Key Attributes of the Top IT Professionals

In most businesses, individuals are the foundation of the value offered to customers.  This is especially true for service businesses. Thus, in the service business, people are the key to success.   Service businesses should establish a thorough process to help them recruit and hire the best people they can.  However, accomplishing this is a lot easier said than done.

Often too much emphasis is placed on the technical aspects of candidates’ qualifications and not enough time and effort is expended on the assessment of other critical performance dimensions.

In this paper, I will provide a framework to make the process of recruiting and hiring talented IT professionals much easier.

There are three key areas that can be used to encapsulate the most important performance dimensions of the most successful individuals: attitudes, aptitudes, and approaches.

Attitudes

Attitudes are ways of thinking and looking at things that drive individuals to behave in a certain manner.  There are certain important attitudes to look for in technical service professionals.  If you want to hire the best service people, make sure your process is designed to ascertain the following attitudes:

• A passion for the service area and related skills for which they are needed
• A strong desire to be the best they can be and add as much value as possible
• A passion for customer service
• A positive and “can do” attitude
• A high sense of urgency
• A strong bias towards teamwork, collaboration, and synergy
• A strong desire to continuously learn, share, and apply what they know
• A proactive prevention-oriented mindset in everything they do

Aptitudes

Aptitudes are the knowledge, skills, and experiences that make individuals highly competent and capable to perform the key tasks necessary for the job.  Every job has highly specific technical knowledge and experience requirements and attempting to list those would make this a very long paper.  However, the following list includes several key aptitudes that can make a big difference and should be ascertained from every individual under consideration for a technical service job:

• The ability to be creative and innovative
• The ability to communicate clearly and concisely in oral and written form
• The ability to predict and prevent problems
• The ability to efficiently and effectively solve problems when not preventable
• The ability to plan, organize and execute complex projects and work tasks

Approaches

An approach is the way people go about doing something.  There are three key approach categories to explore when hiring an individual.  Successful individuals tend to take a disciplined, comprehensive and systematic approach to everything they do.  The following list includes several approaches taken by such individuals under each of these three categories:

A Disciplined Approach

• They follow established processes
• They adhere to established procedures
• They seek and apply best practices
• They establish, communicate and follow work plans and schedules

A Comprehensive Approach

• They gather, understand, and adhere to set requirements
• They carefully assess and define situations, tasks and problems
• They are meticulous in the performance of all tasks
• They document and share important matters
• They keep timely up to date records

A Systematic Approach

• They are systematic in the conduct of their work
• They take full advantage of existing systems
• They seek to improve systems and develop new ones
• They take a holistic systems view to everything they do

Recruiters and managers involved in the hiring process for technical service personnel should consider enhancing their current processes by including the aforementioned criterion and developing mechanisms to ascertain these dimensions in those they intend to hire.

Furthermore, they should consider using it to assess individual performance once they are on-board.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO