Before you hire your next IT Contractor, here are a few key points that will help you to shorten the hiring process and get the right specialist with the skills you need for your particular project.
Get the Right Experience
When you hire a permanent employee, their past experience is most probably the first thing you scan in their CV. Hiring a contractor shouldn’t be any different.
Contractors are usually engaged for anything from three to twelve months. Therefore, in comparison to permanent employees, they get a really broad range of experience just from the sheer volume of assignments they can take on in a short period of time.
For obvious reasons, contractors can’t share the sensitive information they’ve come across while working for other clients. They can, however, enrich and enhance your project by applying skills, tools and methodologies that they refined when working in other industries and IT projects. For many companies, this project-specific insight is the biggest reason to hire a contractor over a permanent employee.
When outlining the project, before you write down the critical skills and experience you require, start from the beginning and define why you need the IT contractor. For example, you may need additional expertise for a specific project, help you through a transformation or simply to add some know-how you don’t have internally.
These points may seem obvious to include, but they are easily omitted, especially when you need the IT contractor as soon as possible. However, if you jump straight into defining the skills and experience, you may end up looking for somebody who’s not on the market or has different skills than what your project requires.
Once you’ve done the initial clarification, it’ll be easy for you to clearly define what experience and skills are required to deliver the goals of your project and then take the time to understand what resources are available in the talent market.
Get the Right Culture Fit
For some contractors, the current IT market situation could’ve been a major reason why they left permanent employment and decided to work on their own. With many projects on offer, the best IT contractors can afford to choose the project, the company and the team they want to invest their time into.
It therefore pays to think of what you can offer them besides paying their invoice. There’s no need to make it a big issue, just thinking of how you can help them to become a part of your company (or at least their team) is a great start.
Depending on their role, the IT contractor you hire might have to interact and liaise with your employees intensively. Whether this is on a colleague-to-colleague basis or as the person delivering the project, hiring somebody who will get along with your people is key.
To find out if the contractor is the right culture fit, ask them about the type of working environment where they perform best. That should give you an idea of how well they’ll match your working environment, and whether you’ll be able to get the most out of their skills in that environment.
You can also take someone who will be working with the contractor to the interview. Not only will this give you a more thorough understanding of the contractor’s past experience thoroughly but both parties will get an instant hint whether your team and the IT contractor will cooperate together smoothly.
Timing & Availability
Hiring the right permanent employee usually doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, in our Time to Fill Whitepaper, we found the average in the technology industry is 45-50 days.
Technology contractors are more flexible by the very nature of their assignments. However, contrary to popular belief, most tend to work on back-to-back assignments so are rarely sat on the bench waiting, especially if they have an in-demand skill set. Working with a recruitment agency that specialises in contracting is a great way to connect with a vast pool of contractors and reach a wider range of talent.
Either way, the earlier you can start your search the better. It also pays to keep in mind that contractors will often work for more than one client. Before you hire them, confirm with them that they can dedicate enough time to deliver your project in the desired time frame.
Summary
For the companies that intend to hire an IT contractor (especially if this is your first experience with contractors), finding the right IT specialist can be a time intensive process.
As IT Recruiters, we continuously research all of the above points and recommend only the candidates that fit the skill and culture requirements of your project, and are available to suit your time frames. We also remove a lot of the paperwork to help you focus on your core business.
Get in touch with us to find out how we can help you to find the right IT contractor.