IncTechnology.com > Hiring Technical Staff

Why You Need to Hire a Virtual Assistant

Minda Zetlin — 2008-12-18T20:20:40-05:00

For small businesses that are drowning in paperwork or administrative tasks, the traditional choice has been to hire a part-time or full-time assistant, or else slog through unassisted. But in these work-from-home days of the Internet, there’s a third option: hiring a virtual assistant.

Though the profession is relatively new and definitions vary, virtual assistants provide administrative or other services from their own offices, over Internet, phone, or fax. Virtual assistants (VAs) can provide a wide range of services, including not only administrative tasks such as clerical work, correspondence, and making travel arrangements, but also Web-based marketing, bookkeeping, writing, and any number of other tasks. VAs are small businesses themselves; some are one-person shops who may mostly handle administrative duties, others work with a staff of VAs to provide a wider range of services and greater availability than is possible for a single person.

For Wendy Battles, a health and lifestyle coach with a company named Healthy Endeavors, hiring a virtual assistant meant finally being able to market her business the way she wanted to. “As the business grew, I had more and more tasks,” she says. “I spend a lot of time with clients, but I also need to do marketing. And I’d wanted to launch new tele-seminars and develop more courses.”

Now two virtual assistants help Battles with Internet marketing tasks. They disseminate her weekly two-minute audio tips, improve her site’s shopping cart and search engine optimization, and write pitches. The Internet marketing work she never seems to have time for is finally getting done. And, though a Web developer might also have been able to improve her SEO and shopping cart, working with a VA has a different quality, she notes. “A Web developer wouldn’t do some of the stuff my assistant does,” she says. “Plus a Web developer might not always be available or have the same mentality about getting things done that a virtual assistant does.”

What to expect from a VA

Ready to consider hiring a virtual assistant? Here’s what to expect if you do:

1. Don’t expect to have to make a big commitment. Some VAs work on a fee-for-project basis. Others work on an hourly basis whenever you need them. But many prefer a monthly retainer for ongoing work. “That way, we get to know the clients and share in their successes,” says Sue Kramer Harrawood, marketing director for the International Virtual Assistants Association, and a VA herself, whose company is Peace of Mind Virtual Assistance. But just because you pay a retainer doesn’t mean you’re committed to a lot of work or expense -- many VAs allow for a commitment as small as five hours per month. Whatever you decide, it may be a good idea to plan for extra work -- perhaps double the usual amount -- during your first month, as the VA gets to know you and your requirements.

2. Expect to pay $25 per hour for a truly novice VA, to $65 per hour for a more experienced or highly skilled one. At least, within the United States, those are the going rates. Many VAs from other countries, notably India, will work for $5 an hour, or less. “You can cut overhead dramatically, but I’ve been looking for offshore VAs for 10 years, and have only found one who reached my standards,” says Jennifer Goodwin, owner of internetGIRLfriday.com, a VA firm that employees other VAs to help serve its clients. Technological challenges and a language barrier can also be an issue when working offshore, Goodwin notes.

3. Consider looking for a VA who specializes in your industry. “Some VAs are specifically trained and licensed to work with real estate or insurance,” Kramer Harrawood says. Others may specialize in copy writing. Depending on the type of work you need, seeking out a VA who knows your industry may be well worth the effort.

4. Check out the VA carefully before you hire. A prospective VA should expect that you will want to have a detailed interview, and also check references with current or former clients. And, if the VA will be handling sensitive or valuable materials, you can take it a step further. “If you feel you want to do a background check, or look for a VA who’s bonded, then do it,” Goodwin declares. “There are plenty of them out there.”

5. Remember that the VA is a small business owner, not an employee. “A lot of people who hire VAs think of them as employees, and they have that mindset that the VA has to come into the office and do whatever they say,” Goodwin notes. “Actually, it’s more of an equal partnership.”

6. Expect more efficiency than you would with in-house staff. “Usually someone on staff has a lot of downtime, because there are breaks, conversations with co-workers and so on,” Goodwin says. “There are studies that show a VA who doesn’t have these distractions can get through an eight-hour day’s worth of work in four hours.”

7. Think of the VA as a partner in your business. “Sometimes there’s a great benefit for a client to creating a strategic alliance with the VA,” Goodwin says. “A lot of VAs send out newsletters, and feature their clients in their newsletters. And let’s say a company like mine has a client who’s a florist. I may want to send flowers to my other clients. And my other clients may want to send flowers to the people in their lives as well. Sometimes you can both make more money if you look at it as being in business together.”

The Virtual CIO

Michelle V. Rafter — 2008-11-26T14:35:58-05:00

In old Westerns, when a town ran into trouble the sheriff brought in a hired gun to help smooth things over.

