IT Manager's Handbook: Getting Your New Job Done (24 page)

If the candidate will be working remotely once they get the job, the video-call interview can give you good insight as to what it will be to interact with them and “meet” as employees once they have the job.

The Right Skill Set for the Job

Have a well-defined list of criteria before you start recruiting. Use this list to weed out résumés and then use a fine-tuned version of that list to interview candidates. Bring the list to the interview itself—you are running the show, so worry more about being thorough and complete and less about appearances.

Keep in mind that you're interviewing for two skill sets. One is
technical
skills and the other is
everything else
: their attitude toward work, ability to juggle multiple priorities, ability to work with others, general intelligence, resourcefulness, potential for growth, dedication and commitment, professionalism, and maturity. You may also be looking for project management skills, supervisory skills, and interpersonal skills, as well as the ability to write reports or give presentations.

When to Accept Similar Experience

Should you accept similar experience? It all depends on how similar the experience is to what you're looking for. It also depends on your needs. If you need to put someone to work on the first day, to be productive on a critical project, your definition of similar might be quite narrow. However, if you can afford to invest time to bring an individual up to speed, then your definition of similar may be more forgiving.

If you like a candidate, but have concerns that his experience isn't similar enough, share your thoughts with him directly. “I like your background, Patrick, you have excellent experience, you'd be perfect for the job, but I'm concerned that you don't have enough experience with X technology.” At the very least, by doing this you're being honest with the candidate and letting them know why there is a chance they won't get the job. More important, you're giving the candidate an opportunity to respond. For all you know, Patrick may have something in his background that wasn't mentioned on his résumé that will make you feel a lot more comfortable about his experience or about his ability to compensate for the gap.

With your responsibility as an IT Manager revolving around technology, it's easy to get caught up in specific technology experience when recruiting—hardware models or software version numbers. Of course, these skills are important, but the technical skill set is only a portion of the qualifications. Softer skills such as interpersonal interaction, writing, attention to detail, and ability to function in a team environment can be just as vital.

Rank Criteria

Have a well-defined list of criteria for a job established
before
you go into the interview. As part of the definition process, you can rank each criterion in terms of importance. These rankings will vary from department to department and company to company. Some organizations rank teamwork way ahead of technical skills, whereas others place a much higher value on technical competence than they do on the ability to work well with others.

You may find that an interviewee is a bit weaker in one area than you would like, but significantly stronger in another area. Also, more than likely, you'll see résumés and candidates who have similar experience to what you're looking for. You may find that a candidate's technical expertise is weaker than you would like, but they strike you as someone who is very bright, picks up new skills quickly on their own, and is a very hard worker.

It is pretty common for a manager to value softer skills (personality, intelligence, interpersonal, resourcefulness, etc.) over specific technical skills. The idea behind this is that technical skills can always be learned (and in the ever-changing field of IT, picking up new skills is an ongoing requirement for success), but teaching someone how to be responsible, likeable, or intelligent isn't as easy.

In addition, the priority you assign to these skills will vary on the job in question; because many technical jobs require relatively little personal interaction, a candidate's ability to “work well on a team” may not be of much value.

In the end, as you weigh all of these issues to make your choice, don't be surprised if you feel you're making a judgment call—you are.

Other Requirements That You Might Be Flexible About

•
Years of experience.
What's more important than the number of years is what the candidate did in those years.

•
College degree.
Perhaps this is more important for a manager, but it's less so for a technologist. And the more years since that college degree, the less it adds value as opposed to experience.

•
Training.
Pertinent training? Fundamentals or advanced? How long since the classes were taken? Have the skills been used out in the real world?

•
Specific hardware and software technology.
Is a dot version or two behind in software truly a disqualifier? These days, everything gets outdated quickly.

•
Environment size.
This can be measured in terabytes of storage, users, number of applications or servers, or number of locations—whatever is appropriate for your needs.

•
Certification.
It may not show anything more than they can cram and memorize to pass an exam. See the next section for a separate discussion of this issue.

•
Industry experience.
Frequently, IT workers don't see enough of their company's business environment to really have a legitimate feel for the industry they're in. While similar industry experience is nice, you may want to broaden it to a more macro level, such as manufacturing or services, for example.

Ability to Learn

When considering prerequisite technical skills, remember that virtually everyone in IT must be at least smart enough to master new skills and adapt to changes in technologies and products on a regular basis. If you have faith that a person is smart enough to learn new skills, you may want to consider trusting that faith with someone who might have to take some time to come up to speed on the specific technology set in your environment.

The Value of Certification

The IT world has gone a little crazy with certification. Chances are that if you've heard of a particular hardware or software product, the vendor is offering some type of certification for it. There's an alphabet soup of available certifications, including CCNA, CNE, CNA, MCSA, MCSE, CCIE, CCNP, A+, CCIP, MCAD, MCT, CISSP, PMI, MCSD, MCP, MCDST, MCDBA, OCA, OCP, OCM, CLS, and CLP, to name just a few.

