Mistakes To Avoid When Hiring IT Professionals

It’s always wise to be cordial in job interviews, but when you’re on the interviewing side of things, figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of the interviewee is much more important. It’s necessary and even more crucial when you’re interviewing for the IT field, as this field requires a strict set of characteristics not every interviewee will have. If you know how to avoid these mistakes when hiring IT professionals, your business will thrive with a robust technological department.

Focusing Too Much on Short-Term Needs

You’re looking to hire an IT professional because your business has needs it must fill, but that doesn’t mean you must only focus on those short-term needs. Instead of solely focusing on what someone can offer you now, you need to think of how they’ll fit in with your company overall and what they can offer in the long term. Don’t hire someone who knows how to do the basics but won’t be able to develop alongside your expected business growth. Look for the professionals you can invest in. Later down the line, that investment will pay off since you’ll have turned a simple IT employee into the IT professional leading your whole department.

Failing To See if They’re Up to Date

One of the biggest challenges of the IT field is that someone can be well educated and knowledgeable, but that doesn’t mean they can stand up to the relentless onslaught of hackers and scams. The field is constantly evolving, so on top of looking for previous experience, you must also look for people who know how information security systems change. For example, ask the interviewee the things they know about the ISO 27002:2022 updates and how they’ll help keep your company compliant. It can sound like a daunting question to the average layperson. But the right IT professionals will know how to respond, which means they’ll know how to protect your company.

Not Listening to the Interviewee

A common interviewing mistake you must avoid when hiring anyone, including IT professionals, is not listening to the interviewee and their wants and needs. In the typical interview, you and your business have a round hole, and you’re trying to see if the interviewee is the round peg that will fit in and get the job done. While this strategy works, you should also consider changing your approach and instead find ways to embrace the pegs that don’t work with your business’s round-hole problem.

Perhaps a particular interviewee is more of a square peg that won’t fit right away. However, over time, your business can see everything they bring to the table and all the square-hole problems they’re fixing you didn’t even know about.

If you learn to avoid these mistakes when hiring IT professionals, your IT team will gain a valuable member you can’t imagine your business without. It won’t click immediately, but after years of hard work and dedication, you won’t even remember a time when they weren’t a part of your business.