Hiring People: Choosing between skills and attitude.

Hiring the right IT worker is one of the most critical job an IT manager faces on a regular basis. In most cases, we look into the candidate's skill sets first to see if it fits our requirements, followed by work experience and lastly, the character or attitude. When I started out as a new IT manager, I obviously wanted to hire the best people so, I dug deep and looked very closely into their skills and work experience. The more skillful and experienced a candidate become, the more likely he gets hired. Attitude is often times overlooked.

This method of qualifying a candidate has been a wide practice among many companies (mine included) over a long period and noticeably, it coincided with my also long unsuccessful stint of selecting a potential candidate. After several years of interviewing a vast mix of candidates and hiring experience, I finally came up with a conclusion that there are only two types of candidates: 1) Candidates that have skills and 2) Candidates that have the right attitude.

Candidates that have skills - These come in moderate abundance and competition is very rigid. They are usually the more confident types and more expensive ones as well. They are very employable and understandably so, you would most likely hire them on your team. We tend think that these are the people that can get the job done every time .

Candidates that have attitude – These come very few and often times overlooked by many employers. These candidates have somewhat 'weak' skills but have the right attitude towards work. They are dedicated, humble, excited and very willing to learn new things.

As a CTO, I have always hired countless candidates with high skills and experience so I can comfortably fall back to my usual task and let the new guy handle the job. Despite the high pay and benefits, I always end up losing them due to varied attitude problems. Luckily for me, I had the opportunity to experiment on hiring the second type of candidate – the ones with attitude.

The second type of candidate takes me out of my comfort zone to train and nurture . They are always willing to accept new challenges and finds fun in solving them. Learning is their way of life and are always excited to learn new things. This type of individual struck me at first for I haven't had that type of staff before – very enthusiastic, personable and certainly dedicated. This candidate will surely go along way.

In conclusion, skills are short-term and can easily fade in time. No one gets remembered for long on skills alone but attitude does. Skill is something that can be trained, learned and developed. Attitude isn't. Attitude on the other hand is molded by an individual's social experiences and outlook. Attitude has more value that a ton of gold. So when hiring a new set of people, dare to look and hire the second candidate. You will be surely amazed at what he can do for you can for your company.

Better by Design - A User Interface Heuristics

Here are some simple rule-of-thumb when designing user interfaces for your projects. Try to adhere to this simple yet practical approach and make it work for you to make your project a success!

1. Usefulness:
• Upon developing a product, the specifications must be almost entirely centered around what people need and not what you think is hip or advanced. The focus should be on people's needs and what makes them more productive and well-informed once they start using your product.
2. Fast:
• Nothing is more valuable to anyone than the end-user's time. It should get to their destination fast. This means cutting down on load times and page clicks whenever possible. Every millisecond counts so cut all the unwanted 'fat' out!
3. Simple:
• "True refinement seeks simplicity" -Bruce Lee. Things of beauty always come from simple things. Use natural colors and simple components so it can be readily accepted by end-users. Proper selection of icons and images are included as well. Use minimalist approach whenever possible.

4. Clean/Organized:
• Avoid information clutter. Display only information that are most used. Tuck away those that aren't. Provide an easy way where users can easily find what they are looking for.

5. Personable:

• Allow customization. Create an environment where users can be comfortable on the choices of information and features they want. Personalization must be limited and must not get in the way of the principles of simplicity.

5. Consistent:
• Design and layout must be uniform all throughout the application that will make user increasingly familiar as they use the application.
6. Unique:
• Make a design that is identifiable to you. An interface design that reflects the type and culture of end-users. This creates your brand uniquely identifiable among other applications in the market.

OpenDNS – For Network Security and Speed!

As my efforts continue to focus more on our Company's strengths by moving our IT services externally, I have unearth another service that will help streamline system administration tasks – thanks to OpenDNS.

