Download IT Talent Management for Mid-Market Companies

IT TALENT MANAGEMENT
FOR MID-MARKET COMPANIES
FOR IT DEPARTMENTS,
CONNECTING WITH TOP TALENT
IS CRITICAL
In the rapidly evolving world of business, hiring
and maintaining a competent IT department
is essential for organizations of all sizes. With
a facile and adaptable IT department in place,
companies can improve the flow of communication,
augment productivity and ultimately boost the
bottom line. A strong IT department is also a great
way to ensure your company is ready to mitigate
emerging trends and seize opportunities for growth.
Unfortunately, many mid-market companies —
organizations with 100 to 1,000 employees —
are finding this critical task to be a tremendous
challenge. That’s because they are operating
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with limited resources in the face of changing
consumer and employee expectations, and in
an economy that yields new obstacles every day.
Already stretched to the limit, these organizations
often don’t have the ability to solidify their IT
functions.
There is some good news, however, in the fact
that the rocky economy has displaced a lot of
top IT talent, making it easier for mid-market
companies to recruit and hire these professionals.
Once these resources are hired, the issue then
becomes retaining talented new hires and not
losing them to companies with deeper pockets.
A UNIVERSAL CHALLENGE.
AND A UNIVERSAL APPROACH.
All organizations share similar challenges with
regards to building an IT department equipped
to handle the changing landscape. But no matter
how much things in the business world change,
there is one constant when it comes to hiring:
Having the right person in the right position
is key to ensuring business success.
An IT workforce comprised of professionals with
the necessary skills to advance your organization
— to upgrade from intranet to cloud, to transform
from Web to Web 2.0 and to evolve from socially
disconnected to social media stalwart — can cut
operating costs, increase efficiency and improve
your financial performance. Furthermore, hiring
the right employees and cultivating a corporate
culture that embraces the advantages of working
in a smaller environment will enhance employee
retention and with it, ROI. Those IT professionals
accustomed to operating in more regimented,
inflexible and frustrating environments inherent
in larger companies will appreciate having more
autonomy, greater control over their responsibilities,
increased exposure to different jobs and the ability
to really drive the direction, vision and strategy
of a mid-market company.
Therefore, the best metric for hiring success
can be defined as “quality of fill.” Hiring the right
employee the first time can be one of the most
cost-effective practices a business can invest in.
THE HIGH COST OF HIRING
THE WRONG PERSON
In the past, many businesses relied on a hit-ormiss collection of IT hiring practices that would
ultimately prove costly. There are significant hard
and soft expenses generated by unnecessary
employee turnover, including:
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resulting in loss of productivity
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and processing applications
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fully trained
Your business can avoid costs
associated with excessive and costly
employee loss due to bad hiring decisions
by adopting a best practices approach.
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BEST PRACTICES
IN IT HIRING
Every company, regardless of industry, is looking
for candidates with a few basic qualities, including
commitment to the job and to the company, ability
to perform the necessary duties, job satisfaction
and smooth integration with the existing team.
SOURCE FROM WITHIN
The Information Technology community is heavily
networked. Post jobs for internal recommendations
and offer a referral bonus. Promoting from within
helps build cohesion while maintaining good
employee relations.
CONNECT WITH THE RIGHT CANDIDATES
The first step towards a best practice approach
is attracting quality applicants and the key to
finding the perfect employee is to cast the widest
possible net. This means putting some time and
effort into recruitment ads and posting them
on job boards heavily trafficked by IT workers.
Job postings should be appealing, clearly define
the role and communicate the business culture
and core values. In addition, the language and
style of job postings should reflect the target
market. A well-crafted job posting will serve to
narrow the field while attracting viable candidates
who are qualified and enthusiastic.
CLEARLY DEFINE THE JOB PROFILE
It may sound obvious, but successful organizations generate job profiles that go beyond a basic
overview of the position. To enhance your job
profiles, solicit input from executives and key
stakeholders and use that information to clearly
delineate the objectives for the position and the
skills necessary to accomplish those objectives.
From there, you can build a comprehensive job
profile that effectively and accurately communicates the experience, skills and personality
traits of the ideal candidate.
SCREEN APPLICATIONS USING TECHNOLOGY
In addition to traditional online applications,
implement an online survey to help screen applicants and narrow the field. In a down economy,
a job opening can attract thousands of hopefuls.
Sorting them out by hand is both time-consuming
and inefficient. Develop a list of keywords that
can be used to find specific talents and skills.
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PREPARE INTERVIEWERS
The IT department, by definition, requires personnel
with strong technical expertise. Ensure that
your interviewers ask comprehensive questions
that address the specific needs of the position.
BEHAVIORAL EVENT QUESTIONS
The current trend in interviewing shifts focus
from a dry recitation of skills to cognitive experience questions. These types of questions are
open-ended and experience-based. Good examples
of behavioral event questions include “describe
a situation where you were faced with a server
malfunction,” and “tell me about a time when
your team implemented a major software upgrade.”
DEVELOP A STANDARD SET
OF ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
Make a list of preferred qualities and skills for
each position, and assess each applicant as to
how well they meet the criteria. This is especially
important when the hiring process involves
a series of interviews.
MAKE AN INFORMED DECISION
Even after a detailed interview procedure, many
hiring managers often go with gut instinct to make
a decision. Though this may be human nature,
it does not always produce the best employee.
