The Armada Group-The Most Attractive Incentives for Short-Term IT Workers

Many employers associate benefits with full-time employees, and don’t think about them in the context of short-term IT workers. But good temporary help is worth the effort of offering incentives — and if you supply benefits for your temporary IT staff, you’ll enjoy advantages like attracting better talent, increased productivity, and a higher ROI on your short-term staff investment.

The ‘more money’ incentive

Just about everyone likes money, and that includes temporary IT workers. A short-term bonus plan for IT temps can be a great motivation to perform well. You can offer bonuses for meeting deadlines, upon project completion, or even for above-and-beyond productivity.

Creating a strategic bonus or series of bonuses for short-term IT employees will increase morale and fuel the natural human drive for competition, ensuring an overall higher performance.

The ‘cool free stuff’ incentive

Gift cards are a great and inexpensive bonus to offer temporary IT employees. You can usually purchase gift cards from just about any local businesses — opt for retail, restaurant, and entertainment cards to give the best bang for your gift bucks.

If you have short-term IT staff that you’ve hired for a big project, and they’ll be around for several months, you may consider giving reloadable gift cards and placing a small amount on them each week. This will keep temporary workers motivated to continue, and give them the opportunity to spend quality time with family when they aren’t working.

The ‘work-life balance’ incentive

Paid holidays, sick days, and personal days are a popular benefit for permanent employees, but what about temporary staff? Offering paid days off to short-term IT workers isn’t usually feasible for a business, but you can create a smaller scale program that still offers much-needed advantages.

For example, you might give temp workers a half-hour of paid time off for every full day worked, and allow them to take advantage of their accrued paid leave for things like important appointments or the occasional personal day. You could also consider offering time off with half-pay when it’s reasonable and needed.

The ‘good job’ incentive

Simple thanks for a job well done are a strong motivator for full-time staff, that’s also free for your business to offer. With short-term IT workers, you can take your recognition for their work a step further and offer official employee awards. The possibilities range from printing out certificates to holding a fun event for your temp IT team upon project completion — and all are equally appreciated.

At The Armada Group, we can help you devise incentive programs to maximize your fulfillment of temporary IT workers, and to keep your full-time staff happy and productive. Contact us today for more information, or to find outstanding qualified candidates.

The Armada Group-The Most Important Career Question You've Never Even Considered

       CIO posed what they consider to be “The most important career question you’ve never even considered.” While Glen–do you want to make yourself a “hot commodity,” someone who has a unique skill but is a Transactional relationship, or a “treasured stalwart,” who is intended to be a long-term employee but rarely works in the “hot new skill” industry.

   The general idea of a commodity worker is one who works contract or part time, and who specializes in a unique skill; one that the company, for whatever reason, doesn’t want a standard full-time employee for. It could be implementing a new network or part-time SQL DBA – there’s no specific field, but it tends to fill the short-term needs, rather than long-term trends.

Commodity pros:

• Generally higher pay (in the short run)
• Provide necessary and sometimes difficult skills
• Can contractually work for flexible periods of time and flexible projects

Commodity Cons:

• Not always a steady, consistent flow of work (e.g. occasional periods of unemployment between projects)
• Not usually “developed” as a tenured employee would be in understanding the overall picture
• Culture doesn’t always fit with company

On the other hand, the stalwarts will have different characteristics. They tend to retain long-term employment, and operate in fields that the business will need either indefinitely or for extended periods.

Stalwart Pros:

• Consistent, stable employment
• Developed as an asset to the team (which can increase flexibility)
• Understand business culture better

Stalwart Cons:

• Doesn’t cash in on “hot skills”
• Generally lower pay (in the short run)
• Less flexible hours

The Armada Group 2014 Job Data

On the upside, there is a definite talent shortage in the IT market — but in potentially less encouraging news, it’s a shortage of the right skills.

Application development. Number one on the list for the third year in a row is this skill, which 49 percent of managers expecting to hire this year are looking for.

Help desk and IT support. Considering the rate of introduction for new technologies, this one shouldn’t be surprising as the second most in-demand skill, with 44 percent of managers looking to fill positions here in 2014. In fact, demand for IT support is rising faster than any other area — it’s up from 37 percent last year.

