Laura Armstrong
Director- Technology
Where did it all begin?
Well, I haven’t always worked within recruitment, I started off in a sales role as part of an IT outsource company.
I suppose I found that sales was quite a natural progression into recruitment and so progressed my career into sales recruitment.
I then met our current CEO, Gordon Brown who offered me a role as head of delivery for technology. I built up a small delivery team and was later promoted to director of Technology at Nine Twenty. Six years later I’m still here, growing the company’s RPO function!
What industries do you recruit for and what type of candidates are you looking for?
I work with clients and candidates from many sectors, all of which are centred in the IT industry.
I don’t have a specific type of role that I find myself recruiting for again and again. I usually take on a variety of roles from graduates all the way up to senior management. Within IT I think there is a demand for every level of role so it’s important to me to have a strong understanding of them all.
Typically I am recruiting for software developers for a variety of languages although I am often tapping in to other roles in areas such as IT infrastructure and support roles, IT managers, and service delivery.
Compared to traditional 360 recruitment, I predominantly deal with RPO and retained clients and this is all down to the strong relationships I keep with my clients. I suppose you could say I’m more involved with account management as opposed to business development, and I’ve been able to form great relationships with clients from the day I started at Nine Twenty.
Because of these strong contacts, many areas of the Nine Twenty such as sales and professional services have benefitted from new business, which is always very positive.
It’s quite important for IT recruitment to stay on top of the market because as technology is changing so quickly, so are the roles. As more apps and mobile friendly websites are being created, IOS and Android developer roles are booming and along with this, there has been a shift towards IT security as this area is also growing.
I’ve noticed that companies are happier to take on more graduates than before as the calibre is just so much higher!
Roles Laura is currently working on:
Typical roles I recruit for:
- Software Engineer
- Software Engineer Graduates
- Senior Board/ CTO roles
- IT Managers
- BI Developers
- SQL Developers
- Infrastructure Specialists
IT Languages I’m looking for:
- Java
- MS.Net
- Molbile Development
- IOS
- Android
- C #
- PHP
- SQL
Want to speak to Laura about her roles?
larmstrong@weareninetwenty.com
+44 (0) 7887 400 749