Karlien : recruiting developers who make apps and websites you use on a daily basis

Those who know Karlien will talk about the energy and the smile she has every day. Few years ago, she discovered the job of Recruitment Consultant in IT. She is now an expert on her market and gets always more interested in the technical side. Find out more about her in this interview !

Hi Karlien, can you tell us more about you ?

Yes sure ! I’m 27, I live in Antwerp and work as a Senior Recruitment Consultant in IT at Computer Futures (@SThree). I guess I have a bit of an unusual background to end up in sales, since I studied Chinese at university. Traveling is one of my passions : the last 12 months I have been camping in Sweden, went on a 200 km hike in Scotland, did a roadtrip in Canada with my boyfriend, went to France with my whole family and visited London to see one of my favorite bands preform live at Wembley. I also love hanging out with friends and family, going to concerts or music festivals at least once a month and playing the guitar in my family band ! There are also cats, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit obsessed with them.

How does your daily life as a Senior Recruitment Consultant at Computer Futures (@SThree) in Antwerp look like ?

I work on the frontend development market. This means I work with developers who make apps and website I use on a daily basis. I like working in this market, because the people I work with, are usually around my age. So when I meet them for lunch or coffee, we can also talk about the newest shows on Netflix, the Game of Thrones final episode, or the latest PS4 games they bought recently.

My clients are cool media companies, big institutions and IT startups that make really innovative products ! Most of my days are a mix between team meetings, searches for new top developers, calls with my clients and candidates, follow-ups with the consultants I have recruited, interview preparations, client visits, coaching with our new team members and chat with our Community Manager to talk about the organization of the next meetups or techtalks we will be hosting…

You have been working at Computer Futures (@SThree) for more than 3 years. How has been your journey so far ?

It was my first job and when I joined Computer Futures (CF) I worked on a brand new market. It was exciting but also very challenging of course. It didn't work as expected so I decided to take the opportunity to switch markets after one year. Very quickly I started making recruitment after recruitment, and breaking open client after client. I hit my promotion in the first month after switching market, and suddenly even got a ticket for the annual incentive in Ibiza.

“The last two years, I have recruited almost 40 top developers on very cool projects.” — Karlien

More recently I have also been given more responsabilities as one of the seniors in the team. Since I liked helping and coaching people, I have been buddying and training our new team members, and even interview potential new colleagues for our team.

Could you tell us what are the nice and bad sides of being a Recruitment Consultant and what would be your pieces of advice to someone who would like to start a career within the recruitment industry ?

That is a really good question ! To be fair, when I started out at CF, I only had a vague image about what recruitment was. In my mind, clients would call me with jobs, and the candidates would just send CVs to my mailbox, where I only had to do some matching between them. Turns out it doesn’t work that way. Sorry for the cliché but I think my key piece of advice is mainly hard work and persistence. You have to know a lot of people and keep very up to date with them. And this sadly just doesn’t happen overnight.

“Recruitment is a bit of a rollercoaster.” — Karlien

In the end we work with people, and people make their own decision. You can do everything you can to make an offer as great as possible, at the end it is up to them to make a decision. But what you get in return is great ! When they finally start on their new project, and they send you a message on the first day for thanking you, you kind of forget all the hard work you put into it. I have been working at Computer Futures for over 3 years now, and recently recruited the first frontend developer I ever met up with, because I have been keeping in touch with him for all this time. I thought that was super cool !

Let’s come back to your market. What do you expect of the IT industry in the coming years ?

Every week, new JavaScript frameworks get released and new projects get started. I feel like the frontend developers I work with, really have to stay up to date and constantly have to educate themselves on new stuff. Next to that, I see more and more people working with big data, AI and blockchain, which aren’t just buzzwords anymore.

Everything is moving to the cloud, and I feel like any developer should have some sort of knowledge of cloud technology. I also feel like IT recruitment is changing as well. The last few years, Computer Futures has been focusing more about making a big community of IT specialists we know, and bringing them together via all sort of knowledge sharing meetings. You have to be a bit different to stand out in this industry !

Why would you recommend to an IT expert to work with you ?

I think people like to work with me because of my personal approach. I get a good and long talk in when I meet new people, and find out what they really want.

“I like to meetup with people to see them face to face, because we work in a people’s business in the end.” — Karlien

I also always try to give as much information about projects and clients as I can and I work with some really cool companies that I can present to people. Next to this, I am actually interested in IT in general. At Computer Futures we work hard to organize a lot of IT talks. If it is about big data, data streaming, or the new trends in Java, I’ll be there ! I just find it really cool how IT professionals can talk so passionately about what they are doing every day. I even did some small coding workshops lately. So who knows, maybe in a few years I can place myself on a project as a frontend developer !

Interested in working in the recruitment industry in Antwerp or Brussels ? Feel free to reach our Talent Acquisition team on myfuturejob@sthree.com.

Interview made by Nathalie & Paul.