TechScreen becoming IT Staffing’s Training partner
By Mark Knowlton
IT staffing firms have no shortage of challenges in trying to deliver services to their clients. Buyers often look at staffing firms like they are commodities because of their sheer numbers and the fact that the industry does see a fair amount of turnover.
New hires are pressured for immediate production, hitting their KPIs and getting to their weekly GM targets as quickly as possible. Figuring out technology typically happens on-the-job because most staffing firms have fewer than 50 employees and don’t have formal Training departments. Keeping up with technical terms is not the biggest challenge, although that is a constantly moving target. Understanding technical topics and concepts — what things are and how they work — is the biggest barrier to staffing professionals from having peer-level connections with their technical counterparts.
This article from Quora may be 9 years old, but the replies still resonate as if this was published last week. Pay special attention to the comment from @jonbischke, the CEO and Founder of sourcing tool Entelo because this is a technologist who is betting his future on seeing recruiters become more effective at their jobs. TechScreen’s launch in 2016 was driven by the kind of sentiment seen here from technologists.
This is the reason that TechScreen is positioning itself as the Technical Training Partner to the IT Staffing industry. We recently rolled out our Certification Training Program, 12 modules of deep dive learning where we break down advanced technical concepts — across Application Architecture, Networking, Databases, DevOps, The Cloud, InfoSec — in a way that was designed for a non-technical person can absorb and internalize.
There certainly are other programs that offer technical training to IT recruiters. Ours is the only one that comes the free use of our proven SaaS screening platform for a year so it reinforces the learning that takes place in training. The daily use of our technical engagement platform helps recruiters and AEs to more effectively engage with their respective audiences. Training content is useless — and a waste of money — if users are not putting this knowledge to use in the execution of their jobs. Combining Training with the use of our tool is a great way to ensure users will retain this detailed technical insight and apply it to how they qualify candidates and requirements.
“Recruiters and AEs in staffing don’t have it easy when it comes to getting ramped up on technology,” TechScreen CEO Mark Knowlton said. “Staffing firms do the best they can to prepare their people to engage with their audiences, but then there is reality. Many staffing owners and senior executives still maintain individual contributor roles on a regular basis, so taking new hires — especially the rookies — under their wing to nurture them doesn’t scale.
“Executives also have the pressure to grow revenue, but they have to be careful in how they deploy resources to drive growth,” Knowlton said. “Let’s say a firm hires two junior recruiters and a mid-level AE and gives them 3 months to get established. They just spent almost $44,000 to find out if they want to keep any of them. That’s a pretty large and risky bet, especially when you consider the inescapable churn that exists in the industry. We want to give staffing executives a much less expensive and risky path to achieve organic growth.”
TechScreen is accelerating the pace by which users can position themselves to more effectively engage with technical audiences. Combining technical training with the use of a tool that reinforces the learning is a great way to ensure that users will retain the knowledge that will help them improve their effectiveness.
Mark Knowlton is the CEO and Founder of TechScreen, the world’s only SaaS technical engagement platform that helps users get better at their jobs using it to do their jobs.
