6 Things to Know When Hiring for Your Help Desk
Vetting employees for your help desk takes time. You are, after all, finding people who will be speaking with angry customers on the verge leaving you. What does this mean for MSPs? Simply put, choose wisely.
Michael Overell, co-founder and CEO of RecruitLoop, a Web-based recruitment marketplace based in San Francisco and Australia, put together an article on this topic on the Salesforce blog. “When you are filling IT customer-support and help-desk positions, getting the right people is critical,” he says.
Here’s what Overell believes MSPs should look for when hiring someone for a help desk.
Find out which skills your candidates need.
Some skills can be taught and others can’t. Assess which skills your candidates need. “You likely need an individual who has fantastic problem-solving skills, great people skills, and even better communication skills,” he says. “It’s truly high-stress to deal with people who may not even understand what their problem is.”
Explain what you need from the beginning.
“One of the biggest temptations here is to list a higher level of experience or education than is required, but this can backfire,” Overell says. “Instinctively, this seems to be a strategy that would help weed out bad candidates.” Though, this isn’t always the case, he explains. “The opposite can be true — it can mean you get too many candidates who are not ideal, which just creates more work for you.”
Prepare questioning ahead of time.
“The key is that every question should have a purpose,” Overell says. Find out how they handle themselves in different situtations by asking them to provide examples from previous experiences. Find out who they are behind their answers.
Involve the right people.
“Regardless of how much of the process is handled in-house and how much is handled by your recruiting team, get the right people into the decision-making process,” he says. “Naturally, you will make sure that the leaders who are directly involved with this position are part of the process, but don’t forget to consider who else should have input.”
Hire the best you can find — just kidding.
Just because someone has the highest degree out of all of your candidates, it doesn’t mean you should hire them. They might not be well-suited for the role. “Of course the person you hire should be an excellent fit for the position, but that doesn’t mean he or she must be the top of the industry,” Overell says. “Worse, having stellar credentials or references can often make it too easy to overlook major red flags in other areas.”
Above all, trust your gut.
“If someone looks perfect on paper but you sense something is ‘off’ during the interview, don’t ignore that feeling,” he says. “Whether that something ‘off’ is worth dismissing the candidate over is a judgment call, but gut instinct matters.”
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