Posts Tagged ‘it staff hiring challenges’

The Top TEN Challenges of Hiring & Managing an Internal IT Staff in Small & Mid-sized Businesses

#10 – Full time IT people are expensive: The average cost of a network administrator in Western PA is $50K to $75K per year. This does not include soft costs like sick time, vacation time, benefits, office space, and they only work 2080 hours out of 8760 hours in the year.

#9 - Cost of turn-over is high / risk of bad hire: Turnover in IT is high and the cost to recruit is significant. This is usually combined with time pressure to fill the vacancy quickly, the challenge to extract the knowledge that is ready to walk out the door and the difficulty in hiring staff that management is not entirely sure of the skill requirements. Combine all this with the added pressure that a bad hire can inflict instability and moral issues.

#8 – Difficult to evaluate / risk of bad hire: Technical skills assessment is difficult to do if the assessor does not understand what the actual skills are. To compound this, a bad hire can wreak havoc on a system and by the time this is remedied the financial and cultural damage can be significant.

#7 – No career path: In a small IT department there is typically no career growth path. This causes high IT staff turnover and a significant transition and knowledge drain.

#6 – Difficult to manage: All too often, management of small businesses lacks the capabilities to give proper oversight, incentives, feedback, and overall leadership to IT staff.

#5 – Managing IT can distract from mission: Often, technology management and disruptions distract small businesses from their core mission, delivering value to their Customers.

#4 - The smaller the organization the more skills required by staff members: CIO’s, network administrators, integrators, and help desk agents are all very different. While one person may try to fill all the roles, they are most likely to come up short in some areas.

#3 – Technology changes rapidly: Within just a few years, skills sets and education become obsolete. This means that there is a constant emphasis on training. Managing this is a challenge and often overlooked resulting in poor technology decisions and implementations.

#2 – No tools: Employees do not come bundled with tools, technology, systems or processes. The tools to ensure efficiency and consistency are beyond the financial reach of most small businesses. Systems and processes are difficult to get IT people to create, follow and document.

#1 – If you were able to find the right person, why would they want to work for you?

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