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IT professionals report the number one action they take when considering a career change is to reassess their skills, goals and interests. Following this self-assessment, they begin searching online job boards and company websites for available job opportunities, with 96% utilizing online job boards. Once potential opportunities are identified, the majority of IT professionals (72%) begin networking with professional communities outside of their current company and researching industries with high demand for IT talent.

“As IT professionals go through their own process of job searching, organizations should go through a similar self-evaluation to determine what skills, knowledge and abilities enable people to excel within their organization,” says TEKsystems Director, Rachel Russell. “Job boards are the quickest way for IT professionals to feel like they’re getting out there and searching for a job. But given that so many people are on the job boards, it’s a hard place to stand out. Job boards also present challenges to employers due to the abundance of resumes and the tendency for skill exaggeration on resumes. The unrivaled leader in terms of effective job search tactics is networking. Credible referrals from people you trust are the best avenue to a new job that’s a truly good fit.” Read more

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that of the 372 metropolitan areas measured, 351 have measurably lower unemployment rates than November 2010. Of the remaining 21 areas, 16 saw increased unemployment rates, and five held steady. Eight metro areas have reported unemployment rates above 15 percent. On the other side of the scale, 25 metro areas have reported rates of less than 5 percent. Within the non-farm payroll sector, over the last 12-month period, 239 areas saw employment increases, 127 experienced decreased employment levels, and six were stagnant.  Nationally, the unemployment rate fell 1.1 percent, over-the-year, from 9.3 percent to 8.2 percent. Read more

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What’s RadMatter going to do? “Help people develop and demonstrate talent.”

RadMatter doesn’t want to tackle the education function of college so much as (arguably) its biggest function: signaling. Signaling means that what employers are interested in isn’t what you learned at Yale, but that you were smart enough to get into Yale.

On RadMatter, people will be able to “categorize their experiences based on talents, not skills,” Stephens tells us. Talents are broader than skills. So for example, Stephens says, both “I know [the programming language] Python” and “I organized a wedding for a thousand people”, which are skills, can fit into the talent “solving puzzles.” Examples of other talents could be “seeing possibilities” or “empowering people.”

So anyone will be able to create a profile with what they’ve done and have it socially validated by the community. As on Couchsurfing.com, where only people who have certain badges can award it to others, “people can only endorse others if they have that same talent.”

There will be many problems to figure out. “Talents” are a vague thing, and certification can pose problems. It’s easy enough to prove you know Python, but how do you prove on a website that you organized a wedding? “You have to articulate it in a way that’s convincing” to get it validated, Stephens says, and anyway plenty of people lie on their resume and no system is perfect. Which is fair enough, but we see devils in those details. Learn more

If you want to be in the top 20 percent of job applicants who get noticed and win interviews, you should be thinking about how to incorporate sales secrets into your job search strategy. John Kalusa is a nationally recognized writer who speaks about corporate sales, recruiting, and personal career management. With over 25 years of experience as a strategic recruiting, human resources, and sales and marketing management leader in start-ups and Fortune 250 companies, he’s well qualified to comment on what the hiring manager wants to see. Read more

To qualify for the ranking, staffing firms had to post at least $1 million in revenues in 2006 and to have compound annual revenue growth of at least 15 percent between 2006 and 2010. In the category of Information Technology staffing firms starting with over $50M in revenues, MMI was the 3^rd fastest growing reported in the survey.  The company has actually increased its rate of growth since. In 2010 the annual growth was well over 40%. The company is on track in 2011 to deliver 20 to 23% continuing growth.

Mitchell Martin, headquartered in midtown New York has a strong concentration in high level technologists that have deep experience in financial services and other related verticals. MMI also has a division that services the healthcare sector.  The company is expanding its geographic reach servicing clients in 33 states.

Company President Gene Holtzman expressed satisfaction with the recognition. “We really see this as an affirmation that our core principal of keeping focused on partnering with the best talent in the market resonates with clients and then the revenues speak for themselves. We will continue this candidate centric approach and continue to grow our community of experts while we expand our geographic reach and gain the capacity to present even more project and career opportunities to the experts we work with.”