FEATURE
Jon Cairns , VP , Technical Services , Nexthink employee wellbeing , productivity , satisfaction and job retention . Increasingly , the lines between HR and IT are becoming blurred and they must collaborate towards the common goal of achieving optimum employee experience .
In this new proactive and experience-driven environment , IT teams are required to harness more and more empathy and people-skills when it comes to how they approach solving employee problems .
Coming from an empathetic and personable place will empower teams to take a more pre-emptive attitude to the day-to-day workplace experience .
As such , those hiring for new IT roles need to shift their focus from traditionally ‘ hard ’ skills to ‘ softer ’ ones , such as communication and teamwork .
Similarly , characteristics such as precise analysis , curiosity and independent initiative are crucial for IT teams to adopt a more forward-looking and hunting approach in which they sharply identify and solve potential issues .
Whereas coding and more technical skills are often only held by those with narrow IT experience , these ‘ softer ’ skills are possessed by more candidates in a larger hiring pool . As a result , IT recruiters need not despair when looking for new talent as they can draw on candidates outside of the traditional IT field .
Furthermore , where hard skills are necessary ( from fixing equipment to navigating tech platforms ), these can be trained and upskilled to new hires . Taking a more open-minded approach to IT skills also enables companies to invest in previously ignored talent pools , such as the under-represented older generation .
Golden opportunity
Rather than viewing candidates with an absence of hard skills as ‘ bad hires ’, the gear-shift in how IT is operating provides an opportunity for leaders to recruit a new type of employee . Taking this new attitude will enable leaders to close the persistent skills gap in the industry , through both reskilling and upskilling . x
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