Today, when a small business runs into IT trouble, the owner can bring in his own version of a hired gun -- a virtual CIO.

Virtual CIOs are experienced IT professionals who work as independent contractors or through a staffing or temp agency, either for a finite period of time or on an ongoing basis. Depending on the kind of help a company needs, some virtual CIOs work full time, while others put in a few hours a week and work with several clients simultaneously.

According to IT experts, using a virtual or contract CIO makes sense for a small business that:

Could use the expertise but can’t afford to pay someone full time
Has outgrown its current IT setup, needs to upgrade, and wants input from someone who knows the marketplace well enough to suggest solutions that would be a good fit
Has a technology project that calls for more expertise than the company’s in-house IT manager can offer
Is involved in a merger or acquisition and could use an outsider’s advice on how to blend different IT systems

Make sure the job description is clear

The first step in hiring a virtual CIO is determining exactly why the position is needed. If your business is a start up that is devising its IT strategy or a growing company about to move to a new IT platform, the virtual CIO should have strategic skills or project management background respectively, plus excellent communication skills in order to collaborate with the company’s senior management and investors, says Tom Hart, operations and technology group executive vice president at Veritude, a Boston staffing firm that places virtual CIOs. On the other hand, if a CIO is being hired to oversee the IT department on an ongoing basis -- keeping everything up and running, making sure files are backed up every night -- then day-to-day operations skills may be more important. “Once you get your arms around that you can hone your search criteria,” Hart says.

Next comes finding qualified candidates. There’s no shortage of potential candidates, especially now that the bad economy is causing some IT companies to lay off workers. But finding people whose skills, experience and industry background match a particular company’s needs is still tricky. Larger small businesses -- those closer to 500 employees or more -- may opt to use an executive search firm, especially if a company’s senior executives don’t have the time, contacts, or inclination to conduct a search themselves. But they pay for the convenience. Rates for virtual CIOs range from $125 to $200 an hour and using a search firm or recruiter can add an additional 50 to 60 percent of that to the total bill, according to industry experts.

Networking and the Internet are other avenues. CEOs can tap into their industry connections for recommendations, offer referral bonuses to employees who bring in candidates, post help wanted ads on their website or on job boards or rely on good old word of mouth. They can also use Web-based recruiting software such as Jobvite or iCIMS or

Bullhorn, which lets them forward a message about the open position through their employees’ online social networks. Some businesses are turning social networks into their recruiters. Others are using recruiting software to speed the hiring process and make good picks.

Finding a good personality match

Conduct an interview with a prospective virtual CIO just as you would if you were looking to hire someone full time, says Rocky Vienna. The long-time IT professional has worked as a contract CIO and currently runs Vienna Technology Group, a Silicon Valley IT outsourcing firm. Since it’s a leadership position, the person’s personality should fit in with the rest of the company’s executive team “since they’ll be sitting at the table with them,” Vienna says. He recommends asking candidates to sign a non-disclosure agreement so a CEO can talk candidly about corporate goals, projects and problems in order to find out how they’ll respond.

Companies need to be very clear about the areas they want a contract CIO to cover, Vienna says. “If they don’t, they run the risk of not getting what they’re paying for,” he says. “If your product launch doesn’t go off on time and you’re relying on your virtual CIO to make that happen, the potential loss is much greater than what you’re spending on the consultant’s rates.”

Beware of IT Certification Scams

Michelle V. Rafter — 2008-06-28T15:15:13-05:00

IT certifications are one way to distinguish between well-trained job candidates and prospects whose skills on specific hardware or software aren’t quite up to par.

At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. In recent times, however, an overabundance of certifications and widespread cheating on exams caused in part by lax security at testing centers have tarnished IT certifications’ reputation in the eyes of many human-resources executives and hiring managers.

“It’s a big problem,” agrees Don Sorensen, marketing vice president at Caveon, a Salt Lake City test security company. He says there are “literally hundreds” of so-called "braindump" websites that share or sell test questions.

According to a 2007 report from the Association of Test Publishers, of 101 IT vendors and certification test centers surveyed, slightly more than half said that 46 percent or more of their IT certification tests had been copied, stolen or breached in some other way in the recent past. Some test givers said their new tests could be found on braindump websites within a month of being published, and in some cases, as soon as two days, according to the report.

Industry groups, testing centers, test security organizations, and individual companies are taking steps to curb cheating and spiff up the image of IT certifications. One of them is Cisco Systems, which as of April 2008 had issued 1 million certifications to IT professionals -- working at small, medium, and large companies -- who take courses and pass tests on routing and switching, network security, and storage networking, among similar topics.

“In the past we’ve done a lot to protect the integrity of our certifications, but we haven’t talked about it much,” says Fred Weiller, Cisco’s marketing director for career training and certifications. “Now we’re on a communications campaign to explain how we protect certifications. Our goal is zero cheating, zero trade offs.”

Industry taking action

The actions Cisco is taking to keep certification test questions from falling into the wrong hands reflect steps other companies and industry associations are taking as well. They include:

Limiting the number of test vendors they work with to one, PearsonVUE, a global testing company.
Dumping paper-based tests in favor of computer-based tests, which allows test companies to analyze data to flag individuals whose scores or behavior indicate something’s fishy. “We can ban some candidates for life,” Weiller says.
Constantly monitoring security at testing facilities, to check test results for trends that might indicate cheating is going on.
Photographing test takers to ensure they aren’t using proxies to take tests for them, then making photos available to HR and hiring managers “to prove they’re interviewing the person who took the test,” Weiller says.
Changing tests so they’re more difficult to memorize or reproduce, by including for example, simulations that force candidates to draw network diagrams rather than answer multiple-choice questions.

In addition to cheaters, certifications have lost some of their luster because there are so many of them. Cisco and Microsofthave issued more than 3.25 million certifications since the early 1990s. That’s when IT vendors first began using certification tests to document that employees were proficient in using newly released software programs. The Computing Technology Industry Association, another IT trade group, has issued 1 million certifications in its lifetime, and vendors such as Novell run certification programs too.

There’s a reason why software developers, network managers and other IT professionals like certifications so much some are willing to cheat to get them: a fatter pay check. A network analyst with a college degree, experience on the job and a certification earns $74,285 a year, compared to $66,000 without certification, and $61,200 with neither certification or past job experience, according to the March 2008 IT Skills and Salary Report, published by Global Knowledge, an IT training company, and TechRepublic, an IT online magazine.

How to protect your business

What else can small and mid-sized businesses do to make sure they’re not hiring or promoting cheaters?

Just as there’s a difference between Harvard and your local community college, not all IT certifications are equal. The highest-valued certification programs are the most in demand, command the highest salaries, and are most relevant to the job.
Pay attention to how often a certification needs to be renewed. In a profession where hardware and software updates happen yearly or more often, how relevant is a certification someone got 10 years ago? Look at how self-critical a re-certification program is. “The rigor they put on their customers to stay on top of the technology is key,” says Erik Ullanderson, Cisco’s global certifications manager.
Don’t base hiring decisions solely on a candidate’s certification. Connie Shaw, is HR director at Tyler Technologies’ EDEN Division, a Renton, Wash., business that sells utility billing and other software and services to cities and local governments. A portion of EDEN’s 170-person staff are project managers, technical support crew and Website or software developers. “When I’m recruiting it’s not just about a person’s education, background, experience and fit,” Shaw says. “It’s important to evaluate all those factors and then make your decision.”

Turn Social Networks into Your Recruiter

Michelle V. Rafter — 2008-06-24T15:31:25-05:00

Jason Averbook flies around the country advising major corporations how to weave social networks and Web 2.0 tools into recruiting and other human-resources practices. So when Averbook needed to add staff to his 50-person HR industry consulting firm recently, he knew he had to practice what he preached.

Instead of going through traditional channels, Averbook updated the “Status” section of his profiles on three social networking sites, Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo, to show he was “desperately” seeking new employees. It worked. He got 19 qualified candidates in two days, compared to the five that his Minneapolis-based firm, Knowledge Infusion, attracted through a job listing on their website over the past three months. “Based on interviews that are already happening I predict we’ll end up hiring some of them,” Averbook says.

Like Knowledge Infusion, other small businesses are using social networks to recruit employees at all levels. Because networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and Ning cost little or nothing to join, there’s no reason small and mid-sized businesses shouldn’t try them for recruiting purposes, according to recruiting industry sources.

According to Averbook and others, the key is building up a large circle of co-workers, former co-workers, friends, industry associates, customers and “people you run into on airplanes” so when you do have a job opening, you can tap into a group that already knows you and your company, Averbook says.

Another advantage of using social networks: showing candidates that even though you’re small, you can be as “bleeding edge” as a much larger enterprise, Averbook says.

Recruiting efforts start on in-house networks

At nGenera, a venture-backed Austin, Texas, company that makes a suite of Web-based business software, recruiting starts at home. The year-old business uses applicant-tracking software from Jobvite to broadcast information on job openings over its company intranet to 537 employees, half of whom work from home. Employees can use Jobvite to forward the information to any email address in their Microsoft Outlook address book -- and earn a referral bonus if someone they know ends up taking the job.

