Congratulations!
You’ve finally gotten that technology budget you’ve been fighting for!
Now all you have to do is:
- Hire someone who can manage the project(s)
- Hire software developers
- Create development life-cycle processes that will work for your specific team’s needs as well as the needs of the stakeholders
- Buy the development tools
- Figure out your documentation needs
- Hire a business analyst
- Buy the infrastructure
- Hire infrastructure developers
- Hire a systems architect (Often heard: Didn’t even know we needed one!)
- Determine what your security needs are
- Hire security experts (most likely)
- Figure out how all of these people work together
At this point you are already sixty days into your timeline and you’ve invested a significant portion of your technology budget on just building the team.
And you are already tired!
You’re already tired because you found out that hiring technologists is difficult, time consuming, and not very simple. It’s about way more than just deciding you need a Microsoft full stack developer and going to the developer store and buying one. You learned, or re-learned, not all technologists – even within the same technical discipline – are alike.
Creating a top-tier technology team requires specific skills.
The difference in quality between two developers with otherwise identical qualifications on paper can be the difference between an on-budget, on-time project and an effort that stays in a whirlpool of ever-increasing budget drain and dread. Making sure you hire the correct Business Analyst who can drive your requirements gathering in the right direction or who can analyze the data you are relying on to make your project successful is hugely important. Making sure your infrastructure is built to sustain your needs, and that its maintenance will be manageable in the production environment, is hugely vital to success. Making sure your technology team works cohesively and is flexible with meeting demands is also key. These things and 100 more should be in the hands of someone deeply experienced in the full spectrum of everything that needs to be considered.
Many technology projects never even get off the ground before the budget runs out. As you can see, hiring technologists is about so much more than just finding people with applicable technical skills.
Got it! Now, what do I do?
- Don’t try to tackle this yourself:
- You already know this is going to be a time-sucking nightmare.
- Do you really want to spend the next two months interviewing?
- Don’t hire a recruiter to do it for you:
- This is the same process as doing it yourself – you’re just outsourcing the only fun part.
- Your recruiter will cast a broad net and you get to interview twice as many people – most of them unqualified.
The most efficient way to get actual technologist eyes on the work that needs to be done is going to be interviewing entire teams of technologists. Partner with someone who already has vetted resources ready to start working immediately.