Who to hire?

[fly]

We're a small business and need someone to carry out a variety of IT tasks, including:
- Create/maintain WordPress sites
- Basic tech support for ~10 users
- Gathering data from various systems (AdWords, CRM, etc) and producing Excel reports
- Software testing for a system we're building

We're a small business, we all wear many hats and no two days are the same.

My preference would be to get a web developer with ~2 years experience, so they can hit the ground running with things like WordPress/PHP/JS/etc. But this will be a small part of the job - maybe 30% at best.

But I worry that a web developer won't want to dilute their CV - they'll want to focus on development, and we don't have enough of that to keep them happy.

Would we be better looking for a tech support person with WordPress experience? Or just a keen IT graduate? Or something else?
We won't have time to provide training so would rather get someone who can already get things done.

[Blanchimont]

fly said:

We're a small business and need someone to carry out a variety of IT tasks, including:
- Create/maintain WordPress sites
- Basic tech support for ~10 users
- Gathering data from various systems (AdWords, CRM, etc) and producing Excel reports
- Software testing for a system we're building

The issue may be that any Web developers will want to focus entirely on that aspect. The other support stuff won't appeal, and as it's a low amount of web work, you won't get many bits from a webdev.

It may be worth getting a good all rounder, and teaching them the wordpress stuff.

[rog007]

fly said:

We're a small business and need someone to carry out a variety of IT tasks, including:
- Create/maintain WordPress sites
- Basic tech support for ~10 users
- Gathering data from various systems (AdWords, CRM, etc) and producing Excel reports
- Software testing for a system we're building

We're a small business, we all wear many hats and no two days are the same.

My preference would be to get a web developer with ~2 years experience, so they can hit the ground running with things like WordPress/PHP/JS/etc. But this will be a small part of the job - maybe 30% at best.

But I worry that a web developer won't want to dilute their CV - they'll want to focus on development, and we don't have enough of that to keep them happy.

Would we be better looking for a tech support person with WordPress experience? Or just a keen IT graduate? Or something else?
We won't have time to provide training so would rather get someone who can already get things done.

Don’t worry about what they’re currently called; write the job description and advertise for what you want.

Not having time to train an employee? I’d advise anyone not to work for an outfit with that attitude I’m afraid.

Using ‘x years of experience ‘ as an indicator of competence is usually flawed; they may have been underperforming for those years. Use outcomes as a better measure of competence.

Hope that little helps

[bitchstewie]

Being blunt you're not selling it well.

Someone who's doing help desk type stuff probably isn't going to want to be turned into a web-developer and an Excel report Monkey.

Someone who's doing development type stuff probably isn't going to want to be turned into a help desk person and an Excel report Monkey.

An apprentice will need training and you don't want to do offer that.

I'd be curious what the salary is for this opportunity?

[deckster]

Ignore what the basic day-to-day tasks are; as you say, you're a small company and you all wear many hats.

What is the aim of the job? What role are they playing in the business? How do you expect it to grow? What would a successful applicant be doing in 5 years time? What value do you need them to bring to the organisation?

A well-crafted role description will go much further to attracting good applicants than a simple list of 'things what we need doing' - and also will help to focus your thoughts on exactly why you need somebody to do these things.

[leemanning]

The things you are looking for are very different skillsets. I would suggest that for anyone to be truly good at one of them, they will probably be lacking in the other areas. Unless you already know somebody proficient in all areas, I would think that running a job ad for this role will through up all manner of candidates and unless you intrinsically understand each of the 4 parts of the tasks, you'll have issues hiring the right person.

The only thing similar between web development and tech support is that they both use a computer - other than that they're completely different roles.

My advice would be to pay external companies to do the web development and tech support (as they're in abundance). For instance, you're probably looking at about £350 per month to have your 10 users on an inclusive IT support contract. Maintaining Wordpress, depends on the sites and complexity and the number of changes a month, but I would suggest that a Wordpress site kept ticking along with news articles, a small amount of new monthly content and a few bits of maintenance & backup would be around £550 a month.

Then you can focus on getting somebody with the skill set of coding and product development. Any coders are likely to be able to write you Macro's for your Excel tasks too.

[Australiam]

bhstewie said:

Being blunt you're not selling it well.

Someone who's doing help desk type stuff probably isn't going to want to be turned into a web-developer and an Excel report Monkey.

Someone who's doing development type stuff probably isn't going to want to be turned into a help desk person and an Excel report Monkey.

An apprentice will need training and you don't want to do offer that.

I'd be curious what the salary is for this opportunity?

I agree.

Whilst you know what you want, you are looking for 3 distinct areas (I started my career in tech support, and there is no way I would have been interested in the other 2 areas) - unless you go for a novice or retiree, I think there will be few people interested in this mix.

As another comment says, I think you need to either consider making this an 'Entry' into IT job, and target that audience with some of the suggestions already mentioned or look at outsourcing 1 or more of the elements (I suggest either the dev or tech support options).