How do you find and select the right people? - Tips (part 3)

Understanding recruitment do's and don'ts

Successfully implementing ITAM strategy and preparing for the demands of the future doesn’t depend on a single person. And ITAM is not determined by the factor 'I' but by the factor 'team', where cooperation on ITAM tasks enables synergy and growth in maturity.

But how do you get from a well-founded number for the amount of FTE’s for your ITAM strategy to an actual balanced composition of your ITAM team? What will you require in terms of skills from the internal people in your team, what criteria do the external specialists need to meet? As key generic requirements, you should think about:

• being able to work in a team, alone or in the background;
• understanding licensing models, software delivery models and metrics, as well as an understanding of the application of licensing rights;
• strong administrative skills, including attention to detail, organisational skills and ability to follow defined processes;
• understanding the basics of financial management and being able to collaborate with finance;
• understanding supplier negotiation processes;
• legal insight, understanding the risks of incompliance and being able to quantify them.

With that in mind, you will need to make sure you know what you already have. What do the people you currently see as part of your ITAM team know and what can they do? Where do they still need to gain knowledge or experience? After all, if you are going to supplement your team with in-house or external consultants, it is useful to know how far away you are from your ITAM dream team and what gaps you need to fill. Create clear job and/or role descriptions for your current team members and then, if you want to fill in the blanks in-house, define what you are looking for in a new team member.

Some basic starters to make recruitment successful:

• First, clearly define the "top" 5 tasks you are looking at for a new team member.
• Make sure that you understand where this position you are recruiting for sits within the HR hierarchy of job titles, salary bandwidths.
  • This may seem obvious, but ITAM often appears to fall in between technology, administrative and finance functions.
• An important warning! Do not throw every task related to ITAM onto just one job description!
  • Often, the description posted and presented to candidates would literally take a team to fulfil.

Mapping out the tasks and skills for the various positions on the ITAM team in this way will help you in every way to put together or complement your dream team. And, as an added bonus: it ensures that when someone does decide to leave the organisation because of another job or because of retirement, you know where the actual gaps are.

Tip 1: Don't get too hung up on restrictive criteria

Finding a candidate with the right combination of hard skills and soft skills is more important than software or hardware experience. Admittedly, a background in IT is preferred, but in many cases candidates with a (slightly) different background can be valuable additions to our team. Think of, for example, project managers, IT service managers, or procurement professionals.

Tip 2: Train them if you can't find them

The ideal candidate who can do everything, probably doesn’t exist or is priceless. You can also look at candidates with some of the key skills, that you then further train or coach! Think of:

• ITAM best-practice training, like CSAM, CAMP or CHAMP;
• training specific to the ITAM / ITSM tooling you use at your company.

Moreover, this way, you can also make your own people fit the needs of your organisation.

Tip 3: Use available sourcing options

Not all your team members need to be full-time employees. You can build your team by:

• hiring a consultant specialising in a specific vendor such as IBM to help you with your quarterly reports or with an audit;
• outsourcing specific functions, such as ITAM tooling management, or asset verification;
• working with an ITAM service provider to co-source your ITAM team as part of an ITAM service.
  
  

Or, read more in our eBook: There is no I in ITAM - Building a future-proof ITAM-team