7 Essential Tips For How To Hire An IT Manager

If you are a small business, deciding to hire an IT manager for the first time can be daunting. With the prospective IT manager playing a crucial leadership role within your organisation, making a bad hire could have serious consequences for your business.

Despite this, hiring an IT manager will be a necessity as your business grows. An IT manager will help you to utilise technology to give your business a competitive advantage, as well as supporting your IT infrastructure and your long term growth plans.

Why you might be looking to hire an IT manager?

An IT manager aligns your IT strategy with your business objectives, manages the running of your organisation’s tech operations, as well as provides leadership for your IT department.

If you are a small but growing business, you may have only previously used an external provider or supplier for your IT needs, so, hiring a professional internally could seem like an extravagant investment.

However, an IT manager could work wonders for your future growth plans. They would be responsible for your organisation’s technological infrastructure and systems, which is the backbone of business operations. Most modern businesses use tech for everything, from storing important data to communicating with team members and clients. Making use of the latest technologies and ensuring your business has the right infrastructure in place would keep your business efficient, competitive and set up for growth.

When you should hire an IT manager?

The period of time when your organisation wants to gain a competitive edge by incorporating technology into its growth plans, should align with when you hire an IT manager.

An IT manager will be able to help support your wider business operations and goals, spearhead tech projects, as well as work with stakeholders and the leadership team to address technology needs and challenges. They will be in charge of all areas of IT in your business, from overseeing deployment and maintenance of tech, to developing IT policies, monitoring IT performance and owning digital transformation projects. Delaying hiring an IT manager could limit your company’s progress and your ability to stay agile in the current market.

Tips to help you hire an IT manager

Identify your requirements

As a small business, your exact needs for hiring an IT manager will depend on the size of the IT department and the capabilities of your current team.

Each IT manager needs 3 core skills:

• Technical
• Strategical
• Leadership

All 3 are important but depending on your company’s requirements, they will be weighted differently.

For example, if you only have a small team or a couple of contractors that need to be managed and you have limited external consultation, the IT manager’s technical skills will be more important than with a large team, in order to stay on top of all technical projects being undertaken.

Identifying what your business needs from an IT manager will help to give you the focus you need to make a successful hire.

Use example-based questioning

Applying example-based questioning is great general advice in any hiring process, but it is even more crucial for a senior role such as an IT manager. An IT manager has a large effect over business operations which often relies on internal tech infrastructure and systems, so it is imperative not to make a bad hire.

Some example-based questions to use when hiring an IT manager:

• How do you keep up with new technologies?
• What was the last project you managed? Can you tell me about how you achieved a successful outcome?
• Can you give me an example of when you managed or supported a small team or company?

These questions will change based on the exact role and your business objectives and structure, however, asking for specific examples will help you to ascertain what experience the candidate has in the role and how they react in certain situations.

Ask about departmental management

An IT manager should have prior experience in managing a department. This includes:

• Project management
• Budget management
• Communication with stakeholders
• Strategic knowledge
• The ability to alleviate conflict between employees or other stakeholders

Remember, for an IT manager vacancy, you are not just hiring someone with a niche skillset, but someone who has a wide range of technical skills, as well as management, leadership, and strategy. You need someone who can communicate with stakeholders, collaborate across departments and manage a departmental budget effectively.

Conduct skills and psychometric tests

Skills tests can help to confirm technical skills, whilst psychometric tests investigate personality profiling, logical reasoning, and situation judgment. All of these elements will contribute to identifying the right IT manager for your business.

By incorporating skills and psychometric tests into the interview process, you can get a better understanding of the candidate’s experience and how they approach different situations and challenges. This can help you to narrow down the candidate pool more easily and secure someone who is a great hire for your IT manager vacancy.

Choose someone who can safeguard your business

When hiring an IT manager, look out for those with good documentation skills, who know how to safeguard the extensive data your business produces and holds. As with managers from all departments, an IT manager is the keeper of knowledge. They will often write processes and have access to passwords, confidential information etc. It is critical that you have the processes in place for another IT manager to pick up where the last left off if there were unexpected changes or circumstances – they leave abruptly, become ill etc.

When deciding which candidate to choose, ask them for information on how they document their processes and how they keep this information secure. When choosing to hire an IT manager look out for candidates who understand the importance of documentation. This will help to manage potential future risks.

Use a tech professional to help vet candidates

You may be able to adequately assess the candidates’ soft skills and their leadership abilities, but understanding their technical experience and abilities is critical too. If you are non-technical, bringing in a tech professional for part or all of the hiring process means that you’ll be able to make a decision safe in the knowledge that a tech professional who understands the technical requirements of the role has given the candidate the green light.

Therefore, if you do not have a senior-level technical professional in-house to vet candidates, you might want to consider asking your IT provider for support, or for your IT recruiter to recommend a contractor. This way you’ll have the support of someone with technical know-how on a free basis or a day rate, to help you avoid a bad hire.

Consider working with an IT specialist recruitment agency

You may view this as biased coming from an IT specialist recruiter. However, a specialist recruitment agency can be an incredibly useful asset to have in your corner when you are hiring an IT manager.

IT recruitment agencies have access to a fantastic wide pool of IT professionals, including IT managers. They have market knowledge to advise on how to identify and secure the best professionals, as well as what other companies are doing to make themselves attractive employers.

IT specialist recruiters have lots of experience in successfully hiring IT managers, so would be able to advise you on your hiring campaign. They would also be able to help pre-vet candidates, due to their knowledge of the sector, as well as handle a lot of the admin side of the recruitment process. This would mean that the candidates that you see, would all be relevant and potentially great fits for your business. This cuts down the amount of time and money you might need to spend on the recruitment process.

If you want to hire an IT manager and need expert help from an award-winning IT recruitment agency, get in touch with our team here.