What´s the Best Way to Find IT Specialists?
Since almost every organization has some form of IT equipment or infrastructure they rely on to do work, there is a need for hiring professional IT developers to ensure seamless operations of this equipment.
However, it can be challenging to hire a good fit for your team. Only in the U.S. hiring IT, professionals is getting harder every day. While digital technologies keep proliferating, by 2026, the shortage of tech positions is going to be 1.2M. IT employees don’t exactly grow on trees, and finding the best fit for your team requires a careful hiring process.
In this article, you´ll learn about the key aspects to consider if you want to hire an IT specialist, including their role in any organization, where to find them, and how to conduct the hiring process.
Why Do You Need IT Professionals?
- To configure and maintain all IT hardware and software: You need technical and knowledgeable individuals to ensure that all your IT equipment and the software they use are always in good working condition.
- To help in the adaptation of emerging technologies: IT professionals help research and evaluate emerging technologies to figure out how best they can be used to make an organization better.
- Train users on how to use different IT equipment: Your IT team is also responsible for training all of your employees on how to use the IT tools at their disposal.
- Develop better strategies for utilizing technology: Your IT team should always develop new strategies that take advantage of technology to optimize your workflows and increase the productivity of your employees.
- To help in purchasing new IT tools: If you want to buy new IT hardware or software, your IT team will help you collaborate with various vendors to get the most suitable products for your organization.
- To offer IT support to the rest of the team: If any of your employees have an issue with their computer or any other IT tool, IT professionals can help them fix it. This gives your employees peace of mind and, in the end, leads to more productivity.
Required Skills to Look for IT Recruiting
Before hiring a professional in IT, you need to consider the technical skills one has before bringing them on board.
1. Knowledge of Different Operating systems
The IT professionals you bring on board should have advanced knowledge about all the popular Operating systems, including Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux. They should also be able to fix all the common issues in these operating systems.
2. Networking Skills
Your IT team needs to have intermediate or advanced knowledge about networks and how they work. They should also be able to configure different IT devices to ensure they are connected to your company’s network at all times.
3. CyberSecurity
The IT professionals you bring on board need to have intermediate and advanced knowledge of cybersecurity. These skills are vital to ensure your organization is safeguarded from potential cyber-attacks that are pretty common these days. They need to provide safe and secure connectivity of all computers and other IT devices that access the internet.
4. Troubleshooting Skills
One of the core skills that every IT professional needs to have is troubleshooting problems with any IT hardware. So, if a computer, printer, or any other IT device gets issues, they should be able to figure out the cause and also come up with solutions to fix the problem.
Troubleshooting skills usually increase with experience; that’s why you need to have some experienced individuals on your IT team.
5. Cloud Computing
Almost every business today relies on some form of cloud app to do work. So, your IT team needs to know how cloud applications work to help your organization get the best out of them. They should also help your other employees in case any of them gets issues while using these apps.
6. Database Management
If your organization deals with huge chunks of data, you will need to bring on board IT professionals with database management skills. They should have basic or intermediate-level skills regarding reading and using some of the popular database programming languages like Standard Query Language (SQL).
How To Hire an IT Professional Safe and Efficient?
When looking to hire IT professionals, the procedure will vary from company to company.
However, there are some common steps that almost every organization needs to go through to ensure the hiring process is a success.
Let’s discuss the common procedures organizations go through:
1. Writing An IT Specialist Job Description
Writing a job description requires you first to establish the needs of the position you are hiring an IT professional to take on. This will inform them of the types of skills and responsibilities, as well as the qualifications required for the job.
These details, along with an enticing summary of the job itself, go a long way to make your offer more informative and appealing to would-be candidates.
When writing your IT specialist job descriptions, it’s usually a good idea to include relevant keywords to the field you want to hire a professional for. This will help your job posting be found by a larger portion of people searching for jobs on job boards. Some of the generic keywords you can use include:
- IT
- IT Specialist
- IT Professional
- IT Manager / IT Project Manager
- Front-end developer / Back-end developer / Full-stack developer
If you don’t want to start from scratch, there are several job description templates you can take advantage of to make the process a little shorter. Choose any template that you find suitable and customize it according to your needs.
2. Running a Job Advert
After writing your job description, you need to let people know about the available position. You can do this by asking internally within your company by listing your job on your website or externally by posting your job on Job listing websites. You may also publish a job advert on your social media using Google forms.
If you’re looking to hire IT engineers who would be a culture fit with your organization, connect with our expert team at Distant Job with your requirements. Our carefully vetted process ensures that you will get only top IT specialists!
3. Interviewing IT Specialist Candidates
After running the advert, you will likely get many applicants interested in joining your company. The next step is choosing the ones that qualify and inviting them for an interview. Depending on how elaborate or important the job is, you may need to conduct several different interviews to find the most appropriate candidate.