Business intelligence and database analysis / development. These two separate skills tied for third place on the top 10 list. In both cases, 29 percent of hiring managers have plans to increase their staffing for BI and data-related positions — including database administrators, database developers, and database architects.

The remaining IT skills on the top 10 list include:

• Security
• Network administration
• Networking
• Cloud computing
• Web design and development
• Data management

Beyond hard skills: A shortage of sought-after qualities

One of the difficulties hiring managers face in finding the right IT talent is their own desire to employ the perfectly well-rounded candidate — a skilled IT pro who also has great people skills and problem-solving abilities.

The role of IT workers is changing, and it’s no longer sufficient to deliver a flawless technical performance. Tech pros who are most in-demand are those who can demonstrate flexibility in their approaches, and who are able to break down and explain complex technical concepts in language that executives, co-workers, and end users can understand.

The outlook for IT salaries

In addition to hot job skills, the Computerworld survey looks at salary data in both current and historical senses. This year, average IT salary changes include:

• Average pay increases of 2.1%
• Average bonus increases of 0.7%
• 60% of IT pros reported receiving raises (up from 57% last year)
• 8% reported pay cuts (down from 9% last year)
• 61% of IT professionals feel secure in their jobs

Java Developer Jobs in Santa Cruz-The Armada Group

A Java developer is responsible for designing, developing, and implementingWeb-based Java applications according to the requirements of a business. However, organizations are increasingly seeking Java developers with both hard and soft skills — those who can create great Java apps, and explain them in non-technical language to investors, executives, and end users.

Salaries for Java developers vary depending on a number of factors, from the complexity of the job duties to the location of the business. In general, the range of Java developer salaries in Santa Cruz is higher than the national average range.

Factors that affect Java developer salaries in Santa Cruz

• Education and training: Most Java developer positions require a minimum education of a bachelor’s degree in your area of specialty. Obtaining certifications in Java, such as Oracle Certified Associate (OCA), Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) or Sun Certified Java Developer (SCJD) may allow you to command a higher salary than a degree alone.
• Experience: As with nearly any industry, the more experience you have as a Java developer, the higher the salary you can expect. Experience with developing high-profile projects may be worth more, salary-wise.
• Job scope: Different companies and organizations will have different requirements for Java developer positions. In general, more complex job descriptions will offer higher salaries. Here, the size of the company is also typically a factor — larger companies can often pay more for Java developers.
• Geographic location: Organizations within large cities such as Santa Cruz will often pay higher salaries than those in suburban or rural locations. In addition, geographic locations within the country affect salary — for example, East Coast and West Coast locations often have higher average salaries than the middle regions of the country.

3 COMPELLING REASONS TO HIRE FOR CULTURAL FIT : THE ARMADA GROUP

When it comes to hiring the right person, the hard skills and certifications are primary qualifiers. Certifications are the key identifiers on a resume, but it’s the business culture and soft skills that ensure long term employer/employee relationships yield long-term results. Having the ideal match, rather than someone who simply has the hard skills, will greatly produce long-term benefits. Here are three reasons to hire for cultural fit:

1. Increased productivity.

A candidate with a similar mindset of the business will have a more synergistic approach, and hence, a similar mindset on projects small and large. This will allow a worker to yield results that both require fewer edits and are more closely in line with business expectations.

2. Decreased friction.

Having a cultural fit decreases the amount of friction between employer and employee, and enables the business relationship to function more smoothly. A smoother relationship increases long-term job satisfaction, reducing turnover and lowering training costs. Furthermore, the strategic and long-term goals will coincide more directly with employers who share cultural similarities, eliminating potential hostilities.

3. Versatility and mobility.

Having an outstanding software developer who doesn’t share the company’s cultural fit can still develop software – but moving up or over is simply not an option. In order to maintain a company’s culture, leaders must hire and train within that culture. Any other mindset will diminish the cultural values, which can cause enormous amounts of tension and personality clashes among leadership – a sure way to inadvertently nullify a business’s strategic plan.

