Companies that reach a certain size typically want to hire a full-time IT professional. The IT infrastructure is often a point of frustration and a security concern. Business managers figure a full-time IT professional can keep the business running more smoothly with end user support and maintaining security.
The problem is that hiring and managing a full-time IT professional creates some challenges and things typically do not run as smoothly as expected. Here are the three big challenges:
1) Skills Assessment
There are many different levels of experience that an IT professional can have, yet they sound very similar on paper. That is why we use a formal system for testing skills. However, this does not typically make sense for a single IT hire. So, hiring managers risk hiring someone with an inadequate skill set and that sets up a bad situation from the start.
2) Limited Expertise
IT professionals are typically strong in a couple areas of IT and weak in other areas. IT is too broad to be skilled across all areas. If you are hiring a full-time IT professional, it makes sense to find someone who is great at end-user support. However, that same person may not be strong on security or designing networks. That can lead to a lot of frustration and downtime in the areas where they are weak.
3) Aligning IT and Business Priorities
The primary reason most business managers want to hire an IT professional is to take the IT issues off of their plate. The challenge is that most IT professionals are not trained or skilled in aligning IT priorities with business priorities. So, they often spend time on projects that may be interesting or challenging, but that do not move the business forward.
So even if your business is large enough to hire a full-time IT professional, it can still make a lot of sense to outsource your IT to a firm that can make IT stress-free for you. Or, if you choose to hire an in-house IT person, be sure to get help assessing candidate skills. This can be done by someone with IT management experience or by using a temp-to-hire firm that specializes in IT. After bringing the IT professional onboard, be sure to work with them and help them set priorities so that the IT projects that will benefit the business most get done.
The Skyriver IT Guarantee
Skyriver IT is so confident that you will be delighted with our frustration-free IT Services, we guarantee your satisfaction. If after 3 months of working with Skyriver IT, you are not absolutely delighted with the service, we will help you find a new IT services company and pay for your first month of service.
If you would like to discuss how we can help make your IT frustration free, please contact us.
