A career is defined as "an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with

opportunities for progress." - Wiki

A career is defined as "an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with
opportunities for progress." - Wiki
US IT Staffing as a career would be one of the best decision one can make to excel in a fast pacing world,
It gives you an opportunity to work with the best of the best system integrator, consulting and end
clients. Many of recruitment professionals who are in staffing industry specially in US IT sector have
started their career because of no other option or they didn't find any other job for themselves and they
landed up in US IT staffing job by a referral or with someone's recommendation.
In this post I will be discussing the career roadmap to understand the career development of a
recruitment professional that would enable one to understand staffing world with bit more clarity. Many
of the recruitment professionals I talk to or in the industry that were recruiters and are still recruiters as
they won’t get a way to move on in the career or lack of interest of staffing agencies to promote them to
a lead or a managerial role. One of the thing that I always emphasis when I talk about growth is
education, training and empowerment where these three thing wont exists one should decide to leave
that organization or agency at any level. As a recruiter/manager in the US IT staffing industry one must
be able to adapt, change and implement transformation in his work approach otherwise he/she will be
facing career growth issues.
The beginning...
A) IT Recruiter / Trainee IT Recruiter: You will be joining in a staffing firm / in house recruiter. At this
stage of time you will be more focused on training yourself on end to end recruitment process where in
your employer will invest on your training and facilitating you with a computer/laptop and etc. You will
learn how search for people in different industries through various channels like job boards, social sites,
database and etc. At this point of time you must be very careful about picking the role you want to get
into as we have "US IT Staffing" divided into recruiting and bench sales.
Note: At this point of career beginning very few of the leaders talks to the employees about the two
divisions in the staffing vertical, sadly many of them are self centered so they look at their worth not your
career or growth but anyways ..
In the beginning of your career in the "US IT Staffing" industry you will have two options either to recruit
people for the job or place people on the jobs so in other words "recruiting people for the job" is called
recruiter and "placing candidates on jobs" is called bench sales. So if you have passion for talking to
people and connecting with them on call or via email or any medium recruiting is good for you but if you
do not like it but rather you like selling or talking about things then you can chose your career in bench
sales where in you will working closely with the candidates to place him on the job.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. -
John Quincy Adams
Senior US IT Recruiter : After gaining sufficient experience and exposure to technologies you will be able
to understand job roles, domains and verticals by function you become mature enough to differentiate
between important and priority in other words a focus recruitment professional who can close positions
on priority or on demand. In this role you will be able to guide fresh recruiters on sourcing practices and
different approaches to recruitment. There is not much different between a lead and a senior US IT
recruiter as a senior professional you take care of your work and stuff but as a lead you take not only
care of your stuff but also helps other colleagues perform the same in same or different capacity. There
is where one realizes the leadership qualities in oneself that how is one able to educate, train and
mentor people to perform and produce results.
Note: Many of the organizations push senior professionals due to their performance to a lead position
without realizing the impact of that decision meaning a productive individual recruiter might lose his/her
productivity by taking a role of a lead recruiter. It is the responsibility of an organization to identity
people who have these leadership qualities then promoting them to a lead role which will benefit
everyone. Remember the end goal of making someone a lead should be doubling the productivity of
himself through different heads that he/she trains.
Account Manager: As you train, mentor and groom your fellow colleagues a times comes for you when
you leave your billing seat and seat on the business side of the business that is driving delivery and client
servicing role. In many of the organization we have this role but in some organization this role is divided
into two part mainly delivery and client servicing.
i) Delivery Manager: A DM is someone who seats with the recruiters and work closely to ensure resume
submissions/delivery on the client requirements (jobs). He/she works closely with the TL (Lead
Recruiters) to ensure quality, quantity and timely delivery of the resumes on the jobs received from the
clients. An additional responsibility of a DM could be mentoring leads who are good enough to
understand urgency priorities and delivery of various technologies for making them future delivery
managers. Unfortunately very few would like to grow , mentor and groom their colleagues.
ii) Client Service Manager / Client Partner / Client Engagement Manager: At this level an individual is
already been through lot of recruitment's, hiring’s, experiences and exposures with delivery then he
seats on the chair of client servicing role where in one interacts daily with the clients for discussing
requirements , priorities, traction, interviews, closures and many other client focus things. He/she
fosters the relationship with the client to make sure whatever DM have submitted or presented to
him/her is been sent to the client for review, screening, selection and rejection. A client partner works
closely with the hiring managers to understand the priority requirements and future projects for
building strong relationship which leads to higher profits and more business.
Note: As said above most of the organizations have single role where in a single point of contact is
managing recruiters for delivery of resumes and as well managing clients relationships. This spreading
into two is mostly done because of large accounts and more hiring managers where in we need to
provide assistance on bulk hiring which leads to lot of interviews and closures or so on that is why
organization keep AM into two different roles i.e DM & CP. An additional responsibility of a CP is to
mentor DM on client servicing activities and relationship building.
Business Development & Sales : This is very exciting role and front seat of the business within US IT
Staffing where in an individual who have been through all the phases of staffing such as end to end
recruitment, sourcing, delivery, client services which gives him/her an edge and grip of entire business.
Now as an individual one see and feel not recruitment life cycle but rather see and focus on business life
cycle. At this level the individual is not concerned with the delivery or client services but rather on
acquiring new clients and business of which the ultimate goal would be business conversions.
Note: Many organizations hire people directly for the role of BDM or consider previous experience as BD
person and thinks things will work for them. Some time yes but many times as an individual who are not
aware of insights of the business will faces challenges when interacting with clients or pitching in or
would be able to answer questions asked by the clients.

Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a
goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the
consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing
back and letting them shine. - Chris Hadfield
Director/ Head of Staffing Business: This individual is responsible for overall development of a staffing
business like blue printing the business goals and executing plans through the year with the teams and
groups. At this level an individual is more focused towards creating the COE center of excellence, quality
control, training, mentoring, nurturing accounts, managing relationship, change agent and etc. usually
this people also take care of hiring people in the organization and take responsibility of profit and loss,
revenue and expenditure, escalation and problem solving kind of activities. They are the ones who
heads the organization and manage both client relations from business point of view as well internal
teams in terms of motivation , inspiration and role modeling.
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. John C. Maxwell
Note: This seats define your success in the industry by how you manage teams, inspire and lead them to
become successful. This role comes with diplomacy two side roles that one play between stake holders
and work force to keep the equilibrium. At this position many of the heads or directors or we call them as
leaders create their follower base and become influencer and make careers of many people by guiding
them for their inspiration.