How To Attract and Retain Top ISP Tech Talent

Part 2: Attracting Top Technical Talent

The quality of your ISP (and your subscribers' perception of it) will be affected by the quality of your technical staff. This two-part article will delve into the basics of recruiting and retaining top-notch networking technicians, and provide some insights into immediate strategies that you can deploy to strengthen your ISP's ability to attract and retain tech talent.

Also read Part 1: Retaining Top Technical Talent.

by Christopher Knight

In order to attract top tech talent, your ISP must have a reputation of being a top ISP or employer of choice. This creates a paradoxical problem in that if your ISP is not number one in your market, how do you attract number one type technicians?

The answer is that you can create a goal to build your tech staff in phases by over-compensating with increased interpersonal communication and increased pay until you are number one, in which case the same increased compensation and communication needs will exist.

Gorilla top talent attraction principle number 1: Get to know your competitors' top tech talent via participating in local Linux or network or operating system user groups in your area. In getting to know them, you can begin trying to convince them that the grass is greener over at your ISP. Know that your competitors are already doing this to you.

Pay now or Pay later
Don't be afraid to pay for top talent. If you under-pay, you often end up paying twice, once for the problems your technical staff is incompetent in solving and once more for the expensive outside talent you had to bring in to help solve those problems in the end.

(Now, all of you techies who are reading this, don't haul off and print this out for your boss to read, because the amount of money you make must be in direct proportion to the economic value that you create, and if you are underpaid, the marketplace will make sure you get more money or your ISP will help you get more money so that they can retain your services.)

Word of mouth and happy existing top talent will help attract more top tech talent
Offer your on-staff techies a bounty, such as $200, paid $100 upon the signing of one of their friends or acquaintances who gets hired and $100 upon their friend or referral making 90 days of employment with your ISP. Often times they will know of at least one or two other techies at your competitors or at a noncompetitor such as a corporate employer who might be dissatisfied with their current employer and be interested in a new job.

Writing your help wanted ads
Before you place another recruiting ad in your local newspaper for technical staff, try the popular online services, such as dice.com, monster.com, hotjobs.com. Also, every state has at least one state-specific online job service on which you can promote your position for interested job seekers.

When doing recruiting, make sure you identify how the candidates found you, so that in future searches you can place less emphasis on the media that didn't produce the most qualified candidates and more on the ones that did.

Lastly, when you write your ads, make sure you list the benefits and pay first, and then the job responsibilities. Every techie — and most other humans for that matter — always wants to know what is in it for them first, and what they will have to do second.

To Your ISP Tech Hiring Success!

Christopher ("Sparky") Knight
Founder & Managing Editor of the ISP-Lists Discussion Community

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