One, sometimes annoying, tasks a System Administrator handles on a daily basis is to monitor network and internet activity. Primary reason is to manage users from visiting sites that may cause network congestion, expose security risks and decrease worker productivity. Despite the existing policies that are in place, this activity takes a significant amount of time from the system administrator.

OpenDNS is a another reliable and free DNS service that will definitely takeaway unnecessary workload from your system administrator to focus more on another important tasks.

OpenDNS boasts the following features to help speedup and secure your internet connectivity:

• Content Filtering,
• Phishing Protection,
• Domain Blocking,
• Adult Site Blocking,
• Web Proxy Blocking,
• and Domain Whitelisting

Setup is very easy for fixed or dynamic IP users. All it takes is to sign-up and configure your PC or router to point to their DNS servers and voila! You're all setup and just forget about it. You may optionally customize your filter to additionally block unwanted sites say, mail.yahoo.com.

Technology for the Masses

I am starting personal advocacy movement which I call "Practical and Affordable Technology for the Filipino Masses".

It's a free service (consultancy, training and setup) centered on schools, foundations, organizations and small to medium-sized enterprises. The main goal here is to deliver a more focused, practical technology solutions on a shoestring budget.

What specific services can I deliver?

Much of the services I can share were all founded on my experience as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of our company. Adopting and compiling all the best practices that will surely bring down IT spending while at the same, hitting your organization's bottom-lines. The service are as follows:

• Migration, setup and training of your corporate email, calendar, online document management, instant messaging, and corporate intranet on a single-sign-on service.

• Setup and manage your corporate servers for webhosting, database, file-sharing, and security.

• Maximizing PC utilization by splitting to multiple PC workstations. No additional hardware 'splitters' or software licenses needed.

• IT Service Management (ITSM) Implementation.

• Establishing a System of Policies and Procedures for your IT Department.

• Document and Record Control (for ISO preparedness)

• a hassle-free and straight forward approach to IT Service Request Management.

Is it really free?

All my services are free but there may be other dependent services that aren't. An example of such is webhosting or DNS services which requires some reasonable fees to be paid. In most cases, all other dependent services that I include in my services are free or may require small fees to be paid to other third-party service providers.

Who can avail of my services?

Anyone who wants to cut back on IT spending or organizations that want to deliver more for less can apply. No hidden charges, no fees, no special favors – nada!

Schools, church groups, foundations and other civic organizations will be given high priority. For organizations or companies outside Cebu wishing to avail of my services, all incidental expenses will have to be covered by them since I have two kids I put in school and don't have that ready cash to donate.

Am I hiring people for help?

No. But I would definitely need people who share the same values I have and volunteer to help me. Any small amount of help will be of great value to me most specially to people who would need it the most.

Contact me

If you're interested, drop me a mail at my email address and leave your name and phone number. I will try to answer all your queries as much as possible so please be patient.

dan.dumaraos@kainoshealth.net

The best FREE alternative to MS Office Suite

IBM's Lotus Symphony -

the best FREE alternative to MS Office Suite.

I found a really, really, really wonderful office application that really makes me feel comfortable working and very excited to tell everyone! It's IBM's variant of OpenOffice Suite called Lotus Symphony.

Lotus Symphony was based on OpenOffice infrastructure but has much more of a homey feel like MS Office. It's well designed interface makes it easy for beginners or long-time MS Office users to make the switch.

The wonderful key features of Lotus Symphony are as follows:

• Well organized interface design. All document types open up in a single window as tabs. Much like how Firefox browser opens new pages in a tab. All documents have a single uniform tools bar and some properties of objects may be manipulated from its sidebar located on the right window.

• Windows formats are supported. Just like its predecessor, Symphony can open any MS Office document formats may it be spreadsheet, document, or presentation. It's default format for saving document is ODT or open document format.

• Lightweight. It has small installable file and open really fast. Also utilizes small amount of memory unlike its predecessor.

I would say that this app will surely be an MS Office killer! I made the switch and moving my entire company's office suite to this one.