These 5 IT Hires Can Cost You an Extra Million

We all know the cost of a bad hire can be high. When you have been on enough software development teams, you have seen the good and the bad. When you start seeing, and recognizing, the good that can turn bad – that is when you know you are experienced. There are 5 types of IT individuals we have seen show up in different organizations. They can appear to be knowledgeable and productive, but they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Having one of these can cost your organization huge dollars. When one adds up the person’s time, the [...]

By |March 28th, 2017|Better IT Hiring, IT Recruiting, IT Staffing|0 Comments
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Why your IT job description is wrong. One question to fix it.

Odds are your job description for your IT position is not as good as is can be. Don’t worry too much, you are not alone. Most job descriptions are listings of skills needed, some background experience and desired education. Granted these are all relevant things. You do not want to hire a C# programmer for a Java position. The critical missing thing in most job descriptions is the answer to one question: What is the background of your best people? We had a recent client who writes security software. They were looking to expand their software implementation staff. These people [...]

By |March 26th, 2017|Better IT Hiring, IT Recruiting, IT Staffing|0 Comments
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4 Questions to Identify a Team Player for Software Development

Team players are better than lone wolfs when it comes to software development. No one individual will be able to code, test, release, prototype, etc. We need teams of people to get this done. Good team players make an organization better. Bad team members can cost thousands, if not millions, of dollars. This makes it important to realize which software developers are good team players and which ones need more coaching. I have only met one professional who readily admitted he was not a good team player. He was right. He got credit for his self-awareness. I have met many [...]

By |March 13th, 2017|Better IT Hiring, IT Staffing, Retain Your Talent, Software Development|0 Comments
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Are You Hiring Problem Solvers for your IT Team?

Regardless of what company we have worked with, the same scenario happens. Pick any group of 20 software developers, infrastructure people or any other technical specialty. Out of that 20, there are going to be 1-2 “go-to” people. Three if you’re lucky. These are you best problem solvers. Here is a sampling of what we hear being asked of these “go-to” people: “Run the estimate by Jane” “Let’s bring Joe in at the end and run the summary by him to see if we missed anything” The boss always asking if Jane has seen it before believing it. “We have [...]

By |January 22nd, 2017|Better IT Hiring, IT Recruiting, IT Staffing|0 Comments
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How to do a Better Technical Interview

I cannot even count how many technical interviews I’ve done. No less than 500. There were phases in my career where I continuously did 4-6 a week for weeks on end. At least half of those were done the wrong way. Luckily it was the first half. From this, I have learned how to do a better technical interview. I’ve noticed when a lot of people do technical interviews, they fall into the same trap I first fell into. They focus on whether the candidate knows the same technical trivia the interviewer knows. On a software team, most of [...]

By |January 11th, 2017|Better IT Hiring, Interview Tips, IT Recruiting, IT Staffing|0 Comments
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