Katie Tierney, nGenera’s recruiting manager and a dedicated online networker, also uses Twitter, the combination micro-blogging and networking service, to announce when she has openings for software developers or other positions. She also uses Summize, a Twitter search engine, to comb through Twitter feeds for people talking about subjects related to jobs she’s trying to fill “and figure out if it’s someone I want to approach,” she says.

nGenera maintains a fan page on Facebook and an nGenera group on LinkedIn. Because they don’t cost anything, it’s easy to experiment. Even when things haven’t worked out it’s led to publicity for the company, such as the time an nGenera recruiter auctioned off a potato chip with a burn mark in the shape of the state of Texas on eBay and donated the proceeds to Austin’s city parks. The stunt didn’t net any new recruiters, but it was a morale booster for existing employees, says Susie Buehler, nGenera’s chief people officer. “With more Gen Ys coming in, we hear from employees that it’s important to them that the company has a social conscious,” and if they’re happy they’ll tell their friends, Buehler says.

Recruiters almost universally shun MySpace, the granddaddy of social networks, because the demographic -- think high school kids and younger -- isn’t what they’re looking for, and because “it’s too noisy,” audibly and visually, nGenera’s Tierney says.

Tips and tricks

Although Facebook and LinkedIn are the biggies, recruiters suggest that companies investigate niche social networks that have cropped up to serve specific professionals or regions of the country. Tierney belongs to two, RecruitingBlogs.com, and Minnesota Recruiters, which is part of Ning. Inc.com's sister publication, Fast Company, now also operates a social network.

Other recruiting suggestions:

Be prepared to act quickly. According to Knowledge Infusion’s Averbook, A and B level talent are the mostly likely users of online social networks, and the most sought after candidates. “Whether you’re big or small, the faster you get to the A-grade talent the better off you are,” Averbook says.
Think instant. Use instant messaging, texting, and other instant forms of communication, which resonate with Gen Y-age workers, says Pat Meehan, an executive recruiter in Evansville, Ind. “They respond much faster to these media as opposed to phone calls, e-mails or voice mail,” Meehan says.
Finding leads is just the start. Make sure to go through your normal interview process, says Bob Lenthart, president of Derek Hart Ventures LLC, an Atlanta-area publishing company, who recruits through LinkedIn and ecademy, a business networking Website.

Sidebar: Online Social Networks

Here are some online social networks companies can use for recruiting purposes:

Bebo - 40 million registered users

Classmates.com - 50 million registered users

Facebook - 80 million registered users

Friendster - 65 million registered users

LinkedIn - 22 million registered users

Ning - Registered users not disclosed

Plaxo - 15 million registered users

How to Fill IT Jobs in Hot Categories

Michelle V. Rafter — 2008-06-24T15:24:33-05:00

Having trouble finding IT staff? Join the club.

While the overall job market has taken a hit from the economy, demand for IT professionals is still going strong. According to at least one industry source, the current U.S. unemployment rate for IT professionals and engineers is 2 to 2.5 percent, well below the national unemployment rate of 5.5 percent in May 2008, the latest figures available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

One factor keeping unemployment rates so low is a serious shortage of IT professionals with sought-after skills, says Crystal Shephard, a senior recruiter with the Huntington Beach, California office of Manpower Professional, the professional recruiting arm of the national contingent staffing agency. “There are just not a lot of people going into that line of work,” Shephard says.

With IT skills in such demand, small and mid-sized businesses need to be creative to fill positions when they open, including recruiting from within, using outside agencies to recruit for them, and outsourcing IT positions to third parties, Shephard and other IT industry and recruiting experts say.

Hot IT jobs

According to a June 2008 survey from Robert Half Technology, of 1,400 chief information officers at U.S. companies with 100 or more employees, 14 percent expected to add IT staff during the third quarter, while only 4 percent planned staff reductions. In the survey, Robert Half Technology, a technology consultant and IT staffing firm, found that CIOs were most interesting in hiring IT professionals with the following skills:

Windows administration (Server 2000/2003)
Desktop support
LAN and WAN network administration

Separately, Network World, an IT industry publication, recently reported that demand is also great for IT professional with experience in Web 2.0 technologies such AJAX and XML, network operating systems such as Windows Server and Linux, and IP and Internet skills.

Word of mouth, contracting, and outsourcing

So how does a small company compete for sought-after talent?

Start in house. The first thing companies can do when there’s an opening is alert their employees, so they can tap into their circle of friends, acquaintances, and former work colleagues to see if anyone’s interested in the job, recruiting and IT industry sources say. Some companies offer bonuses to employees whose referrals lead to a hire.

Use online social networks. Spreading the word that you’re hiring is easier than ever now that so many people use Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo, Twitter and other online social networks to stay in touch, says Katie Tierney, recruiting manager at nGenera, a 537-person Austin, Texas, company that makes a suite of Web-based business software.

Tierney is especially fond of Twitter, the combination micro-blogging and social networking service. “I’ll say on Twitter that I’m looking for a Ruby on Rails developer,” someone who specializes in the Web application development software, Tierney explains. “If someone follows my tweets or uses an aggregator to look for pieces of info on things like Ruby on Rails, they’ll contact me.” Tierney says she’s picked up some good prospects through Twitter though she hasn’t hired any of them yet.

Small businesses that use Twitter or social networks for recruiting are showing how tech savvy they are and that’s another way to attract IT professionals, says Jason Averbook, CEO of Knowledge Infusion, a 50-person Minneapolis consulting firm that helps Fortune 500 corporations plan human-resources technology strategies. Averbook has recently posted job openings on Facebook and other social networks and “I’ve had people say the fact that you’re posting this on Facebook, you’re the kind of organization I want to work for,” he says.

Hire an outside staffing firm. Recruiters at staffing firms such as Manpower Professional and Robert Half Technology work with companies of all sizes to fill open positions. Like those two firms, many have separate divisions to staff IT and other white-collar or professional jobs. At Manpower Professional, recruiters help companies find full-time employees, or fill positions on a contract basis. In those instances, IT workers are employees of Manpower, which takes care of things like payroll taxes and benefits. To find IT workers, Shephard uses online networks, posts jobs on job boards, contacts college alumni associates and works with her existing networking contacts. “We also have a pretty rich database that we use,” she says.

Outsource. Some small businesses might not need a large full-time IT staff, or their IT needs are limited to occasional projects or upgrades. In that case, they may be better off outsourcing most or all IT functions to a third party such as external iT or Binary Science, sources say.

Small businesses shouldn’t automatically assume that they’ll lose out if they go up against a much bigger business for the same job candidates. Some IT professionals, especially if they’re in the Gen Y age group, would rather work for a small company with a better work/life balance than a large one where they’d be expected to put in lots of overtime, says Shephard, with Manpower Professional. Offering flex-time, on-site child care, flu shots and regular health and wellness days are other perks could also persuade a candidate to join a smaller company, she says.

From Geek to Boss: Choosing Tech Leaders

Minda Zetlin — 2008-02-26T11:48:12-05:00

Two or three years ago, an IT employee at PrintingForLess.com started reading up on virtualization. The company wasn’t using that technology, so there was no immediate need for him to learn about it. But, looking ahead, he saw an opportunity. “The next time it looked like we would have to buy new servers, he told us he thought this might be an alternative,” recalls Dan Rice, vice president of corporate affairs. “He told us exactly how much he thought we could save, and asked us to hold off while he investigated further.”

This, Rice knew, was someone who would make a good manager. “He was thinking beyond what he did on a day-to-day basis,” he says. “That’s a sure indicator.”

For many small businesses, choosing the right leaders from within a technology group can be a real challenge. A lot of them get it wrong.

Making a tech person into a boss

“The biggest mistake I see is that they take the smartest technology person and make him or her the boss, on the assumption that someone who knows how to deliver technically will also make a good manager,” says Paul Glen, principle of C2Consulting and author of Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead the People Who Deliver Technology (Jossey-Bass 2002). Frequently, he says, technology experts put in this position go though a rough time while making the transition. Many can’t make it at all. When selecting technology managers, he says, “You need people who find satisfaction in making others productive, rather than in being productive themselves.”

Sounds like good advice. But how do you identify such people? Instead of the best technical experts, try looking for:

1. Innovators

“You have to look for innovation in this field, and that doesn’t require you to be a technologist,” he says. “Our CEO comes up with as many new ideas for our technology group as they do themselves.” This is mostly because he reads a wide range of business publications, and is constantly looking out for ideas that can help PrintingForLess, Rice explains.

2. Influencers

“One part of leadership is being able to influence your own technology group,” notes John Bostick, CEO of dbaDirect, Inc., which provides database infrastructure management. “In business, you must influence a broader circle that includes finance, marketing and operations, and most importantly, your company’s customer base.”

Influencing others, he adds, accounts for 85 percent of the success of a project, while only 15 percent of the success comes from the solution itself. Not surprisingly, he’s found this idea gets a lot of resistance from some technology people. “A lot of them think I have it backwards, that 85 percent is the solution itself,” he says. “They’re quite evangelical about it.” Whether or not they accept the notion, those with the strongest social and communication skills are likely to be the most effective managers.

3. Responsibility seekers

Rice also advises looking for people who take the initiative. “The best potential managers are the people who look for new responsibilities,” he says. “They look for more than their daily duties, and they look to be accountable for more than what’s been assigned to them.”

