When you’re a small business, or even an SME, the thought process that has to go into creating a successful business can often be much longer than an everyday organisation. Not only do you need to cover a number of different departments, but usually you have to do this on your own and with little, or no help and support at all. Hiring staff can be a difficult task especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. Specifically looking at departmental staff, and the importance of hiring for particular roles, we’ve looked into the importance of hiring good IT staff and the implications this can have on your business. Below we’ve outlined the three main things to consider when hiring staff.

1. Qualifications

One of the first things that should be on your mind when hiring a new team should be how qualified the staff members are. Not only is experience important (which we will move onto shortly), but the qualifications that certain members of a team have can really influence the productivity and performance levels of a team. When putting together your IT team, you want a group of people who know what they’re doing, look out for Cisco CCIE courses, although these are fairly specific they focus on an employee knowing how to test, deploy, configure, maintain and troubleshoot networks. However, if you really like an employee but they lack the necessary qualifications don’t be put off as you could always put them through the training at a later date.

2. Experience

As touched on in the above point, experience is key. Business New Daily did an article on the 8 tips you should take when hiring, one of the main points looked at here was on fitting the personality to the job. Although it’s great to have all the right qualifications, when you’re stuck between two individuals you have to look into the experience that the two have and compare your specific needs to this.

3. Efficiency and reliability

Two of the biggest things to consider when recruiting and putting together your IT department is the reliability and efficiency of the team. When things go wrong, you need to have faith that your team will be there to pick up the pieces and be called upon at the right time. If you worry that they may not be around, you have to worry that your systems may not be up to full scratch.