There was a time when tech skills were scarce. Hiring new IT staff was all about finding someone qualified from a technical perspective. Skills were everything; certifications, even better. That day has past us by.
The reality is that if you look at your IT department today carefully, you’ll find that most folks there are not working in a job that they originally trained for. They might have started out writing COBOL. They may have started out with a degree in marketing. They might have gotten into programming because it pays the bills while they try to get their band signed (in fact, if you work in Nashville, that’s probably 25%-50% of your entire company’s staff).
This means that your IT staff has adapted over time. They’ve acquired the skills to keep succeeding. Given what the IT industry is like, in fact, you can be certain that absolutely any candidate that has worked in the industry for five years or more has adapted and picked up the skills they need for the job as they went, as technology skills typically have a shelf life of just that- about five years. Adapting is not a bonus in IT- it’s a survival skill.
So what should you be looking at to hire people? Attitude. Communications skills. The ability to fit in your company’s culture. The key here is to find a personality that works, not just a set of skills. You wouldn’t pick a dog for your kids based solely on its color, height and weight; you shouldn’t pick staff based on a set of statistics either.
Here’s a short list of useful guidelines and a few questions you can use for each:
- Look for people fit to the pace. If it’s a challenging position that will have to hit the ground running, look for someone seeking challenge. If there’s a lot of repitition involved, look for someone comfortable with routine.
- Look for people interested in today’s challenge. If they ask about advancement opportunities, that’s great; people should be ambitious. Be sure, though, that they’re interested in the problems you have now. You don’t want someone looking ahead so much that they’re not doing the job you hired them to do.
- Look for honesty. Ask a tough question or two, like why they’re leaving their old job. Anything that smacks of honesty is good here, even if it’s “I hate my old boss”.
- Look for a willingness to take responsibility. Ask how they would handle reporting a massive budget overrun to an executive. How they would handle a systems outage at the end of the day. How they would handle a major and valid customer complaint with your software services. What they would do if they found out that one of their staff had screwed up a major account. Watch for answers that smack of ”I would deliver a straight answer, take the lead to find a solution the problem, and report on the results.”
- Find out how the person handles confrontation. How they would handle the firing of a staff member. How they would handle it if an executive ever blew their top at them. How they would handle an irate customer.
- Find out how they prefer to communicate. Ask how they would handle delivering bad news to someone else on his team. In another office. A customer. How would they handle requesting help from another department.
There are other factors to consider as well, depending on your company, its culture, and the particular job, but this is a good starting point. How a person handles conflict, how they communicate, how they take responsibility, their level of honesty- all of these things are things that can make or break a new employee, regardless of their technical skills. Make certain that they have the minimum skills to meet the position, obviously, but you can always teach technical skills- teaching attitude is much harder, and much more difficult within the context of your organization.