Managing IT Talent

I recently wrote a paper on new online platforms used for acquiring qualified and skilled IT professionals. New online job posting and freelancer websites that have spawned in recent years have dramatically changed the way managers seek and hire new employees. The ease of sending resumes to potential employers has dramatically increased the amount of resumes that managers must sift through to find qualified applicants, providing several advantages and disadvantages for managers. 

The number of job openings in the IT field has steadily increased and is forecasted to continue to see this trend for years to come (Job Bank Report, 2013). Although there are increased job openings, the number of qualified individuals for IT positions has also seen a rapid growth and with the ability to work remotely, the number of qualified individuals continues to increase as the number of people owning computers and having access to the Internet continues to increase globally. India, for example, has seen a growth in internet usage penetration by over 1000% since the year 2000, making up nearly half of the global internet users as of 2015 (Internet World Stats, 2016). Companies are increasingly outsourcing specific programming skills to freelancer, or subcontract workers, instead of hiring, training, and trying to keep talent within the organization.

Outsourcing projects or parts of a project has both its benefits and disadvantages. For starters, outsourcing projects offers a firm the opportunity to shop around and find the most qualified individual(s) for the job and promote competitive bidding for projects. The latter can have the advantage of driving the cost of the project down. Also, depending on the contractor you decide to go with, the project completion could vary significantly. For instance, say you have a small change to make to an old ASP.net application; you could hire someone that is very adept, promote a price war on the project and more than likely get the job done for a very reasonable price. However, the lower the price, typically means that the contractor is taking on a lot of work and could increase the time to complete the project. However, a lower price could also indicate that the service is being provided by a larger organization that has gained economies of scale allowing them to provide competitive prices and timely service. Therefore, paying more for outsourced services does not necessarily guarantee the most effective solution for the project at hand. It is important to first create a short-list of applicants, then each of these should be evaluated individually, gauging both pros and cons, to find the offer which is most suitable and affordable to the organization's needs.

One of the largest deterrants to outsourcing work would have to be that it can be difficult to keep the contracted employee(s) motivated as they have no long-term association with the company (McKeen, J. D., & Smith, H. A. , 2012). Also, it can sometimes be difficult to coordinate assigned contract employee(s) with the current project team (McKeen, J. D., & Smith, H. A. , 2012). Often, specialists in their field have their own way of doing things and can sometimes be hesitant to work with others; when project members display a clear lack of understanding or competence on the subject matter, the specialists can become quite irritated and resistant to letting them in on the inner-workings of the project. These hired contractors can also be very difficult to get a hold of to perform updates or maintenance as they often have quite a busy schedule. Finally, when work is outsourced and the organization does not become familiar with the new system, or insufficient and/or ineffective communication took place during the project, the organization could be left with a system in which they have no idea how to use, extend, or maintain. There is a significant amount of risk involved when outsourcing work, but hiring and maintaining cohesive project teams with a myriad of skills to accompany all the necessary programming tasks can be quite difficult and expensive.

Considering the risks of outsourcing, it is vital for managers to understand what types of individuals working together produce results in their organization. Every project is unique, every organization is unique; their requirements, goal, risk, and affected parties will all vary: managers must recognize the latter and choose individuals that are suited for the task, meld well with the organization and project team's culture. Budget limitations are also a strong consideration when choosing project members. Some projects might require six or seven different field specialists each with their own area of expertise (security, design and interface, database management, calculus and other mathematics, game physics, software engineering, just to name a few), while others might only need six junior-level programmers, and one senior-level Java programmer. Having too many overqualified project members can be just as taxing on the organization in terms of cost as a delay in time to launch the project due to insufficient talent. The ability to recognize a project's needs at its outset in terms of human and technical resources is a skill in its own, and one that all IT managers should strive to achieve.

McKeen, J. D., & Smith, H. A. (2012). IT strategy: Issues and practices. Boston: Prentice Hall.

Internet World Stats (November, 2015). INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS - The Internet Big Picture - World Internet Users and 2015 Population Stats. Retrieved from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm