For CIOs who are looking to expand their IT teams, a little bit of hiring strategy can go a long way.
"For chief information officers, the trick in building an IT team is to find players with the technical prowess to handle any challenge in the game, as well as the business acumen to recognize when they can best achieve objectives by running straight toward the goal without any fancy tricks along the way," according to Mike Moore, CIO of technology company Virtual Instruments.
Mr. Moore offered the following three hiring tips for CIOs in a contributed Wall Street Journal piece.
1. Hire more expensive candidates to save money down the road. Candidates that have a higher skill set, and therefore likely a higher monetary worth, can pay off in terms of better and faster operations, Mr. Moore said, especially as software-as-a-service applications can manage coding or system administration needs.
2. Hire fewer people to reach big goals. "Finding IT pros who can balance technical skill and business needs often requires bigger salaries, but CIOs can offset the costs by building smaller teams that understand the nuances of that balance," Mr. Moore said. By hiring for just the most productive positions, CIOs can measure productivity in business value output and mold the team to achieve goals.
3. Don't forget about critical skills beyond technical expertise. After discussing in an interview how a candidate handled a technical challenge, CIOs should ask why that solution was important to end users, as this can identify if the candidate can deliver in line-of-business units in addition to the IT department, Mr. Moore said. "Technologist [sic] in business thinking are the hires CIOs need today and in the future," he said.
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