These interviews can be virtual or physical, depending on what you find suitable and convenient, and may take different approaches depending on what you’re trying to evaluate. There are usually two types of interviews:
- Technical interviews: These are your typical interviews, where you prepare a battery of technical questions pertaining to the nature of the job and use them to assess the candidate. As the name implies, these are better suited to evaluating the overall technical knowledge of candidates but say little in terms of how they work as part of a team. If you want to test your candidates on their Python expertise, for example, this is the kind of interview to conduct.
- Coding challenges: Coding challenges, such as pair-programming interviews, are better suited to assessing a candidate’s soft skills and team fit. While they can also be used to assess technical skills, they are better suited to testing creativity and problem-solving, all while in an environment that resembles the candidate’s day-to-day job. You’ll want to give your candidates a custom test that closely resembles the types of challenges they will face regularly.
Tips For Conducting Successful Interviews
- Prepare your questions ahead of time: For technical interviews, you need to prepare about 7 to 10 questions to ask the candidates. Most of these questions should be able to assess the competence of the candidates in terms of their technical skills. However, you can also have 1 or 2 questions that assess the candidates’ soft skills, such as communication, problem-solving, management, and working with others. If you feel that the answers weren’t enough to make an informed decision, consider taking on a coding challenge!
- Make the candidates comfortable: If you want to assess the competence of the candidates, you need to ensure they are comfortable. You can conduct the interview in a conversational manner to get as much information as you can from your candidates.
- Be aware of unconscious bias: By nature, we usually judge people after interacting with them for a few seconds. However, it is always best to stick to the plan and ask your interviewee all the questions you prepared. You should then assess them based on how they answered each of the questions.
- Give them a chance to ask you questions: One of the best ways to determine the candidate’s ability to take on an IT job is by assessing the quality of questions they ask. Your IT professional will have to deal with several technical issues that will require asking good questions a good number of times each day.
Note: if you have already realized that this could be very demanding for you and your team, it’s one of the main reasons to hire an IT recruitment agency. It can save you time and effort, leaving the process in the hands of specialists.
Types of IT Specialists
IT has several fields that you will need to know about while bringing a professional on board. Each of these fields is handled by a different type of IT professional. Some of the common IT specialists include:
- Cyber security specialists: These deploy tools, policies, and necessary training to ensure your organization’s data is safe at all times.
- Systems analysts: These have a good understanding of how the hardware and software of the various IT tools work to help you choose the right configurations you need.
- Programmers: These are responsible for writing computer programs that can solve various problems in your organization.
- Web developers: These build web apps and websites
- Technical support: Deal with any emergency hardware and software issues that your employees may face while using the various IT tools.
- Network engineers: To develop, deploy, and maintain local and wide area networks your IT equipment relies on to communicate.
Where can I Recruit IT Professionals?
- Freelance platforms
- Job listing sites like indeed.
- Your current employees that have relevant IT skills
- Headhunting from your competitors
- Post the job on your website or social media
- Remote recruitment agencies like DistanJob
FAQ
To hire right, you need to know the needs of the job and then look for the best available candidate to meet those needs. You should also not forget company culture while doing your assessment.
The choice between the two should largely depend on the needs of your IT position. For example, having an IT support staff that is a freelancer may not yield the best results. On the other hand, it may make sense to hire a freelance web developer since such work is not available all the time.
When should I hire a freelancer? You should look for one if:
– You want someone for a short-lived job that doesn’t require heavy support after release.
– You want someone to work on a project but need someone to fill that role until you can find a full-time professional to do it.
When should I hire a full-time professional? You should look for one if:
– You want someone for a long project or one that requires heavy support after release.
– You want someone to work on many short-lived projects in the company over time.
– You want someone that can eventually grow and take on other responsibilities at the company.
– You want someone heavily invested in your project and the company’s success.
If on-site work isn’t mandatory for your business, you should absolutely consider it! Hiring a remote professional brings many advantages, including:
You can hire from a bigger talent pool: Remote work means you can hire from anywhere in the world, allowing you to choose from a greater variety of candidates and find the perfect one for your needs.
You get access to highly qualified professionals: Finding experienced professionals in highly sought-after skills can be a challenge, especially for smaller companies and startups. By broadening your hiring pool, you can get access to those professionals more easily so you can stay competitive.
You can save on costs: By hiring from countries with lower costs of living, you can pay your workers good salaries while still reducing your company’s expenses.
Hire The Best IT Professionals With DistantJob
Hiring IT professionals has no tried and true method: it all depends on what you’re looking for and the resources you have available to do so.
If you’re struggling to find professionals to help you with your projects, then DistantJob can be your valued partner. We have more than 10 years of experience finding the best remote developers and IT specialists out there to work for our clients. We conduct rigorous vetting processes that will guarantee a professional, culture-fit employee for your company in as little as 2 weeks.
Interested? Contact us, and hire professional IT specialists with DistantJob today!
