Business: National technology and professional staffing firm
Launched: 1997
HQ: Fort Lauderdale
Employees: 700
Website: SigConsult.com
Fort Lauderdale-based Signature Consultants connects companies with top tech talent in South Florida and across the US. In an industry and a region where jobs move fast, Signature Consultants is laser focused on finding the right talent for their clients.
“We pride ourselves on building strong relationships,” Account Manager Sarah Norton told Tech Hub South Florida. She explained that having a deep understanding of their clients’ and job candidates’ needs allows Signature Consultants to create a winning match.
“We don’t want to just place a candidate,” said Norton. “We want to find a long term employee-employer fit.”
Sarah Norton
Norton believes that a company’s culture is one of the best ways to ensure strong compatibility between jobseekers and Signature’s clients: “It’s about the way you work, not just the job you do.”
“Skills are important, but skills can be taught and learned,” she said. In Norton’s experience, aspects of company culture, such as whether team-working or individual work is the norm, is harder to learn.
Having been active in the Florida tech community for almost a quarter of a century, Signature Consultants has seen the industry blossom into the robust tech environment it is today. They work with clients of all sizes – “small, medium, big, and everything in between,” said Norton – across a diverse range of industries, including automotive, energy, finance, and hospitality.
While the beginning of the pandemic last year brought uncertainty to the South Florida tech job market, Norton reports that employees and employers alike have reason to feel optimistic.
“It’s awesome to see that the IT market is rebounding quickly from Covid,” Norton explained. Since the turbulent job market has largely stabilized, Norton has noticed a boom in the South Florida tech scene: “People are a lot more eager to get down to South Florida.”
This growth has led to a strong market for candidates: “Right now there are more roles than there are candidates,” Norton said.
Technical roles are most in demand at the moment, “especially DevOps and cloud migration experts.” But Norton said that demand for project manager and business analyst roles is “always huge” for Signature’s South Florida clients.
While the working world is on track to broadly bounce back this year, Norton thinks that some changes brought on by the pandemic will remain. In her mind, the biggest change has been the shift towards remote working. “South Florida companies used to just hire candidates based in South Florida,” she explained. “Now they’re getting used to hiring people from all across the world.”
With employers casting a wider net for talent, Norton said that local talent should not feel discouraged: “If you’re an active IT candidate, you’re in demand.”
She tells candidates to “apply to as much as they can” and see rejections as learning experiences. “You’re probably not going to get the job after your first interview, so be open to the coaching and to the feedback,” she said.
Her advice to jobseekers in today’s market? “Go with your gut. Go with the person who gets to know you, and knows what you want. That’s how you’ll land the job you’re looking for.”