MSPs Provide Hiring, Training Advice At Channel Transitions Newark
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
At Channel Transitions Newark powered by Business Solutions Magazine, three managed services providers (MSPs) offered advice for you regarding hiring and training employees as you grow your managed services business.
Tom Clancy, co-founder of services providers Valiant Technology, Marshall Wright, CEO of managed services provider DeckerWright, and Dale Walls, president of solution provider Corsica Technologies all agreed you need to start with the Jim Collins approach, which is to “get the right people on the bus, and get them the right seat.”
Wright stated that “My take on the MSP model is that it’s more about customer relationships. The technology becomes a magic black box that your highly skilled technical staff takes care of and it’s more about the customer relationship developing, so there’s a difference in the person you are looking for.”
Walls concurred: “You need guys who are willing to represent you and the customers and going to like dealing with them, so I think having good communication skills as well as the discipline to follow our standards as well is crucial.”
Wright added, “I will tell you that 50 percent of the people that apply for any job out there can’t follow instructions. There’s another 25 percent that fall out from following the steps, so immediately my pool is reduced. If they survive the initial screening, and then they survive the first interview, then we put them through the DISC test.” The DISC personality tests helps you understand a candidate’s personality by describing it in terms of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness — and can help you decide if the candidate is a good fit for a particular type of work.
Clancy also advised testing, citing a comment from Gary Wonderlic, who created the Wonderlic personality test: “He made the point that we as IT people will spend a lot of money and time testing a 500 dollar laser printer, but we will spend no time testing a 56,000 dollar a year employee.”
When it comes to training, Clancy said his company requires every engineer to earn at least one industry certification annually. He said the type of certification is up to the individual employees, although they do provide a list of certifications that are preferred.
Walls agreed, “The training for certifications opens up their eyes to things that maybe they haven’t seen before.”
Wright emphasized, “Never forget the training vendors want to give you. If you can use the training, go and get certified, because that just makes you a better player in their channel.”
Clancy also said his company uses CBCET Nuggets, a website that provides theories and videos for training. Valiant also holds weekly training sessions on Fridays after work. “Sometimes the training is purely technical, sometimes it’s internal processes. What we found is that Friday training segues into Friday happy hour,” he comments. “That’s ok by me. I know that they’re a better team, better aligned, more tightly bound and we’re in this together.”
Business Solutions held Channel Transitions at the DoubleTree Newark Airport on June 4, 2015. Platinum sponsors were MAXfocus from LogicNow and Mercury Payment Systems, a Vantiv Company, and industry association partners were The ASCII Group, CompTIA, and the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA).