Think Twice Before Hiring an In-house IT Person

Are you considering hiring an in-house IT support person? There are two main reasons for look into doing so:

1) Your company has grown. Perhaps you started it from scratch as a home-based start up, then moved into an office, to a bigger office, and then to your own free-standing building. Along the way, you became aware that the casual or occasional ‘IT Guys’ you had been using just weren’t cutting it anymore.

We at ITFirm.com have seen this familiar scenario: Early on, you had an employee who ‘knew some stuff’ about computers, which was fine when you had three or four stand-alone workstations, But once the company grew into a network situation by doubling or tripling the number of workstations with a centralized server, these individuals quickly became overwhelmed. By that point, you needed to bring in sophisticated, professional IT Support.

2) You got fed up with non-responsive, outsourced IT support and now you want somebody there at all times.

Before you begin interviewing people for an IT department spot on your staff, take a look at the most critical factors:

Do you know what to look for in a candidate? Each company will have some selective criteria, but there is a baseline for experience and competency. It may require a little homework to figure out what you need to look for. According to Glassdoor, these are the minimum requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, a related field, or equivalent experience
• 2-5 years of experience working in IT operations
• Experience leading and managing large IT projects and rolling out IT infrastructures across various technologies
• Excellent working knowledge of computer systems, security, network and systems administration, databases, data storage systems, and phone systems
• Strong critical thinking and decision-making skills
• Excellent project management skills and strong ability to prioritize
• Firm grasp on IT infrastructure and operations best practices

Any viable prospect should also have solid references from former employers concerning their IT capabilities and performance. An HR person with no IT experience may need help evaluating their ‘working knowledge’ of all things IT related.

There are very few IT people with thorough knowledge of everything. Aside from areas of specialization,  there is also the Mac vs. PC issue: Here at ITFirm.com, about 85% of the computers we handle are PCs whereas Macs comprise 15%, and our technical workforce reflects that. Our Mac techs are dedicated to Mac accounts, so the majority of our tech staff is PC oriented.

With an array of talents on payroll, the best Managed Services Providers (MSPs) know when your dedicated technician and backup tech needs the help of a specialist and assign the appropriate person.

Employment cost: Depending on the criteria involved in the calculation, employment costs vary. PolicyAdvice cites the national average salary range for a qualified IT professional as between $75,000 to $100,000 per year. Here’s something to consider: If you are interviewing a candidate that is eager to accept the $40,000 (or less) that you’re offering, it means they are not qualified to go after even the average paying jobs in their industry.

Add company benefits on top of the salary and everything kicks up a good notch. According to the career experts at Zippia.com, the average cost of employee benefits is about 30% above and beyond the employee’s base salary.

Technical setup costs: This factor also varies greatly - it takes a lot to set up your own IT department, so the costs can be minimal or maximal.

Minimal - no monitoring or remote repair capabilities. Just an IT person sitting at a desk waiting for something to go wrong (it will).

If you have only fifteen workstations, you may be willing to put up with a scenario like this playing out:
Your IT person gets a phone call from Jackie that she can’t access something or can’t print etc. The IT person walks to Jackie’s desk, sits down, and starts troubleshooting, at which point Jackie’s productivity stops cold, and if she spends the time chatting with co-workers, their productivity becomes impaired as well. Now multiply this by at least a dozen times a day.

Maximal – You set up your in-house IT like an outsourced Managed IT Services provider. This generally only happens with a minimum of sixty workstations to manage. The minimal scenario above becomes untenable at that point.

Now you need to spend some real money: Ticketing systems, multiple data backups (at least one in the cloud), remote monitoring software in each controlled device – with an overriding RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management) suite, several ancillary IT management and reporting tools, licenses, and subscriptions, among others. Even without the best in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) these costs add up quickly.

What are the benefits of an MSP?

A top-notch MSP (Managed Services Provider) has invested in the best versions of all the tools an internal IT Department needs and has defrayed that cost over their entire client base. You must pay for all those tools just for your own company.

Unlike an internal IT person, your MSP’s team is on your account 24/7/365 – even if somebody wants to work on Christmas or New Year’s Day. No vacations, no sick days, no family emergencies.

Compare the costs:

The average per-user cost for the entire gamut of MSP benefits runs about $100 per user per month.

15 users x $100 = $1500/mo. / $18,000 per year
60 users x $100 = $6,000/mo. /$72,000 per year

Compare the annual 60-user cost of $72,000 for an MSP to the annual cost of employing a fully qualified internal IT manager:
Salary:                   $75,000
+             Benefits:              $21,726
Total:                     $93,726

Bear in mind that this is the annual of cost for only one IT person.

In addition to the hardware/software setup and maintenance costs (depending on the situation and number of end-users, figure on average between $10,000 to $30,000 dollars for the initial setup and ongoing licensing and subscription costs), and you are paying over $100,000 dollars for one person who works 9-5 Monday Through Friday.

With an MSP, you get a fixed budget for an entire team that will ALWAYS be on the job – and will know more and be much faster than your internal IT person. The MSP will never take sick, personal, and vacation days off, you will never have EDD unemployment claims or HR difficulties. In effect, you are John Connor protected by The Terminator of IT: It will always be there for you and will never, ever stop.
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Think of it this way: If you want a donut, you don’t need to buy a bakery.