Make sure they really want to manage

“My top technology employee came to me and said, ‘I’d really like to be the leader of this group,’” Rice recalls. “So over a course of six months, I involved him in the management of several projects so he could see what being a group leader was really like. At the end of that time, he came back and said, ‘I’ve decided this isn’t really what I want to do.’”

Why do employees ask for management positions they don’t really want? “People who haven’t been managers don’t always know what managing entails,” Rice says. “If you’re leading a group and motivating them, you have to have a genuine interest in helping them in their careers. Not everyone wants to do that.”

Also, many technology people believe heading into management is the one way to advance their own careers. “Often, that’s their only motivation for asking for a management position.”

In fact, becoming a manager can be a setback for a skilled technologist, because it’s impossible to keep up with the constant changes in, say, programming languages if you’re spending your time overseeing others rather than writing code yourself. “Their skills can become obsolete over time,” Rice says. “That can make moving to management a very tough decision.”

It’s the question the employee who suggested virtualization is wrestling with right now, Rice says. “I’ve asked him if he’s interested in a leadership track. Now he’s trying to decide if that’s the direction he wants for his career.”

Hiring: IT Certifications Vs. Real-World Skills

Todd Wasserman — 2008-01-30T15:10:04-05:00

The stereotypical IT pro is not a people person. He or she tends to be introverted and more comfortable with lines of code than in-person meetings and is proudly unaware and uninvolved with the actual business a firm conducts.

For the most part, that portrait is as outdated as a Commodore 64. An October survey by Foote Partners, Vero Beach, Fla., of 74,000 IT professionals among 1,900 employers in the U.S. and Canada found for the first time since 2000 that workers with non-certified IT skills had higher salaries than those with certified skills.

David Foote, co-founder, CEO and chief research officer of Foote, says employers are now looking for non-technical skills like a knowledge of the company’s business and “even things like ethics in some cases” rather than, say, a certification in JavaBeans/EJB or Visual C++.

“More and more people are looking for people with good strong, sound experience,” says Diane Morello, vice president and fellow at Gartner, of Stamford, Conn. “That they may have certification is great, but certification is not where people are going to look initially, except for a very few technical areas, like security.”

Not your grandfather’s programmer

Or, as Debra Peterson, vice president of organization development and human resources for Acsys, a 42-person Web development firm in Farmington, Conn., put it: “It’s not your grandfather’s programmer anymore, someone who was introverted and just did his code. We want someone who’s interacting with team members, someone who’s really dynamic.”

The push for a more well-rounded techie, call him a renaissance techie, is being driven by several factors. Matt Colarusso, branch manager of the national recruiting and strategic accounts team for Sapphire Technologies, the Woburn, Mass., IT recruiter, says Microsoft’s .Net platform is a factor since consultants are usually versed in it, which means IT pros have to tech part in discussions that are equal parts tech and business. “Technologies like .Net have pushed people to become more flexible,” he says.

What to seek in a tech worker

The change has been happening for a while. Foote says that things began to shift in the 1990s as work became less specialized and new titles began to pop up. The growth of Unix, in particular, muddied the waters. “It was so out of control back then that they were lumping in Unix systems administrators with MVS,” or specialists in Multiple Virtual System, a programming language for mainframes, says Foote.

“They were like ‘What’s the difference?’” Foote says. The HR departments didn’t keep up with the changes.

Foote suggests instead of focusing on titles to seek candidates with a collection of skills that fit the profile. He acknowledges that de-emphasizing titles is somewhat controversial in the IT world. “IT people are very title-oriented because they know titles are everything when it comes to new jobs,” he says. “If you don¹t have SAP and SAP is hot and you don’t have SAP in your title, you’re not going to look that great when you’re out there looking for a job to have to explain you were an SAP person.”

Nevertheless, the fact is that the people doing the hiring are less impressed by specific skills than the ability to think on one’s feet and see the big picture. That’s especially true for small businesses, where having an IT pro who understands the company’s business and even shows an interest in it, is becoming a standard requirement.

“Typically that is the profile of anyone we have to bring in house,” Peterson says. “They are more multifaceted. We need to have some one who has really diverse skills and business acumen. Our last few hires meet those criteria.”

What Makes Tech Workers Tick?

Minda Zetlin — 2007-12-21T16:11:52-05:00

A few years ago, management consultant Karlin Sloan was working with the CTO of a robotics company. “His direct reports were all getting bad performance reviews,” she recalls. “The board was complaining they weren’t socially aware or good with clients.”

Sloan, who is also the author of Smarter, Faster, Better: Strategies for Effective, Enduring, and Fulfilled Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2006) gave these geeks a formula for dealing with social situations. “We got them to look at the big picture,” she recalls. “We said, ‘We want clients to gravitate to you. What’s your gravitational pull?’” Framing the issue in these terms helped. “It gave them a formula for human behavior, and they’re good at pattern recognition,” she says.

