Just when you thought the hard part was over, an equally challenging task has presented itself: acclimating your new hire to the company and the new job. You feel good about the candidate you’ve just hired, even if this individual doesn’t have all the technical skills you initially required.

Getting your new employee up and running smoothly requires putting together a smart strategy. After all the work you’ve done during the hiring process, you want to make sure the new employee is satisfied, motivated, productive and stays with the company a long time.

Even if your HR department has New Hire policies and procedures in place, it still helps to go the extra mile. According to the Aberdeen Group, “the relationship between the new employee and the manager is the determining factor in whether the new employee stays with an organization.” First impressions mean everything when it comes to the first few days on the job, and your responsibility entails making sure your new employee’s experience is nothing less than stellar.

If you’ve been recruiting for a hard-to-find skill set, you’ve likely been pretty desperate to have this employee on board for quite awhile. But don’t turn on the fire hose just yet. It’s not realistic to expect a new employee to start performing miracles for you on Day 1.

We recommend that you do a little homework and set a plan for three important areas: orientation, setting up a buddy system, and establishing training expectations.

Laying the Groundwork with Orientation

For many companies, orientation is a half-day event where new employees fill out paperwork and review the employee handbook. That’s sad, because it can—and should—be so much more than that.

Make sure orientation covers everything that will make the employee feel self-sufficient and comfortable in their new role. And most importantly, that it reinforces his decision to join your team. The more you can make the employee feel like an insider, the faster he’ll get to doing his job effectively.

Truthfully, “orientation” should begin before your new hire’s first day to give him a big head start before day one. Getting an early start is the best way to ensure a seamless transition. Before orientation—heck, before the first day—do the following activities:

• Plan the employee’s first lunch (plus who will participate)
• Provide the employee with a first-day schedule
• Plan a company or facility tour
• Email the team who will be working with the new hire and cc the employee to facilitate introductions
• Clear your schedule as much as possible, but especially at the beginning and end of the day

Employ the Buddy System

Pairing your new employee with a veteran employee is not only a good idea, but also strategic. Your new hire may be hesitant to ask questions to you or HR, but she’ll most likely feel more comfortable with a peer. And in the event she does run up against a challenge, an encouraging buddy might get her through the problem and empower her to seek solutions independently or collaboratively.

Keep in mind that a buddy is not a substitute for a mentor, boss, or HR professional, but part of the overall support system.

Put Together the Training Plan

Training: It’s the last piece of the puzzle need to get your new hire up and running in a reasonable, productive timeframe.

During the interview process should’ve already assessed—and addressed—any technical gaps or deficiencies that the individual will need to do the job well.

While technology can be one of the best methods to meeting training needs, also consider traditional classroom training within or outside of the organization. Better yet, rounding out a training curriculum with active and hands-on learning will be even more effective.

Lastly, make sure the employee clearly understands the parameters around his training: what he’s expected to learn, how long he’ll be in training and if he’ll be tested or evaluated further.

Just remember: your new employee’s success is your success. Set expectations, communicate regularly, make yourself available and never assume anything.

Be Flexible to Find the “Perfect” Candidate

In a perfect world, recruiting a candidate to fit a technical job opening goes something like this: You write the job description with a perfect balance of the job’s “needs” in addition to “nice-to-have’s.” You hand off the opening to your favorite IT recruiting company, sit back, and are soon presented with several pre-qualified candidates with impressive resumes.
After interviewing your top 3 picks, you bring back the most qualified candidate and make an offer which is eagerly accepted. Then you pat yourself on the back for another great hire.

Today, the process of finding top candidates rarely goes that smoothly. This seems to especially be the case when you have a job to fill that requires a rare, competitive set of technical skills.

So what exactly do you do when you’re presented with a list of solid candidates who frankly, just don’t look perfect on paper? To answer that question we have to look further into the age old debate: what’s more important—hard skills or soft skills?

Soft Skills or Hard Skills? What Sets Superior Performers Apart

The first thing you have to do (aside from reigning in your disappointment), is define the hard skills and soft skills required to do the job well.

Soft skills are known as a set of skills relating to a collection of personal, positive attributes and competencies that enhance relationships, job performance, and value to the market. Hard skills are a specific set of trainable abilities needed to carry out the technical requirements of a job.

When it becomes a challenge to find a candidate with the right hard skills, it becomes your job to assess and identify candidates who may not be the most “experienced,” but who have the potential to be the best overall fit with the right technical foundation.

The truth is, hard skills can be learned in school and from books. So if you’re unable to find a very specific technical skillet, find a candidate who is enthusiastic, trainable, and eager to learn. If the skills can be developed with a little training and mentorship, then hiring a solid, intelligent candidate is a smart move.

If You Can’t Find an Exact DNA Match, What Key Skills Should You Look For?

According to a Wall Street Journal article, Why Companies Aren’t Getting the Employees They Need, writer and Professor Peter Cappelli states that companies “need to drop the idea of finding perfect candidates and look for people who could do the job with a bit of training and practice.”

If a candidate is truly talented but doesn’t ideally fit the bill, take a look at their soft skills and think twice before writing them off. According to an article by MSN Career, the most impressive soft skills job candidates can possess are:

1. Preparation
2. Initiative
3. Sense of humor
4. Passion
5. Confidence
6. Professionalism
7. Body language
8. Longevity
9. Communication
10. Attitude

In addition to the traits featured in the MSN article, we’d like to go one step further and contribute the soft skills and characteristics that we’ve seen in superior performers:

• Intelligence: Does the candidate have the ability to apply themselves and what they’ve learned? Can he or she acquire and utilize knowledge and skills?
• Sense of ownership: Great candidates have a good idea of what they’re capable of and how that fits into an organization. He or she should be able to communicate this trait through stories and examples.
• Analytical: Can the candidate grasp and process information quickly? Understanding and applying information in a tactical and strategic manner is an extremely important attribute.

