Dear Bob, I work for a small company with an IT staff of 8. We are currently without a department manager and probably won't hire one until late this year or early next year. When it comes time to hire a new manager all of us will have at least some input into the process. I expect that we, as a group, will have an opportunity to interview the final candidates. We have people with a wide range of skills and job Dear Bob,I work for a small company with an IT staff of 8. We are currently without a department manager and probably won’t hire one until late this year or early next year. When it comes time to hire a new manager all of us will have at least some input into the process. I expect that we, as a group, will have an opportunity to interview the final candidates. We have people with a wide range of skills and job duties, and there is quite a bit of overlap in many of the tasks we do. This is really an issue of managing the IT staff; taking an interest in what our skills are, what training would be most useful, how the daily grind of tasks are being accomplished… What are some questions that we can ask a candidate to address the management of the IT staff?– Wanting a good manager.Dear Wanting … I can’t give you a complete answer to your question, because there is no one-size-fits-all job description for IT director. A lot depends on the issues that currently need the most attention. If your technical architecture is a mess, for example, an emphasis on business acumen isn’t your top priority, where if the biggest issue is a lack of trust between business and IT, focusing on technical knowledge takes you in the wrong direction.So my most important suggestion is something you’ve probably done already: Get together, agree on the three most important issues facing IT in your company, and develop questions that will help you understand how each candidate would go about addressing them.To give you something to chew on, here are a few topics I’d expect to be important to explore with each candidate given your small size: * Their understanding of the dynamics of small companies and IT organizations. Not all solutions scale down successfully. IT managers from large companies tend to emphasize process to an extent that’s unworkable in small, entrepreneurial situations and as a result impose a level of rigidity that just doesn’t work when you have a staff of generalists.* Sourcing. With a staff of eight it’s unlikely you have all of the expertise the company needs in-house. Beyond the issue of expertise, there will be projects that call for more effort than a staff of eight can muster. So having a strong network of outside resources to draw on, and knowing how and when to draw on them, is likely to be important.* How they onboard. You can gain quite a bit of insight about how a candidate thinks about the job by how he or she plans to spend the first several weeks in the company. In general, what you want to hear is that the candidate plans to do a lot of listening before offering brilliant opinions and bold new directions. * How well they’ll fit with the corporate culture. This is vitally important, It’s also dangerous ground for the interviewing team, given that you’ll end up reporting to the successful candidate. It’s easy for questions in this area to sound self-serving, so remember at all times: They’re interviewing you at the same time you’re interviewing them. Try this: “IT leaders have a lot of different areas in which they can focus their time and attention. In past leadership positions, where have you tended to focus most of your time and energy?”Which brings me to a general suggestion for all questions: Make them behavioral rather than philosophical. “What’s your leadership style?” is far less likely to lead to an answer you can rely on than the question provided above. “Describe a situation in which you needed expertise and staffing beyond what’s available through internal resources, and how you went about sourcing it,” tells you how the candidate behaved in the real world, where, “Describe your philosophy of outsourcing,” just raises red flags in the candidates eyes about the interviewing team’s motives in asking the question.I hope this helps. – Bob ——– Technology Industry