Hiring is one of the most important things you’ll do in business if you want to succeed. Finding people who will be engaged and committed to the work they do for your company will guarantee growth, and in today’s technology driven world, some of the most important roles require IT skills. Whether it’s a website that makes you look professional and seamlessly helps generate leads or it’s a software that enables your process to be faster and less complex, technology within your business is a necessity, but because you’re a hiring manager, a HR executive or a business owner doesn’t mean you’ll know how to spot the talents you need even if it hits you in the face. With a flood of technology candidates in todays marketplace, here are five things to consider before hiring your next technology staff.
Avoid the Jack of All Trades – Information technology is an extremely wide field. From web developers to database administrators to network engineers to software engineers and far beyond. Like many trades, an IT professional should be able to hone his craft, and like the saying goes, a Jack of all trades is usually a master of none. A resume that boast ten or more unrelated IT skills usually means the resume is doctored or the candidate is not very good at any of them. Before hiring someone, determine what business challenge your new hire should solve and look for someone who has an extensive track record in this field.
Remember Your Candidate is a Person Not a Machine – You want an IT staff who is good at what he does, but you also want someone who doesn’t speak machine language when communicating with human beings as well. Someone who is unable to communicate properly, no matter how skilled will probably slow the entire process down. To sieve out bad communicators from a group of candidates is to see if their resume includes interests outside of work.
Be Up to Date with the Employment Market and Trends – If you must fill up a role you’ve never filled before or even if it’s been a while since you filled up that position, you’ll need to know what the employment market looks like for that role. While it’s important to understand the kind of candidates you’re looking for, it’s also important to ensure that your job description, salary and candidate pool are optimized to locate the talent you need. By using a salary report, you can be sure your salary goals are competitive enough to pull in the required talent.
Don’t Be Too Shy to Ask for Help – Sometimes as a manager or a business owner, you understand you lack certain things, you know you need to hire someone but you’re not quite sure what the required skills are. You know you want to build and manage a custom software, but you do not know enough about application development. You know very basics about .NET, Java and C++. You know exactly what you want your software to accomplish but you’re not a software developer and you don’t know the intricacies required to make the right hiring decision. Usually, in a situation like this, hiring a HR person to make the right choice for you is not only too expensive but also time consuming. Talking however to an IT hiring consultant should help with your hiring blues.