Hiring For a Skill You Don't Have
When I was kid and would be in the car with my Dad, he would put on some music that I just couldn’t get into. There was a radio station where I lived called “Kixx Country,” which made no sense because their call sign was WXXK which is nothing at all like KIXX. Anyways, they would play the really old country; not the stuff you get today from Jason Aldean or Eric Church or someone, but like Hank Williams. No, not the “Are you Ready for Some Football?!?” guy – that’s Hank Williams Junior. I’m talking about Hank Senior. He died in the 1950s - so we’re talking about country music almost a decade before humankind launched someone into space.
I feel like I should add some commentary that I did a brief stint as an on-air DJ for a rock station (WFRD 99.3 FM – 99 Rock) back in my younger days, and I enjoyed this 1950’s and 1960’s country as a tween and teenager about as much as getting my braces adjusted – which incidentally I was often on the way to have done when in his car. They weren’t great trips, honestly. The point of this is that I would try to get him to play something – anything – else and he resolutely refused to do so. So instead, I would try to turn it down, which he would immediately reverse and turn back up – louder than before. Despite my (vocal) objections, he would end the conversation by saying that it was his car and in his car he picks the music - and the volume.
This story has nothing to do with IT so why on earth did I bring it up? I don’t know – I like stories, I guess? But as I was thinking about this story while talking to my sister on the phone to send her birthday wishes recently I started to think how often that line of thinking comes up in the professional space. This is my [whatever it is we’re talking about] and I will pick the [whatever solution or component is relevant.] For instance, you might hear someone say “This is my data center and I will pick the storage,” or “This is my cluster and I will pick the resource pools.” But today I want to talk about “This is my [team/department/company] and I will pick the employees.”
You had to know getting in this rad mobile that you weren’t making any decisions - it was Dad’s.
I have noticed throughout my career a trend that annoys me; people make it to a point where they are in a position to hire and lead a team and they start to think they have all the qualifications to hire someone into their team to handle a role that they personally may know little to nothing about. Now, I want to be clear that I think it’s perfectly okay – even healthy – for people in leadership and management to take on roles outside of their comfort zones that are not in an area they were a direct individual contributor in and I would be being totally hypocritical if I said something otherwise. However, I’d like to point out a few instances where this can come to bite someone as they progress through an IT management career.
The first I’ve already alluded to is the most obvious example, which is if you are a specialist, say in networking and you get promoted to become an infrastructure manager. You may have some skills as a DBA, but likely not very many. However, you may be responsible for hiring a DBA at some point. That puts you in a sticky situation – you need to find someone for your team, but you may not know enough about the subject matter to know if they are qualified. Do you know the right questions to ask to make sure they are competent and skilled? There is danger to your reputation as well as that of your team in forging ahead, even if you don’t have a strong grounding.
Another example of this that I have seen more often than I care to admit is when nontechnical managers need to hire someone technical and they have only a vague notion of what skills they are looking for and even less of a way to validate if the candidate they are reviewing actually possesses skills they claim to. Very often this happens in smaller companies who are looking for contract support or perhaps their first full-time IT employee. For these smaller organizations, every single hire matters and yet they may find themselves in a position where they are least likely to make the objectively best decision. Of course, you can always ask someone if they have fifteen years of experience with Ansible, but it may surprise you to know that some people may stretch the truth and say they do when they couldn’t possibly because Ansible was first released in 2012.
“Thanks for coming in. It says here that you have 10 years of experience with vSphere 8. Please tell us about time travel - we’d very much like to get out of you know… now.”
The good news is that these are really easy mistakes to prevent, and I know of two ways to overcome these kinds of limitations and substantially increase the likelihood of hiring someone great who will really be able to help drive your team towards your goals. While this is a tech careers blog, you can use the same two methods in literally any industry or functional area - so even if you aren’t a techie read on.
The first way is the one that requires the most humility and collaboration which makes it hard for many to take it as an option; involve experts on the subject matter in the decision-making process. That sounds incredibly simple, but if you are trying to locate your first team member in a new specialty or replace someone who was the only person serving in that capacity, it can be a little more challenging than asking someone else in the department to interview candidates. Still, it’s not that hard. Looking first at our example above, even if you don’t have a DBA on your team you very likely know someone who is very skilled at that in your network. Call them and ask if they’d be willing to be a gut-check on a finalist or two for you. They can then make sure they can walk the walk instead of just talking the talk.