Of course, not all technologists need this kind of assistance -- some are outgoing or even charming. But, Sloan says, “If you test people who work in that environment there’s a greater tendency toward introversion and system seeking.”

“Tech folks are different,” agrees Paul Glen, principle of C2 Consulting and author of Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead the People Who Deliver Technology (Jossey-Bass, 2002). “They self-select to do this work that most people find confusing or frustrating, and that we actually enjoy. We were the children who, on Christmas morning, tore our toys apart in order to figure out how they worked and possibly redesign them.”

Helping geeks feel inspired

If techies are fundamentally different from everyone else, it also stands to reason that they are motivated differently. “The same inspiration you give the sales force won’t work with geeks because they won’t be excited about making more money,” Glen says.

So how do you get geeks excited about their jobs? There’s no one answer. “Some tech people are motivated purely by playing with new technology,” Glen says. “For some, there’s nothing more gratifying than seeing someone use the technology they created. Some are motivated by the role they play, the appreciation they get or the experience they gain.”

There’s really only one way to find out which aspects of a job is likely to excite which geek -- through one-to-one conversations. Glen recommends asking technology people about their favorite and least-favorite projects. “Watch their facial expressions as they respond, and you’ll learn very quickly what they consider drudgery and what they consider exciting.”

Sloan suggests starting the conversation by asking for help on a technological matter. “Once they’ve demonstrated their technological competence, they may be more comfortable talking,” she says. “First you get to know their work, then you get to know them.”

Matching the geek to the job

Conventional geek-management wisdom is that techies are inspired by the chance to learn new technology, even more than by money. But Glen says this is not true of every geek. “At one end of the scale are inventors who love new technology and will hate it if you ask them to do something they’ve done before,” he says. “At the other end are perfectors who love working on the same system for years, improving things. They get great satisfaction from perfecting rather than creating.”

Knowing which is which is important, he says, because they are each suited to different types of jobs. “For instance, are you asking a team to create a new product or provide support for it? People who create revolutionary products never want to support them. They don’t know where to start and don’t think providing support is exciting. Hiring the most creative code-writer you can find to help people with their desktops would probably be miserable for everyone involved.”

Of course, he notes, just because you find out exactly what technology workers want to do doesn’t necessarily mean you can fulfill their desires. “You can’t tailor a job to be exactly what someone will love,” Glen says. “But mix in a reasonable amount of whatever motivates them. People will go put up with a lot of crappy work if they find part of what they do inspiring.”

IT Talent Wars: Hire and Retain Tech Workers

Patricia Brown — 2007-06-22T13:22:23-05:00

Since staff accounts for one of the largest segments of IT budgets for small and medium-size businesses, hiring the right staff can be one of the most critical tasks for a small or mid-size business owner or executive. But finding and retaining top talent is not easy -- especially when competing against much bigger companies and public sector organizations that have more resources and more potential for advancement. Consequently, small and mid-size firms are learning to get creative in their hiring tactics.

In addition to paying higher salaries, small and mid-size businesses are trying other tools to woo tech workers. They're offering flexible work schedules and family-friendly work environments. They're willing to pay higher fees to offer employees competitive health and other benefits. And they're offering existing IT staff members more challenging projects, raising the potential for career development.

“We’ve found that to hire and retain bright people, the work needs to be challenging and engaging," says Len Ott, chief technology officer of Socket Mobile, a mobile computer hardware manufacturer based in Newark, Calif., who acknowledges that competing against larger companies for IT talent can be difficult. "Finding projects that enable employees to work with the latest technologies can be a win-win for both parties."

Perks beyond salary

Small and mid-size businesses must move beyond just offering competitive salaries to bring in good IT employees, says Jack Midgley, vice president of human capital for TriNet, a nationwide provider of human resources outsourcing services. In order to remain competitive, small businesses are increasingly taking on higher costs to offer employees more competitive health and other benefits. Benefit costs for small and mid-size employees are rising more rapidly -- sometimes three to six times as high per employee -- than the national average, according to a TriNet survey of 700 small companies.

At the same time, salaries are rising more quickly in the small and mid-size business tech space than in large enterprises—sometimes by 15-20 percent annually, Midgley says. But beyond excellent compensation packages, employees are asking for other perks -- flexible schedules, stimulating work environments, and autonomy. “Many IT workers consider themselves [to be] a brand, and ask ‘what’s in it for me?’” Midgley explains.

