The Best Job I Ever Had: Technical Recruiting

When I was starting college, I got a part-time job working for a technical recruiter. It worked out great for me - it was flexible around my classes, and it taught me a lot about the Technology Workplace.

Here's how it helped me prepare for a career in computer technology:

- By starting out in Technical Recruiting, I found out what is reasonable to expect as far as salary. I often found that in harder engineering courses, professors would try to dazzle us with tantalizing stories of former students of theirs who had gotten out of this world salaries. While it did motivate me to not give up at times, I also knew that it was unrealistic to expect that my salary would be as high to start out since I didn't have the skill set or the talent of the former student mentioned. On the other hand, knowing the starting salaries of those who had like skill sets to mine kept me motivated to cultivate what I was (and am) good at. And occasionally, you would see a job description with way above average salary - knowing that I had options when I got out of school was always comforting.

- By and large, a computer science major does not prepare you for the business end of the workforce. Technical Recruiting exposed me to both job candidates and employers. It was interesting to see the dynamics between the two in the negotiation stages. I learned a lot of tips that my university curriculum did not teach me - benefits are negotiable, vacation time is negotiable, relocation costs are negotiable, even telecommuting is negotiable. I also saw when job candidates pushed the negotiation too far - and lost out on the job opportunity. The fine balance between know what an employer is willing to give you, but is not in the job description or standard benefits package, and what is asking too much is something that I would not have understood if I did not have this initial exposure to the field.

- By working in Technical Recruiting, I saw the trends in the market. If I took the standard computer science curriculum and didn't venture beyond those computer languages, I'd be in trouble when I reached the job market. The simple fact is that universities cannot keep up with every new technology - before it's even known if it will catch on. So there is a standard curriculum that teaches you basic technologies and computer languages. Because I saw what the employment market actually wanted, I knew to take "special offering" classes that taught hot new technologies that vastly improved my resume. This put me ahead in the job market.

Are you not particularly a techie, but you are interested in the Technology Field? Technical Recruiting might be good for you as well. It will take a little while to get used to the buzzwords, but pretty soon, you'll be able to be in the Tech Market without having to sit in front of a computer all day coding.

Technical Recruiting laid a great groundwork for my career - I knew what to expect in the real world, and I knew what was and wasn't important to master in my academic career. In reflecting on the opportunities it opened up for me, it was truly a wonderful first job.