SBA

Recruiting Your IT Manager

What do you do when you need a new Head of IT for your small / medium-sized business?  Chances are you call in a local recruitment agency, or advertise directly, and that neither the recruitment agency nor you actually have a strong understanding of what the job entails. You know some of the outcomes you want for your business, but the qualities and skills necessary to deliver those outcomes? You, or the agency, are likely to be a bit less clear on those - and without that clarity the final selection interview, full of hope and optimism, is often the start of a slide into disappointment. I’ve hired a few IT Managers over the years to work for my consultancy clients or to work for me, and of course I’ve done the job myself. Every business is different, and very different attributes are needed for the IT leaders of large corporates, but in general these are the qualities I would look for in IT Managers for the small and medium businesses typical of the Manx economy:

Commitment

Not the “will they still be with us in three years or will they run off to a company offering more money?” type of commitment, but something far more basic. How will they ensure that the IT is up and running every day when staff roll up for work? In most businesses the likelihood is that IT systems will fail outside of core hours, and that a significant failure will take at least a couple of hours to fix - meaning that a problem discovered at the start of the working day will still be hurting the business after elevenses. A core measure for me is what the IT Manager candidates will do to avoid this. 

I like to hear about “implementing real-time server and network monitoring and alerting tools to detect issues before systems fail”, and (this is the commitment bit) “I check my email and text alert messages as soon as I wake up, and connect remotely from home to fix problems before breakfast. Over the weekend I check my alert messages through the day and fix issues as soon as I can within the constraints of family needs”. These types of responses indicate that the candidate is likely to take personal responsibility for making sure that the business is able to operate when it opens for business each day, and knows how to put in place the tools they will need in order to avoid IT system failures and to mitigate the impacts to the business when those failures occur. Obviously all this is even more critical when your business serves customers online 24x365.

Understanding Your Workers

Not understanding your business model or industry, but the nature of the work your people do. If they are office workers then what matters to them? Office-based use of word processing, spreadsheets, email, CRM, scanning documents etc. are much the same whether your business is banking, insurance, legal services or car sales. Mobile or field-based IT systems are the same in principle whether your mobile staff are sales reps, installation and maintenance engineers, delivery drivers or policemen. Manufacturing workers will have a core set of production support needs irrespective of whether they are making lawnmowers or musical instruments, and these will significantly overlap with the inventory control requirements for warehousing and distribution workers irrespective of whether the inventory is furniture or pharmaceuticals.

Whilst industry-specific systems for different businesses may vary the core interactions between your workers and the IT systems will not differ greatly - and in all probability nor will the core barriers and problems your workers experience when trying to use your IT systems. An experienced IT manager who has never had to support a mobile workforce will have a steep learning curve when given the problem of supporting the users and IT systems for your nationwide fleet of mobile locksmiths. 

Generic Technology Skills

There are some technology skills that pretty much every IT Manager should have mastered - and most of them relate to “infrastructure”. 

Computer networking & communications - how to design, construct and maintain networks, static and dynamic addressing, domain name resolution, site-to-site connections and ad-hoc remote access. 

Cyber security including secure access to systems, intrusion detection and intrusion prevention, malware prevention, detection and removal, email and web threat scanning and filtering, and AAA methods (authentication, access and accounting) (user authentication, user access controls / permissions and user activity logging / auditing). 

Server management and maintenance, and client estate (PCs, laptops, handheld devices) management and maintenance - the principles are transferrable between brands and operating systems, but you want to know that your IT Manager has experience of managing fleets of equipment efficiently. 

Basic relational database administration, maintenance and interrogation (querying / reporting) - on almost any brand of relational database such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL etc. - again the principles are transferrable but almost every “enterprise system” will use a relational database. Basic email server configuration and maintenance. Basic web server configuration and maintenance. 

You may also want to ask for evidence of telephony systems management experience, including switchboards / PABX configuration, VoIP (Voice over IP) and POTS (Plain Old Telephone Systems), and of course mobile telephony including SMS/MMS and 3G/4G.

Which brands / manufacturers or specific tools an IT Manager has used in support of any of these skills is pretty much irrelevant - all tech products will be out of date soon enough but the generic IT Management problem set changes more slowly. Elementary coding and scripting skills are a given - none of the above can be performed well without the ability to write a simple computer program.

Procurement / Contract Management Skills

IT systems are expensive, and IT suppliers are amongst the most commercially sophisticated of all businesses. It is not by accident that the lists of the world’s richest business people and most valuable companies are dominated by techies. Your IT Manager may be the single biggest spender in your company, and you want someone with the skills to procure wisely and cost-effectively. Specifying services, running tender processes, negotiating contracts and closing deals are part and parcel of the IT Manager’s role. Similarly measuring and enforcing the performance of technology suppliers for the duration of contracts - which may in the case of enterprise systems run for a decade or more.

Many, perhaps most, small and medium businesses are a bit rubbish at buying IT. Very few actually take into account the need for commercial savvy in the IT Manager when recruiting, but the reality is that even in a relatively modest business an experienced IT Manager will save the company the cost of his annual salary, year after year, through being a more experienced and knowledgeable buyer of IT than the managing director or finance director.

IT Law & Compliance

There’s an increasing body of law and regulation relating specifically to the use of IT and data, covering software authors rights, database owners rights, reverse engineering, personal data protection, e-commerce website and email information disclosure, lawful use of communication / telephony systems, surveillance and privacy, retention of records and information, employee health and safety, discrimination, disaster recovery and business continuity etc., and myriad international standards to be complied with. Very few businesses get everything right in respect of IT law, but having an IT Manager who knows what is addressed by IT law and where to look it up is a start.

Most importantly from a compliance perspective, you want an IT Manager who understands Software Licensing including licence auditing and the maintenance of software asset registers, Data Protection including the EU Data Protection Directive and the upcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation, E-commerce including the EU Electronic Commerce Directive, and (Employee and Public) Health & Safety - these are the areas of IT-related law most likely to get you into serious trouble with stroppy customers, employees or regulators. 

Those are the biggest considerations. If your candidate also understands your industry, business model and even knows his or her way around some of the specific IT systems / products you use then so much the better - but a good IT Manager will quickly learn about all of the specifics of your business from you and your colleagues and your use of your IT systems and has probably done so before in other businesses and industries, whereas the chances of you and your colleagues being able to teach him or her about good IT Management are slim unless you are already very experienced IT managers.