As a guy who played the white-collar game for quite a few years, here’s my bits of advice for any college student studying tech that wants to find work when they graduate.

This is assuming your college job placement program isn’t as great as they said it was. (heh)

This is stuff you will never learn in college.

Be in an area where the tech jobs are

Where are the tech jobs in the USA?

Just go to Dice’s metro searches. Every single USA metro with good tech jobs is listed.

If you live in one of those areas, good for you.

If not, move to one.

Also, it would be good to scan the listings for your metro to see if what you’re studying is actually listed for jobs. If it isn’t, you’re going to have an uphill climb finding work doing what you want.

Many companies prefer recruiters over direct-hire

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, using a tech staffing agency (like RHI for example) is one of the fastest ways to find work.

If you’ve been sending your résumé everywhere but haven’t had any success, use a staffing agency instead.

Three things about staffing agencies:

1. Never pay them anything. The ones that require any cash whatsoever aren’t worth your time because they already make money on any job they place you in.
2. Call, don’t e-mail. Don’t register on their web site. Call instead, speak to a rep and establish a relationship. Do this and you will greatly increase your chances of finding work quickly.
3. You don’t have to ham it up. When you’re actually in the hot-seat on a job interview, that’s when you put on "your face" so to speak. But when speaking with a recruiter you don’t have to do this. You still have to be professional (obviously), but remember, they are working for you and not the other way around.

If your skill set is good, a good recruiter will get you an interview in 2 weeks or less.

A corporation is still a corporation no matter how you look at it

You may have the skills.

You may have a good personality.

You may be the best thing to hit the tech scene ever.

But you still have to deal with corporate b.s. no matter where you go.

Here’s some things to remember:

HR knows nothing about tech - at all

Ah, the dreaded Human Resources department. Every corporation has one.

HR people know nothing about tech - and they don’t have to because it’s not their job.

The single largest hurdle you face trying to get a tech job is getting past HR.

What this means to you is that if your résumé does not "follow the dots" of the job description - HR will kill your hopes and dreams quick.

Why? Because they get your résumé first before the actual people doing the hiring do.

You may send a résumé and never get a call-back. This leaves you confused because you were sure your résumé was perfect. What happened?

HR happened and killed it.

And by the way, using a recruiter is by far the easiest way to skirt HR entirely.

Never interview on a Friday

Many corporations have the last day of the work week as "Casual Friday". This is instant death to you as the one trying to get the job.

If you interview on a Friday, this is what usually happens:

• The person scheduled to interview you is guaranteed to be late by at least a half-hour beyond the normal half-hour wait.
• When you finally do get interviewed, it will probably be some idiot wearing jeans and a tee-shirt with half his unfinished lunch sprawled out on his desk (not exactly a confidence booster).
• You will not be your best. Your mind will kick in a subconscious thought to the tune of "Well, if everyone here is acting over-casual, so can I!" Uh.. no. Don’t do that. You won’t get the job.
• Even if your interview goes well, you will be "shelved" (i.e. forgotten) until next Monday - or possibly forgotten permanently.

Never interview in the afternoon

Sometimes you don’t have a choice in this, but if you do, interview in the morning as early as possible. Brains are fresh and working properly on both sides (yours and theirs) and the interviewer will pay more attention to you.

And yes, you want this because it’s to your advantage.

On the interview: Ask questions, get human

The end part of any interview always ends with a question:

"Do you have any questions for me?"

Yes, you do. Fire off a few of these and you’ll look real smart:

If the job requires several people to do the same thing (such as help desk):

• What’s the retention rate for this position?

If the interviewer looks at you with a concerned look and pauses, this usually means people quit the job left and right. Not a good sign. But if the interviewer immediately answers and says "We have a very good retention rate" or something similar, you’re in good shape.

If the job is a singular position:

• Is this a new position?

If the answer is yes, ask why the position was created. You will get information valuable to you and get a good idea if the job will actually last.

If the answer is no, ask why the last person is no longer with the company. You may get a "I can’t tell you that" answer, but more often than not the interviewer will tell you exactly why the last person left. You will then know exactly what not to do if you get hired.

Here’s one you’d think would be a bad question:

• Do you like it here?

I worked up the nerve to start asking this and surprisingly did well each time I did.

The response by the interviewer usually is:

"Why do you ask?"

I respond to that with:

"It’s important for me to work with people that like what they do. We all have bills to pay but we might as well enjoy our jobs. Know what I mean?"

And wouldn’t you know it - you’re not b.s.’ing - you’re being honest. You really do want to know if people like their jobs there. You don’t want to work in a place full of depressing moody idiots, right?

I will be the first to say that this does not work for everyone - but in my case it did. Each time I did it, the "corporate wall" dropped a bit and I got to see into the humanity of the interviewer.

If the interviewer’s response was a cold "This is a great company to work for", I usually didn’t get the job.

If the response was "(pause) Yes. Yes, I like it", I usually did get the job.

The response you get will usually dictate whether you’re hired or not. Cold corporate responses are bad. Human responses are positive.

When you "get human" with the interviewer it usually increases your chances of getting the job a great deal.

In closing:

You’ll note that very little of what I wrote has anything to do with tech and everything to do with corporate hiring practices. You as a college student will most likely be gunning for a big company because they have the cash you want.

Knowing how white-collar works can very much mean whether you get hired or not.

And if you’ve ever seen someone and asked yourself How did THAT GUY get that job instead of me? He’s terrible!

The answer is most likely that he knows how the game works and you don’t.