Certification really hit the front pages with Novell's Certified Netware Engineer (CNE). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, everyone wanted to be a CNE. To many it seemed like the passkey to dream jobs. However, by the mid- to late 1990s, a new term was coined: “paper CNE.” This term referred to people who took crash courses, studied intensively, and passed the CNE exams, but had virtually no experience to go with the new accreditation on their résumé. Novell's restructuring of their certification program helped deal with this. It's an interesting commentary that 10 to 15 years later, having a CNE was considered of minimal value since Novell had lost so much mind and market share.

Vendors must monitor their certification programs like the Federal Reserve monitors interest rates to balance between too much and too little growth. Vendors don't want their certification program to be so easy that it has no value or prestige, but at the same time, they don't want the programs to be so hard and elitist that too few people are able to pass the tests.

Test-Taking Skills

Whether it was in high school, technical school, or at the Department of Motor Vehicles, we all learned that a passed exam only represents knowledge at that particular moment, which may only in itself represent the ability to study prior to the exam. The same can be said of technical certification. If someone is certified, you know what their knowledge set was at the moment they were tested, which could mean they have the ability to study very hard, have a steel-trap memory, or have information that was ingrained during years of experience. While many IT Managers recognize this, many also look for certifications on résumés. Similarly, many managers looking for programmers prefer individuals with four-year college degrees, even though a college degree may add no value to a programmer's skill set.

Value of Commitment

One aspect of accreditation that's often overlooked is its representation of commitment and persistence. Getting certified usually means passing a series of exams. For many, it also means taking a series of classes. Doing this takes time, energy, and motivation. When you see someone who has been certified, perhaps the first thought you should have is “here's someone who can stick with something and see it through to the end.” Not a bad trait for someone who will be managing projects. The same can be said about college degrees, especially if they're obtained while working full time.

When you see a candidate with certification, be sure to consider how long it's been since that accreditation was obtained and to what degree those skills have been used since. If required, ask them if they have kept their certification current with continuing classes and exams.

Checking the Value of a Certification

There are a number of steps you can take to check the value of a certification:

•
Talk to your own network of contacts.

•
Contact the technical area's association (if there is one). Ask them about the value of certification; they might be also able to point you to a source that can either verify or deny their claims.

•
Contact the product manufacturer. Companies such as Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft have extensive certification programs and local contacts. Again, they will tout their own benefits, but they might also be able to point you to specific individuals who benefited from or are looking for those skills.

•
Scan the Web. Are other employers asking for this in their ads? If the certification appears often, that is a good sign.

Education

Education has changed radically in the last 20 years. Now there are online paper mills, rock-hard certification courses, distance learning, for-profit colleges, and $200 K tuition bills. The simple criteria of yesterday (“a four-year education is invaluable these days”) have changed.

Bill Gates is the richest man in the world according to Forbes, and chairman of one of the world's largest and most successful companies, yet he never finished college. Neither did Steve Jobs of Apple, nor Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. However, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, cofounders of Google, met while they were pursuing doctorates at Stanford. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released in 2010 (
www.bls.gov/spotlight/2010/college
), the median weekly earnings of workers with bachelor's degrees were 1.8 times the average amount earned by those with only a high school diploma, and 2.5 times the earnings of high school dropouts. And, even though the IT industry is filled with stories of those who have succeeded without a college degree, the economic downturn has increased preference for graduates—it's easy to understand why a hiring manager will choose a graduate when faced with a high-number of quality candidates.

When looking at the value of an education for a new hire for your company, consider three things:

•
Type of education

•
Direct value to the job

•
Indirect value to the job

Direct Value to the Job

As a rule, the more hands-on and technical a position, the less
direct
value a typical four-year degree has for you as the employer. This is even truer for a graduate degree. Is a Java programmer with an MBA a better programmer than a Java programmer who only finished high school? Some might argue that the programmer with only a high-school degree might be better since all those years went toward actual experience rather than the more theoretical academic experience. Notice the emphasis on the word “direct.” Of course the MBA may serve the programmer well as he moves up in his career.

A college education is of more value to a position that involves supervisory or management responsibilities. Also, a college degree is often a prerequisite to getting a supervisory or management role. As a general rule, actual experience and skill should always carry more weight than any educational requirements. And even for someone who has significant educational credentials, the value of that education generally decreases with time. The most important point here is: How easily can the candidate learn new things? The world and the marketplace we work in change quickly and significantly. Has this candidate shown the ability and interest to learn new tools and skills as they become the new standards? Lifelong learners are often the most productive employees in an organization.

A four-year degree will also sharpen skills for writing, analytic thinking, reading comprehension, and so on. Sometimes the value of those skill sets is often overlooked until you see that first horribly written e-mail from a staffer.

Indirect Value to the Job

However, a college-educated employee can provide several important
indirect
benefits to a position. Pursuing a four-year degree can be a difficult and complex task; it can show the individual's willingness to make a commitment and follow through. It can be a financial challenge; many people have to pay for a portion, or all, of their college education themselves. It can be intellectually challenging; a person may be pursuing a programming career now, but 10 years ago chose physics as a major in college.

At the minimum, you should seek a high-school degree for virtually all positions. This should at least give you an indication (although no guarantee) that the individual has the fundamental skills to operate in a job (reading, writing, basic math, etc.). As you move up the education ladder (two- and four-year degrees, graduate degrees, etc.), look to it as an indication not necessarily of a higher degree of technical skill, but of more skilled analysis, comprehension, and verbal skills.