If you’re simply a business owner, the chances are that you’ll struggle a lot when hiring an IT professional for your company.
Don’t believe me?
Ok, answer this question: your company wants to build its first website, and you need an IT geek to help you. Who are you going to hire? A web developer or a web designer or both?
You probably don’t know the difference between them.
Hiring an IT geek is not the same as recruiting regular employees. There are a lot of technicalities involved. Technicalities that – if you don’t know your way around them – may lead you to hire the wrong guy.
Keep reading to discover how to hire IT professionals for your business.
What are your IT needs?
The mode of operation of every business organization is different.
While some companies may be in desperate need of an IT professional to help with launching their first website, others may be looking for a graphic expert, data analyst, cybersecurity engineer, mobile app developer, or tech support.
So, I ask you: what are your IT needs?
Do you know them, or you need help figuring it out?
I bet you do.
The first step in hiring an IT professional is to understand your IT needs.
How and where do I find candidates?
Ok, you’ve figured out your IT needs. Good for you.
Now, how do you find someone who’s an expert in handling these needs?
Post an ad calling for interested candidates on digital job boards and news outlets?
Well, that works, too.
But if you want the best IT staff, there are two other methods that guarantee better results. They are:
Networking
By attending industry conferences, linking up with people on LinkedIn, joining industry-relevant webinars, and reaching out to colleagues in the industry, you can learn about the talents that are out there and available to take on the job.
Recruitment agency
If you don’t have the time or resources for networking, using a recruitment agency like Scion IT Staffing represents another good option. They have the resources and contacts to help you find what you need. And are well-spoken for by the Business Times and Forbes. You can look them up.
What are the things you should look out for?
You may think college degrees are the first things to look out for when hiring an IT person.
But guess what?
A Bachelor’s degree is not always the best indication that someone is a good fit for an IT job.
IT job positions are not like regular job positions, wherein qualifications of applicants are the most important.
When hiring an IT professional, the most important thing to look out for is experience.
But if you’re lucky to find someone who has the right qualifications, as well as the needed hands-on experience, then it’s even better.
Verify it’s the experience you need
It’s not enough for a candidate to tell you, by mouth or on paper, the number of years of experience they have. You need proof that they’re actually able to do the job.
Therefore, you should seek out ways to test the experience level and abilities of candidates before giving out the job.
For example, if someone claims they’re an IT tech support, you could ask them to dismantle a computer workstation and reconfigure it back.
Ask a boatload of questions
If someone is truly good enough to handle an IT job role, they should be able to answer any question you throw at them.
After all, since they’re the ones with the skill, qualification, and experience, they shouldn’t have a problem answering questions posed by someone who’s not as vast and knowledgeable as they are.
If you don’t know the right questions to ask, you can simply Google search, say, “questions to ask a web developer/cybersecurity engineer/SEO specialist before hiring them.”
Decide between an In-house IT staff and a managed service provider
Finally, you have to decide whether to hire someone as a part of your organization’s team or just on a pay-as-you-work basis.
Usually, most companies just hire IT geeks to complete tasks, and once they’re done, they pay them off
This is not a bad idea, especially when you know you won’t be requiring the service of the person anytime soon or ever again.
However, in some instances, it makes sense to hire an in-house staff.
Like when you need control over your technical operations, when you have long-term IT needs or when you have extremely complex systems that require the attention of a full-time staff.
Interesting related article: “What is Information Technology?”