Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Information Technology Recruitment Responses
What factors make the recruiting of IT professionals a challenge?
The process of recruiting an IT professional is made challenging by the complexity of the skills and knowledge that the expert has. The process faces challenges of evaluating the skills of the expert as well as the skills from his knowledge base and experience. Not only is it challenging to evaluate a candidate’s skills, it is also challenging to understand his or her orientation in terms of IT services he offers (Klingner & Nalbandian, 2003). The knowledge that these people possess is not well quantified in a paper or a certificate like any other professional. Their abilities are understood from their creativity and compatibility of their skills to the technology of the hiring company.
The process of hiring IT professionals is further complicated by the involvement of non-IT professionals in the interviewing and evaluation process. This creates a gap between the interviewing panel and the candidate due to the lack of knowledge between the two sides (Klingner & Nalbandian, 2003). In addition, some members of the hiring team are not conversant with the complex IT terms.
Finally, the IT profession is a volatile and dynamic field whose skills and knowledge changes over a very short period of time. Therefore, it makes it challenging for the hiring team to determine which candidate is well versed with the latest technology and even the technology of the future. This is challenging because the past IT skills cannot be used to evaluate a current job or future job descriptions.
If your organization recruits for IT professionals what steps has it had to take to get the best qualified candidates?
The first step is to define the job by establishing the right job description for a vacant position. This helps the interviewing panel to have substantial objectives of the hiring process for each of the vacancies to be filled. In addition, this provides the interviewing panel with a benchmark through which they evaluate the candidates.
The second step the organization takes is constituting an appropriate panel for the interview process. This will give the hiring manager a chance to include the most qualified people in the organization to evaluate the new recruits. It also provides the panel with adequate IT experts in the organization to be part of the recruiting team, since they are the most appropriate people.
The third step is to prepare a set of predetermined questions for all the candidates as well as specific questions for each candidate. The set of questions makes it easy for the interviewing team to direct appropriate inquiries to appropriate candidates. The questions also assist the panel to avoid idle moments in the interview room, and keeps the candidates engaged.
The fourth step the organization takes is to research all the candidates before they even arrive for the interview. This gives the panel the most important aspects of their career and provides areas of question. This also provides the experiences of the candidates as well as their conduct at work from their referees. This is important because it helps the panel to detect any untrue information provided by the candidates.
The fifth step is to invite the candidates for interviews separately and with time breaks to allow each candidate to leave after the session. This avoids any possibility of the candidates meeting. At the interviewing session, the panels keenly ask questions targeted at differentiating the abilities of each candidate to get the best.
Final step is the evaluation the interview results in a panel debrief session. Each member of the panel presents his or her views of all candidates. The team jointly evaluates the candidate responses and panel evaluations and ranks the candidates to get the best.
Are merit principles compromised with hiring practices that short-circuit traditional merit systems administrative routine?
The merit systems are regularly compromised by the modern hiring practices that focus on the job description and personal abilities rather than the traditional order. This is because in most cases, the merit system does not give the best candidate for certain jobs. This is because the conventional merit systems provide meriting criteria that does not take consideration of the changing job environments and skills (Naff & Riccucci, 2007).
However, compromising merit systems does not always mean that the hiring process followed will be flawed (Naff & Riccucci, 2007). It is a way of getting the right person for the job and not the most popular. Despite this, compromising merit systems has been used as a way of getting personal interests in the hiring process by appointing preferred candidates to jobs they do not deserve (Klingner & Nalbandian, 2003).
While the acquisition function clearly is affected by the shortage of IT professionals, what other functions are affected? How?
In addition to the acquisition function, the shortage of IT professionals also affects the production function. Production is affected by lack of enough and proficient IT experts to set, develop and maintain the right systems to run and monitor varied production systems. The shortage also leaves an organization with limited capability of the product development function of marketing research and product research and development (Naff & Riccucci, 2007). This risks the organization to produce products that are not in tandem with the changes in the market environment.
Finally, the shortage also affects the administrative function by reducing the ability of the management to manage the organization. Due to lack of enough experts, the organization lacks up to date management systems as well as monitoring tools to run the organization (Klingner & Nalbandian, 2003). This further affects the business process functions of accounting and auditing which are critical for the management of organizational resources.
References
Klingner, D. E., & Nalbandian, J. (2003). Public personnel management: contexts and strategies.
New Jersy: Prentice Hall PTR
Naff, K., & Riccucci, N. (2007). Personnel Management in Government: Politics and Process,
Sixth Edition. New York: CRC Press