Choosing the Right IT Staffing Partner

Choosing the right IT staffing partner and finding the best IT staffing partner should be two sides of the same coin for businesses. You want to find IT professionals that can make a positive impact on your project and your company.

An ideal IT staffing partner provides IT professionals that are skilled specialist as well as generalists. This means choosing an IT staffing partner that identifies and recruits IT talent that can do the work, but can also integrate into your business culture. A good IT staffing partner will know to find a well-rounded individual that understands how IT, in all of its guises, aligns with people, processes and technology as well as the goals and culture of the business.

You want IT talent that is highly experienced and skilled in a wide variety of IT functions and specializations that are derived from a diversity of projects/industries that they have worked in as a contractor or employee. That requires an IT staffing partner that casts a wide net nationally to find the right talent for the job at hand. Ultimately, an IT staffing partner lives IT because it takes an IT pro to find and recognize an IT pro.

Living IT to find the Best IT talent

Working with an IT staffing provider can certainly make the process more manageable on one level, but can expand it on other fronts. For instance, the scope of their database of talent may or may not be adequate from a national reach perspective as well as a skills, certification, and experience perspective. It’s important to remember that few IT staffing providers are:

• Grounded in best practices like IT service management and ITIL
• Have comprehensive training and assessment methodologies
• Ensure that IT talent has the interpersonal skills as well as the IT skills to further your business goals.

The few that are make that criteria a central focus of the skill set of the talent that they recruit as part of their database. The support that some IT staffing companies provide may be termed “turnkey,” theoretically. In actuality, they may lack the proven analytical processes in terms of recruitment, training and methodologies for determining cultural fit as well as technical fit (including ITSM knowledge). If they can’t prove it, they don’t have it.

Since time is of the essence, you don’t want to deal with a high number of candidates, which is a sure sign that they’re making you do the work. It shows that they either don’t understand your needs and your company or don’t really care. That’s another thing that differentiates a staffing provider from a staffing partner. An IT staffing partner will only send the best talent that can also be the right talent. It’s all about personalization, customization and focus.

Personalization, Customization and Focus

Another caution sign when dealing with IT staffing providers is when they don’t exclusively focus on IT. This is a sure sign that they’re not IT people themselves. That means:

• They likely have only a cursory understanding of business and IT alignment as well as IT infrastructure design and implementation
• They lack a real working knowledge and experience from having done the work in the real world for themselves and for others in the real world of business and IT from the cloud to the help desk

You’re looking for a highly focused IT staffing partner made up of IT professionals.

It’s common for businesses to find that they are dealing with an account executive at best and at worst, several different people in their IT staffing talent acquisition process. While they may provide a point person, you should be asking these questions:

• Does that point person have control of all aspects of your account?
• Does the firm have the methodology in place to ensure that all information is shared with the search and onboarding team so that nothing is left to chance or falls through the cracks?

Lastly and quite possibly most importantly, it’s the first few days, weeks and months of a new permanent or contracting hire that are crucial to success. Far too many IT staffing providers figure their job is done when you pick from among their candidates. What happens if there are problems or complications on the business side, the talent side or both?

You’re paying hard earned capital on IT staffing so it has to be right. If it’s not, the project and literally entire aspects of the business can be in jeopardy of failure, loss or bottlenecks. In short, the difference between an IT staffing provider and an IT staffing partner can be a pretty obvious choice upon comparison:

• A long track record of success innovation and focus in the field of IT, service management
• Extreme dedication to excellence with the processes and methodologies to prove it

Ultimately, how can they be a staffing partner if they haven’t been exactly where you are countless times? The ideal IT staffing partner chooses IT talent as if they were choosing them for their own needs while fully understanding you, your business, and your goals.

To find out how Solugenix can expand your team with the best IT talent, give us a call today at 1-866-749-7658 or email us at info@solugenix.com for more information.