In the end, if you have found a good fit (not a perfect fit) with a candidate who is eager to learn, possesses intelligence and is teachable, then make the hire. Odds are you won’t be disappointed.

The new year feels like a breath of fresh air as IT trends reflect growing economic optimism. While challenges remain, the IT job market is seeing signs of life with increased hiring and slight growth in salaries for IT positions across the board.

Keep reading for recent data on IT hiring trends, and watch for our upcoming Market Pulse newsletter with more in-depth analysis of the IT job market.

IT Trends to Watch in 2012

Janco Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that conducts semi-annual salary surveys reports additional trends to watch in 2012. As competition for top talent grows and compensation begins to increase, IT professionals will see:

• Growing demand for IT executives in mid-sized companies as the recession comes to an end.
• Accelerating hiring of CIOs, with slight increases in  large enterprises and significant demand in mid-sized firms.
• More opportunity for flexible hours and work schedules, viewed as a low cost /  high value benefit.
• In the last 12 months mean compensation across all IT professions has increased by 0.81% (from $77,604 to $78,229), with an increase from  $73,934 to $74,435 in for mid-sized firms and from $81,273 to $81,644 in large enterprises.

Competition for Top IT talent is on the Upswing in 2012.

According to a Computerworld’s annual Forecast survey, (as reported in TechRepulbic), the top  IT skills for 2012 are:

1. Programming and Application Development, including website development, mobile applications and internal systems. 61% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, up from 44% in the 2010 survey.
2. Proactive Project Managers who can anticipate users needs and translate demands for IT staff.
3. Help Desk/Technical Support staff who can help end users with the proliferation of mobile devices and applications.
4. Networking from VMWare and Citrix to virtualization and cloud computing. Diverse projects and emerging trends drive the need to networking expertise.
5. Business Intelligence to capture new opportunities as employers shirt their focus from recessional cost-cutting to strategic investments in technology.
6. Data Center - The move to the cloud has not slowed the need for IT professionals with expertise in data center operations and systems integration.
7. Web 2.0 and end-to-end social media skills will continue to be in demand, from .Net, AJAX and PHP to  HTML, XML, CSS, Flash and Javascript.
8. Security - While demand is down from  the 2010 survey, security remains stays perennial concern of IT executives to protect business investments and customers’ information.
9. Telecommunications - Demand for IP telephony skill continues, and  those familiar with Cisco IPCC call center systems is strong.

Read the full post here: Top IT Skills Wanted to 2012.

Learn More

To stay current on IT staffing trends, read Agile’s quarterly Market Pulse report. Subscribe to this blog for regular news and updates from Agile. Choose an RSS subscription, or get the weekly email using the “Subscribe” box on the top left side of this page.

Last month, Agile published its Q2 Market Pulse which focused on the increase in IT employment throughout Metro Atlanta and continued confidence in future IT jobs.  Our findings appear to be in-line with IT employment nationally.

Robert Half Technology recently polled 1,400 CIOs and found that 12 percent of companies are planning to increase the number of full-time IT personnel, and half as many are planning cutbacks.  The survey projects a net increase of six percent in IT hiring activity – up two percentage points from last quarter. Agile’s data found IT employment in the Atlanta area had increased 1.4 percent over Q1, and three percent higher from a year ago.

In addition, the survey shows that corporate confidence appears to be on the rise: 92% of CIOs said they are confident of business growth in the next three months. This level of confidence is up five percentage points from last quarter. Our findings on IT job growth only strengthen this level of confidence. Agile found that growth is most dramatic in contract assignments with the number of open assignments growing 75 percent in just three months – up 290 percent since Q1 2010. Contract-to-hire assignments are up almost 10 percent while searches for permanent, full-time IT professionals incrementally increased in Q2 2011. However, compared to Q1 2010 contract-to-hire searches are up almost 110 percent and searches for permanent IT professionals are up almost 42 percent.

The CIOs polled in the Robert Half Technology survey revealed that the most challenging areas to find talent are IT security (18%), networking (17%), data/database management (11%) and help desk/technical support (11%).  In Agile’s Q1 Market Pulse, we identified the skill sets in greatest demand as: network administration (63%), desktop management (50%) and desktop support (43%).   In that issue, many IT enterprises reported they had trouble recruiting information security analysts, database administrators, and computer and information systems analysts last year and anticipate needing more of them in 2011. In addition, the need for web developers, software developers/systems software, computer programmers, and computer systems analysts for the remainder of 2011 was anticipated by the technology leaders polled in our survey.
Regionally, CIOs in the mid-Atlantic plan to do the most IT hiring in the fourth quarter, with 16% of executives anticipating adding staff. From an industry perspective, transportation is the hottest sector for IT hiring.

“CIOs are optimistic but are being careful not to overload their teams with too many projects, given the challenging recruiting environment,” stated John Reed, executive director of Robert Half Technology.  “Right now, companies are focused on the ‘need-to-have’ projects that can enhance security, streamline processes or generate revenue.”

We’re optimistic that the remainer of 2011 will be positive.  Agile’s Q3 Market Pulse will be published later in October.