6 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES THAT WILL BOOST EMPLOYABILITY FOR DEVELOPERS

Learning a new programming language is a great strategy for any career-minded developer.

Opa: A unified, secure web app developer

Traditional web app creation involves three database components — browser-side, server-side, and backend — that are usually written in three different languages, and then connected together. Opa streamlines this process by allowing you to write the entire application within the Opa framework. A compiler automates client and server code creation, and also builds the communication structure to bridge them.

With Opa, you can customize the code if the automated compiler doesn’t produce the enforcements you need. It’s scalable, fully compatible with JavaScript, and uses automatic verification to reduce debugging time.

Scala: High flexibility for existing environments

While it’s not especially “new,” since it was introduced in 2003, business interest in Scala is currently on the rise. Scala is short for “scalable language,” and the platform is designed for easy use with any size project, from tiny programs to large-scale enterprise applications.

Developers enjoy using Scala because of its flexibility, ease of use, and high concurrency, while organizations are keen on its inter-operational capacities. Scala is compatible with Java and JVMs, as well as the Android platform. It also works with popular integrated development environments (IDEs) like NetBeans, Eclipse, and IntelliJ, as well as frameworks like Hibernate and Spring.

Erlang: Streamlining concurrency

Similar to Scala in that it’s not particularly new (the language was released in 1986 and open sourced in 1998), but it’s experiencing a rise in interest, Erlang is primarily designed to build large-scale applications with high availability. Some of the desirable features of this language include concurrency with popular platforms and environments, language-level features that help simplify concurrent programming, and hot swapping that enables code modification or updating without shutdown.

Go: The language of the cloud

This language, also known as Golang, has a fairly influential backer: Google. An open source, traditional language that’s similar to C, Go was written expressly for use in the cloud and includes built-in features like concurrency and garbage collection. It’s also a fast language, able to compile large applications on a single computer in just a few seconds.

As a programming language, Go has a steep learning curve. But it’s already been used to write well-known projects like Docker and Force.com, and interest in developers who can use Go is fairly high and increasing.

Dart: A better version of JavaScript

This open source language, also developed by Google, is intended to replace JavaScript. It’s fairly easy for developers who already know JavaScript to learn, and it has additional capacities that JS doesn’t — such as easy building for large-scale, multi-developer Web apps.

Currently, Dart applications can run in most popular browsers by cross-compiling to JavaScript, and they run automatically in Google’s Chrome browser through a built-in Dart VM.

Ceylon: The modular Java

While Ceylon is based on Java, it was designed to kill the popular programming language. Ceylon was developed specifically to enable teams to write large programs, so one of its key features is modularity. The language organizes code into modules and packages, and then compiles it to module archives, which are published in a central repository.

HIRING MANAGERS CARE MORE ABOUT PASSION THAN CREDENTIALS

Motivating factors play a primary role in any worker’s performance. When choosing a career in IT, some do it for the money, some for the enjoyment and satisfaction. Others like solving complex problems. Regardless of why, there’s one constant that every successful IT person has: Passion. Here are the top three reasons hiring managers care more about passion than credentials:

1. Technical expertise enables a worker, but it’s passion that drives someone. A professional who has a passionate drive about their occupation will do whatever it takes to be successful, to perform at their peak, and to learn the most about their job. Generally, someone with a CCNP has a higher degree of knowledge than another with a CCNA – but the person who has the CCNA will learn the CCNP position, and their drive will help them learn more comprehensively.

2. Passion finds a way around objects and challenges that frustrate expertise. This same drive motivates a worker to excel personally, not just professionally. This brings an automatic increase in perseverance, training, and discipline. People who enjoy their job are also more likely to acquire new information that, while it may not relate directly to the job, nonetheless increases performance.

3. Passion brings something to the table that technical expertise and credentials simply don’t. Having a “burned out” employee with any amount of expertise is still a disgruntled employee. Having a fire glowing inside of a candidate for what they do isn’t a “soft skill,” it’s a necessity. Passion is what will make a candidate acquire skills and knowledge when it’s not required, and what keeps a candidate up late working when the rest of the office is gone. Passion is what distinguishes an ordinary candidate for a growth driver.