The Right Way to Hire ServiceNow Staff

ServiceNow is the ideal platform for building a service-oriented business in which process automation ensures speed, agility, and accuracy across an enterprise. As with any technology platform, it is the people who implement and integrate the program into the business culture; they are the key to success. That's why knowing the right way to hire ServiceNow staff is critical to enabling the organization to accomplish more with process automation.

A Process to Hire ServiceNow Staff

In Solugenix's 2016 white paper, “The Right Way to Hire ServiceNow Staff,” organizations were introduced to the concept that the process requires a deep understanding of ServiceNow and the needs of the organization to make the right hiring decisions. In one important respect, the right way to hire staff is dependent on the needs and goals of the organization with ServiceNow. In another respect, it is about having a deep understanding of ServiceNow as well as all aspects of the organization.

As an adjunct to the executive summary, “Where Do I Find Good ServiceNow Staff,” the white paper addresses the fact that ServiceNow administrators and developers comprise the majority of ServiceNow talent in the US. This knowledge becomes a point of extrapolation that shows how individual skill sets for each specialization may have a great deal of overlap across a number of ServiceNow specialties.

More importantly, organizations see how the differences in years of experience and the knowledge of many permutations of programming and coding languages and frameworks make one candidate ideal for a particular need over another. Assessing these skill sets internally can be challenging for organizations without a shared, deep understanding of the business goals and structure as it pertains to ServiceNow. When you add in the foundational need of strong ITSM and ITIL knowledge as it pertains to work history, the challenge becomes more complex.

Address Specific Experience

With HR, IT, and even particular departments involved in differing stages of the hiring process for ServiceNow staff, organizations face a challenge assessing work history. It’s imperative to have that deep understanding of business processes, ITSM, ITIL, and much more to assess the true nature of the projects that candidates were involved in, the specifics of their contribution, and the outcomes.

For example, the differences and overlapping aspects in skill sets for a senior UI developer, application developer, and ServiceNow administrator/developer can be significant. They are often shaped by the individual’s experiences with past projects.

Determining whether those skill sets are at a working knowledge or advanced level cannot occur just through the language of a resume. This assessment requires substantial probing and detailed questioning and even skill assessments by people who know these areas even better than the potential candidate.

Hire ServiceNow Staff with Hard and Soft Skills

Few if any organizations have the internal mechanisms, methodologies, people, or time to accurately gauge and assess technical as well as soft skill sets in ServiceNow talent. Yet the integration of technical expertise skill sets and soft skills is crucial for ensuring that the right person is matched to the organization and its specific needs.

That means that soft skills assessments have to be filtered through questions that pertain directly to the ServiceNow platform on a highly detailed level. This enables the interviewing team to see if the candidate has the necessary temperament, communication, and interactive skills to match their technical skills. In many ways, it comes down to highly detailed and specific questions around soft skills, such as:

• Leadership qualities and building collaborative relationships
• Proper feedback response
• Results-oriented behavior under pressure
• An entrepreneurial mindset for developing new approaches and solutions
• The ability to make well-informed, effective, and timely decisions—even when data is limited

As with hiring any new employee or contractor, the truth of the decision for both sides is only revealed in time after working together. Even the exact match in terms of hard and soft skills will need support to ensure that the onboarding process is smooth and successful.

The Bottom Line

Your business needs to define your assessment of the candidates, so the more you understand ServiceNow, the better the match and easier the process of assessing and vetting them. Having a holistic view of what you’re trying to achieve with ServiceNow today and tomorrow will inform the right way to hire ServiceNow staff that effectively furthers the goals of the organization through an agile and responsive ServiceNow platform.