Ashu Bhoot from Orion Networks and David Moise Discuss: Hire People For Who They Are. Not the Project. Ashu and David talk about how technology changes, but people do not, Using training and certifications as a benefit and recruiting tool.

— Contents of this Video—

00:00 – Intro

1:15 – Hire People For Who They Are, Not the Project

2:09 – What do People Want to Do at Work?

2:45 – Technology Changes, but People Don’t

3:33 – Finding Hidden Talent

5:38 – Training and Certifications as Benefits

6:37 – Employee Training Budgets – No Strings Attached

7:37 – What does a Client Need?

8:27 – Competitive Advantage in Recruiting

8:46 – OrioNetworks.net

— End of Contents—

Ashu Bhoot – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashu-bhoot-0921542/

Orion Networks – https://www.orionnetworks.net/

David Moise – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmoise/

Technical Talent Strategies – https://decideconsulting.com/tech-talent-strategy/

Good morning. Today I am talking to Ashoe Boot with Orion Networks.
They are an MSP located in the Washington, D. C. Area.
So, Ashoe, I’d like for you just to do
a little bit broader introduction of yourself and Orion.
Sure sounds good. Good.
And thanks for the opportunity, David.
Glad to be here.
My name is Ashibu.
I have been in technology industry for over 20 years
now, and Orion was started about a decade ago.
So just completing about a decade under our vet.
Now, Congratulations.
Thank you.
And we help businesses in DC, Maryland, and
Virginia area through their journey on technology, and
we essentially do an end to end job.
We are their technology team, whether it comes
to the consulting piece or just strategizing what
cloud means for them or just optimizing their
business processes across the technology spectrum.
Understood.
Now, we’ve been talking to a lot of companies,
and this is how we initially got introduced.
We were just companies are
struggling to find technical talent.
It’s a rough market out there.
There’s a lot of dynamic out
there in the market companies.
It’s very difficult to find the right people
and convince them to come work for you.
And something that you said to
me that really just jumped out.
You guys like to hire for people for
who they are and not for the project.
And that just jumped out at me
as these guys are onto something different.
They have a different model
about what they’re looking at.
Can you just elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah.
So that goes back to one of our
core principle when we started the company.
There are three founders and all of
us were pretty passionate about our team
and not just completing a project.
And it’s not just the people that we hire,
but also the clients that we work with.
Relationships are very important for us
and people aspect, especially through Coed.
As folks get more and more chance to
introspect this chain core to who they are,
what their wants and needs are.
And meeting that first before we evaluate whether they
meet the project needs has been our core tenant,
which just again, even in the hiring process, the
candidates that we interview are just backward.
By that, before a technical interview starts, our behavioral
or what we call a behavioral interview are kind
of fit for the culture interview starts.
That’s our first step.
And a lot of people that we don’t find a
fit, even though they are great on the technical skills.
We would not proceed with hires because
we want to work with people.
Technology changes, but people don’t and we want to make
sure we are meeting their needs while they are meeting
our needs or our clients needs as well.
Is there a good story?
Go ahead, please, go ahead.
I was just about to go that out
with essentially, that has helped us a lot.
Our attrition rate, even through
COVID, has been near zero.
We just had, like, one person who we lost or tried.
Not at least yet.
I keep looking over my shoulder
always, but no great resignation yet.
Is there a good story with someone that you
hired that you think other companies might have overlooked?
That’s really turned out to be
a great asset for the company? Yeah.
Matter of fact, I was just
reflecting on that earlier today.
I was talking to now, our teammate, and we hired
him back in October, and he was out of job
for six months through the pickup code, and he was
interviewing everywhere and just couldn’t find a fit and something
that in our behavioral interview struck me for him.
There was just this thirst of knowledge while on
paper, he did not have the right certificates or
experience and so on and so forth.
Just as we were going through the fit for the
culture interview that first came across very in the face,
and we went ahead and hired him, even though he
had zero technical skills for the project that we were
looking for and fast forward four months now he was
the first one to complete all our trainings and really
kind of thrive in that environment.
And now he has typically, we have, like,
a six month setting period before they can
start working with our clients just to make
sure they’re inculcated in the culture.
But he is already a month back.
He started working with our clients,
so just a fast track trajectory.
And he was one of our best hires.
So just contrasting, that where other
companies find a dearth of talent.
And we find this guy who has been
looking for a job for six months.
And now he’s, like, one of our
start hires, feels great thinking about that.
I like to tell companies all the time
if you are looking for just a particular
technical skill set, so is everyone else.
And there’s so much demand for people when you can
find an alternative way, bringing somebody in and look under
a rock that someone else is not paying attention to.
There’s a win there.
So Congratulations.
I love hearing stories like this.
Something you said there I want to follow
up on you mentioned the training and certifications.
I’m thinking that’s cheaper for a lot of
companies to train people as opposed to going
out and trying to hire everyone.
Can you elaborate on that a little bit and what you
offer up for training on your people that come to you?
Yeah.
So I would like to think we are
slightly different on that factor as well.
While we have some trainings that we prescribe,
we actually leave it to our teammates on
what training they would like to go to.
And there’s obviously some core training that we
recommend or have our teammates go through on
AWS Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services Solution Architect
as well as Microsoft Azure certifications.
But beyond that, we pretty much leave it open ended.
Every teammate gets training budget, and they are
free to use how they want it. Oh, wow.
No strings attached.
And that’s another way, actually, for us to test
and learn on what courses folks are interested in,
and some of them have just surprised us.
That like, hey, I want to go do this
soft skill course in some shape or fashion.
It always turns out to be very beneficial for
us as well as for the associate, obviously. Okay.
And what are the more popular things people
are using her training budgets on these days?
Oh, gosh, I wish I had prepared that list.
There’s quite a few on Udemy, so Udemy seems
to be at least our team is our favorite. Okay.
It’s all sorts of things.
I think one of the associates was going for
how to think about a client needs not what
they are asking, but what they actually need.
And it was very like we never
thought about it in that fashion.
And think about a system administrator who’s super technical
and very attracted to coding kind of things going
for that kind of soft skill course by himself.
I’ll find the exact name and the link to
that, but that was something that was just off
the beaten path, and we would have never included
in our certification or training courses.
We help that teammate. Okay.
You’re doing a lot of things I love.
I wish more companies were doing it, but, hey,
competitive advantage to you in the short term here
or medium term hiring people for who they are,
not what they know, who can grow with you
spending money on training some people.
That’s just an optimal way of doing things these days.
I commend you, and you’re going to have a competitive
advantage in the recruiting market and being able to grow
what other people are struggling to find individuals.
So kudos to you. Okay.
Orion Networks, who should call
you who’s your target market?
Do you want to reach out to you?
So we laser focus on small and medium sized
businesses who either do not have their own technology
teams or have the technology teams, but really are
struggling with keeping up with all the changes, whether
it’s on the cyber security side or just strategizing
what’s their cloud journey.
We specifically want to talk to them.
They’re in Washington, DC, Maryland
and Virginia area even more.
That’s our sweet spot.
Okay, I appreciate it.
I’m sure a lot of people are going to be
calling you now, and probably some people who want to
figure out how to get some of your training budget
are going to be calling you as well. All good.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for your time today.
All right, you have a good one. Bye.