Because IT plays a vital role in the business world today, a new business cannot afford not to have an IT department. Therefore, if you intend to start a new business, you need to have competent and reliable IT employees with a good grasp of best practices such as offsite data backup and security. Read on to learn how to get the best talent for your IT department.
Take Charge of the Hiring Process
Some entrepreneurs choose to outsource the task of hiring new employees. While there is nothing wrong with this approach, it is advisable to make hiring IT personnel your responsibility. The aim is to get to know the people who will be working for you. Ask open-ended questions to allow the interviewees to express themselves in detail.
Remember, one of the main responsibilities of your IT team will be to keep cyber-criminals at bay. Figures published by the American Databank show that business owners in the US lose as much as $120 billion due to employee fraud. By interviewing potential employees, you will be able to assess personal characteristics and traits.
Incorporate Diversity
Diversity is an important aspect when hiring IT staff. Therefore, go for people who have worked for startups and established businesses in a wide range of industries such as banking, social media, and healthcare. If they are smarter than you, do not feel threatened. When it comes to technology, you need bright and highly innovative staff.
You should also have people willing to contradict you in the team. The fact that you are the owner of the business does not mean that you will always be right. Having employees who can step up and contradict your decisions with facts can save your business from failure.
Skills
At the end of the day, IT personnel should have the right skills. For example, a business that provides cloud-computing services to clients is likely to require people with database, socket, and web programming skills. Do not just trust what people put in their CVs. Instead, set tasks and gauge their competence and technical expertise. You might be surprised to find that education credentials are not a good indicator of coding prowess.
Since data security is such a big concern, you need someone with a good grasp of virtual private networks, data encryption, and techniques used by cyber-criminals to hack into business databases.
Strong Work Ethic
You should choose an IT team with a strong work ethic. If your intranet or website does not function as expected, you need a team that can work round the clock to restore functionality. An IT team that does not have a sense of responsibility is likely to struggle to complete projects on time. A spirit of appreciating the effort put in by co-workers also demonstrates someone who has a strong work ethic.
Other desirable qualities to look out for include great communication skills, good analytical skills, as well as ability to brainstorm ideas in a creative manner.
Recruit for the Future, Not the Present
IT technologies are evolving and changing at an incredible pace. Choose your employees with this in mind. Do not restrict yourself to hiring people who only know a particular programming language or have expertise in a certain type of hardware. Your business is likely to face challenges if clients shift allegiance to more nimble competitors.
As a new business owner, the IT staff you hire can make or break the fortunes of your fledgling business. To build the right team, recruit people with a wide range of IT skills, strong work ethic, incorporate diversity, as well as getting involved in the hiring process. According to Forbes magazine, resourceful IT employees can help you scale your business exponentially using technology.
About the Author: William Stevens is a writer who creates informative articles in relation to technology. In this article, he describes the importance of a knowledgeable IT team and aims to encourage further study with a computer science master’s degree online.