It is more important to make a qualitative and
quantitative decision based on the information
you have painstakingly gathered. Narrow the
choice down to just a few candidates and select
the individual best suited to the position.
METRICS
OF EVALUATION
Information gathered during a traditional
interview has been shown to be the least
effective criteria for hiring. Education and job
experience are not always adequate variables
in fully assessing a candidate’s aptitude for an IT
position. While education serves as a foundation
for IT knowledge, every IT degree is obsolete
almost before the ink on the certification is dry.
Education is a start, but the real value of an IT
employee is in creativity and the ability to adapt
to emerging technologies. The one thing an
IT professional cannot be is stuck in the past.
PSYCHOMETRIC TESTS
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Personality is an important consideration
in the workplace. IT departments are a team
that must work together and interact with
every member of the organization. Clashing
personalities within a department decrease
job satisfaction for all concerned, creating
a workplace that is neither cohesive nor
productive. Personality tests use questions
about thoughts, feelings and behavior
to build a pattern of predictable behavior
models.
PSYCHOMETRIC ASSESSMENTS
Psychometric assessments evaluate job placement suitability beyond basic skills, yielding more
detailed insight into the thought process of job
prospects. Designed to measure personality,
intelligence and cognitive ability, psychometric
assessments were originally introduced as a tool
for educational psychologists. Today they are
commonly used in business application procedures.
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Aptitude tests are designed to measure
intellectual and cognitive reasoning ability.
There are several categories of aptitude tests:
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There are thousands of aptitude tests on
the market. The best approach is to choose
a test to administer that is targeted to
the type of work identified in the job profile.
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BEST PRACTICES
IN EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Once you’ve hired an agile IT workforce, the
challenge shifts to effective employee engagement. To protect your investment and get the
greatest return on that investment, engagement
is the key. According to Gallup’s Employee
Engagement brochure, “The world’s top-performing
organizations understand that employee engagement is a force that drives business outcomes.
Research shows that engaged employees are more
productive employees. They are more profitable,
more customer-focused, safer and more likely to
withstand temptations to leave the organization.”
Innovative companies that manage to engage
both potential hires and existing employees reap
benefits measured in performance, productivity
and profits.
During times of high unemployment rates,
companies often make the mistake of seeing
employees as expendable, focusing their energies
on preserving profits as opposed to reinforcing
corporate culture or enhancing employee communications. Assuming that employees will not
leave because jobs are hard to find is a mistake.
Top talent is always in demand, and employees
who feel undervalued are less productive and more
likely to move on. Here are some tips to improve
employee retention >
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REINFORCE YOUR
CORPORATE IDENTITY
When employees are hired, they
come in with an expectation of the
corporate identity, goals and work
environment. The closer this picture
is to the reality, the more likely
the employee is to be satisfied
that the job is a good fit. Make your
corporate identity an integral part
of daily operations.
TRAINING
A critical aspect of employee
retention is making sure your workforce feels valued. An environment
with ongoing training, skill development and knowledge sharing fosters
the highest level of employee
engagement.
MANAGEMENT
Employee dissatisfaction is often tied
to poor management. To alleviate
this issue, companies should institute
manager training programs that
stimulate engagement and further
learning. Training managers in the
areas of retention and engagement
leadership competencies has been
proven to greatly enhance employee
engagement — and retention.
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COMPENSATION
Offering performance-based
compensation in the form of productivity bonuses, perks, vacation
days or other incentives has been
shown to increase job satisfaction
and employee engagement, which
results in lower attrition. Incentive
compensation should be tailored
to employee interests and needs.
Motivations are rooted in personality,
age and lifestyle; what appeals to
some may not be effective motivation for others. To provide effective
motivators on all levels, solicit input
from the employees themselves.
COMMUNICATION
Arguably, communication is the
most important component of
employee engagement. In a shaky
economy, rumors abound. It is vital
to the health of your business to
keep lines of communication open
to dispel fears and speculation,
especially during times of frequent
layoffs. When employees are worried
about job security, employee engagement plummets. During these
uncomfortable periods, the best
practices of employee engagement
are crucial.
FEEDBACK
The final aspect of employee
engagement is employee feedback. Solicit employee opinion and
suggestions though interactive
online surveys and polls as well as
conversational meetings. Employee
feedback can help employers gain
a dynamic perspective of employee
ideas, wants, goals and career expectations. Once solicited, management must act on the information
in order to make a difference. Managers who fail to act on employee
feedback lose credibility and send
a message to employees that they
are neither respected nor valued.
A FLEXIBLE APPROACH
GENERATES THE BEST RESULTS
A “one-size-fits-all” approach to hiring, engaging
and retaining an IT workforce is no longer
acceptable in today’s market. Effective hiring and
management practices require flexibility and must
take into account the multi-generational makeup
of the workforce and the many challenges that
this dynamic engenders. Best practices call for
engaging members of each generation differently
while targeting communications to both individuals
and groups. The goal is to foster an atmosphere
that promotes ideas and creativity from everyone
in the workforce, ultimately raising employee
satisfaction throughout your organization.
The reward is a motivated IT department
that can reinforce the backbone of your
organization. An engaged IT staff of
competent, well-matched employees
will take pride in their work and improve
productivity and profitability for the
entire company. In the long run, investing
time and effort into hiring the right
people translates to an impressive ROI.
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