The Key to Making the Right Hire for Resellers

In an environment where organizations need to do more with less, and as technology solution providers strive to provide customers with additional value through the expertise of their staff, there is little margin for error when hiring someone new. Organizations simply can’t afford the time and cost involved with bringing on a new employee who doesn’t contribute to the business immediately and doesn’t have the technical background to provide effective customer support.

A recent study by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) found that eight out of ten HR executives said it was a challenge to find a candidate with the right skill set when hiring IT professionals. Despite a virtual buyer’s market for hiring companies, many hiring IT managers share a similar sentiment.

As a rule of thumb, experience and accomplishments trump most other factors when evaluating a prospective employee. But more and more, managers also factor IT certifications into their hiring decisions. Sixty-four percent of IT hiring managers in the CompTIA study rated IT certifications as having an extremely high value in validating a job prospect’s skills and expertise; while 51 percent agreed or strongly agreed that IT certifications save time and resources in evaluating IT job candidates.

For IT solution providers seeking a competitive advantage in this cost-conscious marketplace, the choice to hire certified professionals can be rewarding. Organizations that hired certified IT professionals identified these benefits with certified new hires:

• Ability to understand new or complex technologies
• Higher productivity
• More insightful problem solving

Each of these benefits, by nature, is vastly important to a solution provider’s ability to grow and maintain customer relationships.

To realize the full value of certification, however, organizations have to make an ongoing commitment to employee education and training. More than 70 percent of organizations participating in the CompTIA survey agree, saying that on-going staff professional development is important. Fifty-two percent of responding organizations actively support their staff’s continuing training efforts, paying for them to sit for an IT certification exam, while 45 percent provide financial support for training classes or learning materials.

This is not as simple as just changing the company mindset to focus on hiring certified individuals for open positions. IT managers have to work with the HR department to help them understand what skills-specific certification programs are relevant, so that prospective employees are considered for the right job. Right now, only 40 percent of IT hiring managers said their HR departments know what IT certifications are all about.

While the actual ROI of hiring certified professionals cannot be determined in exact dollars, there is strong evidence that shows the dividends paid to an organization outstrip the cost, and reseller organizations that hire certified IT professionals will be the ones that continue to capture market share and customer satisfaction.

Moving forward, more than eight in ten hiring managers believe that the use of certifications in the hiring process will become even more important, as employers continue to struggle to find skilled individuals to fill their job openings. That means that resellers who choose not to focus on certification as part of the hiring process are in danger of falling behind industry competitors who do.

Todd Thibodeaux is the president and chief executive officer of CompTIA, a leading non-profit trade association for the world’s information technology industry.