Sadly, this seems to be a very uncommon approach. In fact, in my over 25-year IT career, I have been asked only once to talk to a candidate for a company that I am not employed by or affiliated with and I took it as a huge compliment. They were looking for someone who had experience building out a VDI project, and I have done that both at the hands-on level and as a Director and ACIO responsible for the project. I can only chalk this up to the fact that egos can sometimes get in the way, and some managers don’t want to announce to anyone that they don’t feel comfortable evaluating a skillset comprehensively. If it helps, I’m not asking (in fact, let me discourage you from) using your external resource to validate a cultural fit on your team or company – only you can do that – and you should not outsource it. Use these external interviewers only to ascertain if they possess the technical competency that you are searching for, and never for deciding if they will be a great fit.
Some day, this fish & chips trailer hopes to get big enough to need an IT team, but they don’t know how to hire them. Guess they’ll just have to pick at random, right?
The second way that I know how to do this can actually be more complicated but will give you a very three-dimensional view of a candidate: make them prove it. In his book “Creating Magic,” Lee Cockerell talks about how he would hire a chef when he ran hotels and later the Walt Disney World resort – he’d ask them to make a dish or meal. Of course, I actively do not want most of our IT candidates to cook for me, but I would like to see them solve an issue that we’ve designed for them. Today, if you’re hiring an admin you can set up some really great scenarios and have them walk through a diagnosis and resolution using a virtual (or even hosted) lab environment. If you’re hiring an engineer for a new project, you can ask them to put together a simple design and explain what they did and why. I’m not encouraging you to try to get free consulting – I’m simply saying that having them demonstrate their skills aside from just asking questions is a simple and effective way to find people can really do what you’re looking for.
I’m certain there are other ways and certainly there are some organizations that may have totally specialized environments or needs that don’t lend themselves to either of these options easily, but I would guess that those are less than 10% of the total IT job market out there and one of these two options can certainly help you choose an addition to your team that will fill the skills you’re looking for
Ultimately, the most important thing is to acknowledge when you may not have the full view necessary to make the best decision and have the humility to admit as much. Then, put that humility into action and get some support. Trust me, the extra effort required here will pay for itself ten-fold when you realize you made a great hire that will support you and your team for years to come. Besides, admitting your weak areas and asking for help or advice is a great example for your team to look up to.
Yes, I owned this album.
No, I did not buy this album. I won it at a Halloween contest.
Yes, I am guilty of opening it.
Oh, and just to wrap up the story about my Dad since there’s a pretty fun epilogue. Not long after I got my first car, he needed to leave his car at the garage for repairs overnight and asked me to drive him there on my way to school in the morning to pick it up. Not wanting to squander a glorious opportunity, I went and found a CD I had that I knew he would absolutely hate and I made sure to put it in the player the night before. In the morning I trotted out to the car and he hopped in the passenger side, clearly uncomfortable to be driven around by his 16-year-old son (which now with my own son less than a decade from driving I fully understand and appreciate) and buckled in. I started the car, and as I was pulling out of the driveway I turned the radio on and out came late 90’s Rammstein – because literally nothing is further away from my late father’s musical tastes than German metal.
It went exactly as you’d expect. He recoiled in horror and then reached to turn it off or down or something – and I swatted his hand away and told him, “This is my car. In my car, I pick the music… and the volume.” To his credit, he sat back, and I think he even smirked a bit. It was fair play and he knew it. I did give him a break by turning it down just a bit.
After all, my Alpine could get a lot louder than his Dodge Caravan, so it only seemed fair to not torture him too much.
Questions for Reflection:
When in your career have you seen someone in a role where they likely were not qualified?
Do you feel pressure to inflate or “puff-up” your resume? How can you tell if someone else did so in an area you are not an expert at?
Who in your network can you ask to give you a second opinion or “gut-check”? Do you have enough diversity of skills in your network?
