Several folks have asked me recently how we’re able to find good people to work at Dynamic Edge. How we can tell when someone is going to be a good fit. How we decide on who to hire, and who to pass up. I had described the outcome of our hiring process about a year ago, but thought it very fitting to revisit the topic of how to hire, specifically describing how we hire.
First, let’s recap the facts:
Dynamic Edge remains VERY selective when it comes to hiring high quality technicians. As we reported in 2015, we hire under 3% of applicants that apply to work at our company. To put this hiring rate in context, Deloitte (considered one of the toughest consulting firms to land a job) has a hiring rate of just over 3.5%— a number they consider being highly selective.
So, how do we find the best people to work at Dynamic Edge?
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Recent reports suggest Eastern Block European countries may start seeking Russia for security-related concerns. What these reports don’t underscore is that there may be implications for your business! I want to take a few moments to explain how Russian influence may increase your cyber security vulnerabilities.
What is all this about eastern block countries seeking Russian protection?
A recent Gallup poll of 4 NATO countries—specifically Bulgaria, Greece, Slovenia and Turkey—has suggested that popular sentiment is leaning TOWARDS Russian support and away from the US. People in those countries are feeling that Russian policies may be better in their self-interest than those of Americans.
Russian cyber security threats persist to riddle American businesses of all sizes A recent forensics report on ransomware identified that over 1.4 million businesses were hit by ransomware last year. What’s startling is that over 75% of ransomware has been developed by Russian speaking cyber criminals.
What’s even more concerning is that Russia is ACTIVELY swaying eastern Europe.
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How many times have you heard the word “Trump” today?
It doesn’t matter where your staff fall on the political spectrum. One thing is clear—EVERYONE (even people without a single political bone in their bodies) is talking about something related to politics. And it’s become strikingly clear that your staff are talking about politics too (ON THE JOB!). In fact, in a recent poll by Betterworks, 87% of workers read about politics on social media during the work day. 77% have conversations during the workday.
And guess what?
It typically takes 23 minutes to resume work at full mental capacity after distractions. So on top of having a workforce that is distracted more often than not by social media and the 24-hour news cycle blasting up-to-the-minute political news, every time a new announcement or post comes out, it is taking your staff an additional 20 minutes or more to get back to fully functioning?
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I was searching online for the right bouquet of flowers to send a friend yesterday and had decided to visit one of half a dozen national flower chains—one that I had used in the past. After navigating from the homepage to the birthday flowers section, I clicked on the purchase button and nothing happened. At first I thought it was an issue with my computer. But after trying to make a purchase from my phone, I realized, their site was “sort of not working”. Pages were loading, but the site was NOT fully functional. The most important part—the PAYMENT pages—were offline. A few minutes later, I realized that this flower website was hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and was affected by the MAJOR outage experienced by millions. Around noon eastern, AWS reported a major outage to customers across the United States. In fact, millions of American customers were struggling with accessing their data—many of which were websites (Amazon hosts nearly 150 THOUSAND websites).
Amazon’s web services is currently one of the largest web hosting providers in the US. When an outage occurs and you’re impacted, you’re just another number. I could only imagine having my website hosted by a company that large resolving a HUGE outage.
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Did someone just try to PHISH Me?
I want to start with a personal story. Last week, I received this very realistic (and Sneaky) email from who I thought on Initial inspection was American Express.
I saw the AMEX logo, A gold card that kind of looked quite similar to my card (although on second thought my card was platinum).
The message: someone from China had attempted to use my account!
How terrible! I need to take action Now!—that was my initial thoughts (and I’m sure I wouldn’t have been alone!).
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Why you can’t just go with a solo guy that helped your husband’s company last week.
Just like that old story about the man that was too busy shoveling snow that he had no time to use the snow blower, having the wrong IT Support—inadequate or under-qualified—is constantly costing businesses much more than simply their costs for the IT guy. Recently I had been talking to a couple of prospective clients that really wanted enterprise-level IT support, but had an awfully hard time justifying the cost of it. Because all business owners think about costs, I wanted to plainly lay out why getting ‘bargain IT Support’ may end up costing more money, more headaches and more risk than you might have ever expected. And as you think about IT costs, consider whether you are using a shovel or a snow blower to dig out of a blizzard and how is that shovel slowing you down?
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