It’s an area Russell Harris, IT director at T3, is all too familiar with. With 215 employees in Austin, New York and San Francisco, this full service, integrated marketing company produces a lot of Web-based collateral. Harris manages six IT employees, but even though he is based in tech-friendly Austin, Texas, it has been difficult to fill open positions. In order to attract top employees, the company offers flexible work schedules and a family friendly work culture. New parents are allowed to bring their non-mobile infants to their offices every day as long as they are caring for the children. The incentives appear to be working. The company has been growing 20 percent year over year.

In addition, Harris says he’s able to attract employees by offering the opportunity to experiment with newer Web 2.0 technologies. “At a small business, IT employees must cover more bases since we have less of a budget to spend on people,” Harris says. “But they get exposure to a lot of different technologies and they are not coming in here working on the same thing every day.”

Looking for a wide-array of skills

As with many mid-size businesses, T3 is looking for tech professionals that support and are familiar with a number of different technologies, as opposed to larger firms that may look for tech professionals that specialize in a specific area like security or networking.

Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director for Robert Half Technology, provider of IT professionals on project and full-time basis, says small and mid-size businesses are looking for technology specialists that are nimble and experienced in several technologies. Specifically, she is seeing requests for professionals with a .NET, J2EE and Web 2.0 track record, as well as experience in development, network security, wireless, and compliance.

Professionals with this experience are rare. So what’s a small business to do? Take a closer look at what you’re really looking for, she suggests, and then consider breaking the job into two or even hiring a contractor for a portion of the job.

Human Resources: A Self-Service Application

Mary O. Foley — 2007-04-25T14:57:12-05:00

Like many human resource (HR) departments, the staff at Register.com, a New York City-based seller of domain names and website tools, finds itself stretched thin sometimes. With 300-plus employees worldwide, Register.com has only two HR employees in New York in addition to two additional HR staffers in Canada.

Amazingly, the department manages to find time for long-range planning, performance management, and analysis of in-house salary trends. How? It has a secret weapon: self-service HR software.

The HR software keeps track of the company’s benefits and compensation data, allowing employees to view the status of their accrued leave, make time-off requests, or make necessary changes to their contact or benefits information -- all without phone calls or emails to HR personnel. And allowing employees to key in the information themselves online helps boost productivity, too. There are no more forms to fill out in triplicate.

Self-service HR now an essential app

Self-service HR has become so invaluable that a Forrester Research report in September termed it “an essential core application” for businesses. “Virtually any company with more than 100 employees should have an automated system in place,” the report continued. The report noted the benefits to mid-size firms including, efficiency, cost savings, ease in complying with regulations, and managing legal exposure.

Some firms say they have quickly realized return-on-investment in labor savings alone. “Self-service is a tremendous help, because it frees up our time,” says Steve Riccobono, Register.com’s HR manager. “It truly helps get us away from the administrative parts of the job.”

Riccobono’s office uses Allixium West’s SelfSource product. Depending on the number of users, the SelfSource system can cost from $1,000-$10,000, according to Auxillium West’s Loy Oppus.

Like Register.com, a growing number of small- to medium-sized businesses are turning to HR self-service technologies. The options for businesses include either self-service software, such as applications offered by Auxillium West, Sage Software, and other software manufacturers, or online application service providers, such as Benefit Express.

From payroll services to hiring to COBRA

Many of these services now offer desktop accessibility for everything from basic payroll services and benefits management to hiring and performance appraisal services. ADP’s Employease features “Life Event Wizards” that walk employees through such changes as those accompanying a move or the addition or loss of a dependent or spouse.

“Our employees like the fact they can print their own paycheck stubs, or print off the last six months of pay records if they are applying for a loan,” notes Amie Stout, assistant vice president for HR at Independent Bank Corp., of Ionia, Mich. And because employees update their own information, “this keeps our files clean and up to date,” she says.

Stout’s office uses Sage Abra’s HRMS. While pricing varies according to the number of users, a 300-employee company might pay $12,000 for Sage’s product, according to Sage spokeswoman Cynthia Sutton.

But if employees input the data, could they conceivably alter their compensation or benefit information? Spy on another employee’s personnel file? No, say providers, who point out those self-service applications include security features to protect against employees making unauthorized changes or accessing another employee’s personal data.

Add-on “modules” for services like SelfServe or Sage’s Abra include training, recruiting, and COBRA continuation healthcare software after an employee has left the company. The COBRA tool allows companies to keep track of former employee requests to extend their workplace-offered health coverage with ease. “COBRA is terribly time-consuming,” notes Riccobono. With SelfSource, the company doesn't have to outsource COBRA. "That's a real cost savings."

The only downside to self-service HR, it would seem, is the initial data entry associated with introducing it, says Register.com’s Riccobono. “The initial data load can be tiresome," he says, "but it’s so worth it.”