Hiring a staff member

JamieD · 1st May 2008

Hi,

Can anyone suggest the best place to hire a high level tech support person. They would need strong linux server admin skills, clustering/load balance experience, cpanel experience. Also programming experience in ruby on rails would be a plus.

I would need someone based in the UK who can work from home or their own office. They would be in charge of managing all of our servers and dealing with customers who require higher level technical support.

I would also like some advice on what salary I should expect to pay someone with this skill set. I know it will depend on location (London will be more expensive) but a rough, outside London salary would. To start with the position would probably be on a contract basis with part time hours, but would be expected to be on-call from 9.30-6 Monday-Friday. Contract hours would likely increase with the possibility of becoming a permanent position in the future.

Thanks
Jamie

racksense · 1st May 2008

IMO/E...

There are various places that you could post your own ads and recruit direct.. otherwise you have to deal with the scourge of recruitment agents who are rarely worth the exorbitant fees they charge and the low morals they employ.

Salary wise I would think you would be looking at £20-25k for someone with none-to-basic experience, ~30K+/- for someone with 3yrs experience and ~£40K for someone with some actual real skills of 5yrs+.

I think you're expecting a bit much to be able to find someone who will work part time and then also be on call at the drop of a hat - they're either working part time because they have other commitments or because they only want to work part time.

JamieD · 1st May 2008

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info. That's a good point you bring up about the part time/on call requirement. Basically we do not have enough work at the moment to warrant someone full time, but I do understand the issue. I was thinking of offering a regular salary for the part time hours and then a lower on call rate. The amount of times the tech would be asked to work while on call would be extremely low, I'm thinking between 2-6 times a month, usually on the lower side. If the number of calls went any higher we would look to employ full time.

Where would you advise advertising for this kind of position?

Thanks
Jamie

racksense · 1st May 2008

I understand where you're coming from, I just think it will be very hard to find someone who will fit.

I'll PM you with some suggestions of where to advertise.

cookdn · 1st May 2008

I understand your predicament but I'm with Paul on this. It's going to be difficult to employ somebody on a part-time basis but also expect them to be available on demand at other times.

Somebody is either going to be looking for part-time work because their time is otherwise committed elsewhere, or they are going to be juggling a number of jobs and are not going to be available on-call when you need them.

I sympathise as this one of the growing pains of a small enterprise that needs highly skilled and relatively expensive human resource. I guess it could be a case of taking the cost hit in the short-term of employing somebody full-time in the hope that they help grow the business at a faster rate than would otherwise be possible.

Avoid agencies as they are expensive and in our experience their candidates are on a constant look-out for the next best thing and are only loyal to themselves.

Are there any Colleges and Univerisities in your area? You maybe able to pick up somebody graduating and looking for an opportunity that has some of the skills you are looking for and willing to learn the others relatively quickly.

Best of luck.

JamieD · 2nd May 2008

I think the part time/on call will probably be an issue too, you are right David it is a problem when you get to a certain size but maybe can't afford the expense of a full time staff member. The other thing also is that I don't want to pay someone to twiddle their thumbs for 1/2 the day. They could be used for marketing/sales but this might suitable for a tech to do.

On a slight tangent, are there any outsourced support and/or dedicated server management companies in the UK. I know there is loads based in India but I would not go anywhere near any of them. There is one in the US touch support, who I have used and are very good, there is also one in Canada called hostworks who I hear have a good reputation but I have been unable to find anything even remotely similar in the UK. Those two companies provide end user support, then there are the server monitoring companies too that do not provide end user support. I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows of any support companies with offices and staff in the UK.

Hiring fresh out of university is also an option as they are usually pretty enthusiastic and eager to learn, plus cheaper than a more experienced person.

Jon-NC · 2nd May 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamieD

Hiring fresh out of university is also an option as they are usually pretty enthusiastic and eager to learn, plus cheaper than a more experienced person.

If you get the right person you could potentially have a long term asset to your company. My previous job was a result of a placement year in which I worked my ass off, learnt tonnes and (most importantly) enjoyed it.

A good graduate may require a fair bit of training, that will be an investment into your company.

In my experience universities won't generally teach Linux related stuff. Most cover Databases, Networking and programming (I did Java and Php).

nitrohosting · 2nd May 2008

Jamie - have you tried NetSumo and Goscomb?

PaulB · 2nd May 2008

Finding decent staff is always a challenge - we have used webrecruit in the past - they just post ads on most of the job sites for a fixed fee and gave you your money back if you don't get anyone. Haven't used them for a while so don't know if they still work like that.

othellotech · 2nd May 2008

It could depend on how many hours you're looking to commit to - Netegral an ISP Support Service run by Othello doe server admin, management, and 3rdline support from London for a number of hosts.

In salary terms, you're looking @
~20k 1st line
~30k 2nd line
~50k 3rd line

outside of london is cheaper, but then you have longer times to get to the DC, which can translate to longer downtimes and more peeved clients ...

JamieD · 3rd May 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by nitrohosting

Jamie - have you tried NetSumo and Goscomb?

Thanks for the companies, NetSumo looks interesting, from what I can see on the website though Goscomb doesn't offer outsourced support?

JamieD · 3rd May 2008

I'm starting to thing that using an outsourced support solution would be the way to go initially. None of the UK support companies appear to be easy to find via google unfortunately so I had never heard of any of the companies mentioned so far.

Some of the requirements I would need are:
- 24x7 email support
- Office hours phone support
- Excellent experience with cPanel and Linux (CentOS 5)
- Experience of clustered server environments and load balancing
- MySQL experience
- A very high level of proactive server maintenance and monitoring
- Ability to escalate tickets and contact the DC if needed

As an alternative solution if you are not able to provide server maintenance (but can provide phone/email support) you would need to be able to escalate issues to our existing techs and work with them until an issue is resolved.

What I don't need:
- Onsite support, everything can be done remotely or escalated to the DC

Thanks
Jamie

ephasenetworks · 7th May 2008

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