matter of time before he changes job and/or company. And how much does it cost to replace an IT consultant? What will be the impact of the company’s image on the client, the impact on the project, etc.

IT recruitment must be seen as a long-term relationship where doors are kept open for future business opportunities.

The consultant has to help the recruiter do his job, just as the recruiter has to help the consultant in order for him to be happy with his project, salary and team.

When a recruiter asks for a CV in docx format, the consultant should be happy, because the recruiter is, in fact, editing the CV for him, but the recruiter should also be honest and never do anything without the consent of the consultant.

How often do consultants turn down recruiters’ invitations on LinkedIn? Building a strong network is crucial, and it can be very useful in the future.

 

Conclusion

Sprint CV believes that the consultant and the recruiter must collaborate more. By accepting that they both need each other, they will achieve better rates, better salaries, better projects and do more business.

We believe that by providing collaboration and automation tools to generate CV,  Sprint CV frees IT recruitment of manual CV formatting and consequently makes it more people-focused, where IT recruiters and IT consultants have more time to focus on each other.