How does Bill Belichick understand how to find talent in raw, under-ranked receivers? For many years, it seemed as though Bill was a genius. How did he innately understand which players had what it takes to outperform all the rest? In actuality, he can attribute this luck to attracting and mentoring one of the best quarterbacks to ever play football. The technology industry has many similarities to the professional sports world when recruiting and retaining talent.
The Need for Scalable and Repeatable Processes
Often, in the technology space, small companies started by engineers are able to cover missing processes and procedures and function fairly “well” with no standards in place. However, the IT industry is highly competitive, and the race to the top compensation and the ever-present race to the bottom of commodity services make this scenario next to impossible to achieve and support. This model is only scalable and sustainable in the highly competitive IT world, with the best possible talent on your team.
Thus, we arrive back to the age-old problem of making scalable and repeatable processes that enable mid and entry-level technicians to continually deliver the high-quality standard that businesses have grown accustomed to.
How does Vancord do this?
Vancord’s Approach: Invest in Your Team
Our mantra is to enable people with the right process and toolsets to deliver best-of-breed to our customers 24/7×365. Of course, this is easy to say and challenging to deliver.
Many smaller companies achieve this success by having their top engineers deliver everything, address all escalations, and work around the clock. In scenarios like this, the search to find the next “Tom Brady” of engineers begins.
So, where to start? Internally!
There may be really good, even exceptional, players on your team who can evolve into the next quarterback for your organization when you mix in coaching, support, and the right tools and processes.
Let’s put the sports analogies aside for a moment.
Retain Talent: Your Team is Your Future
After out-sourcing level 1 technicians some years back, Vancord realized that maintaining level 1 support in-house is, in fact, a breeding ground for up-and-coming talent. This strategy is an easy way to continue harnessing the IT talent recruiting market while building the next generation of support. We find young and eager individuals, insert them into our MSP “pressure cooker,” and out the other side comes our level 2 and 3 engineers that, when armed with the appropriate amount of process, toolset, and training, can deliver the highest level of service to our Fortune 1000 customers. With enough luck, you can end up with a homegrown Patrick Mahomes!
Check out our recent article on keeping your engineers invested and happy – and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest IT news and insights.
