Hiring IT talent Part 2: What skills should you look for?

In Part 1 I talked about the candidate having the right attitude to mesh with your corporate culture and I shared my thoughts on certifications. Now let’s look at some specifics you should be looking for in a successful IT candidate. They may not be what you expect.

Look for someone with a minimum five years experience supporting a network with multiple locations and a similar number of users or more as your business employs. Make sure they are familiar with the technologies in use at your company (i.e. Microsoft, Novell, etc.)

They must be good with documentation. Make sure they are willing and able to document their solutions effectively. Ask for examples, but realize they may not be able to produce any due to privacy requirements of previous employers.

They must be good with communication to upper management and keeping them and the board of directors in step with initiatives.

If they will be responsible for a departmental budget make sure you get someone with experience drafting and operating within their budget. Ask them how successful they were at operating within their budget at previous employers.

Look for someone experienced with disaster recovery and were involved in drafting and executing disaster recovery plans and tests. Ask them for some specifics on what they did for their previous employer(s). What did they learn and is there anything they’d do differently?

Ask them what programs they’ve implemented for end user support; how would they measure success?

Ask them what they would do in their first 90 days if you hired them. They should be able to explain how they would hit the ground running.

You might want to look for someone experienced with end-user security training.

If you don’t feel like you’re able to conduct a solid interview exploring the candidate’s depth of technical knowledge (maybe you lack sufficient technical expertise yourself), then ask someone whose technical abilities you trust to assist you with the interview. Perhaps this is a trusted consultant.

Do you see how these questions are higher level and strategic in nature and not about nuts and bolts technical issues? Information Technology is no longer about technical minutia; it’s about installing leaders at every level and ensuring they have their eyes on corporate objectives first, and the technical “how tos” second.