Now hiring: Channel partners actively recruiting on what they look for in a candidate
As the job market heats up around September, three channel partners who are actively hiring discuss candidate preferences and culture
Titan Data Solutions
Having gone from a pandemic start-up into a thriving specialist distributor, Titan Data Solutions is "always recruiting", sales director Steve Low tells CRN.
At the moment, however, technical skills are in focus.
"We've grown rapidly, meaning we're always looking for new people and always recruiting and we are also creating new roles."
As a smaller company with wide reach, counting 30-odd employees among its ranks, Titan values breadth and flexibility in new recruits.
"I think the industry is quite stagnant in terms of job titles.
"Looking at the demographic currently making business decisions within the channel, it's a completely new audience.
"And I feel like the way the channel is set up is actually quite static in the way people communicate to that new demographic," Low explains.
Titan is also recruiting in sales and marketing, but currently a big focus is a newly created technical services role, which Low hopes to eventually build a team around.
"We're looking for an individual for this role, because it makes us more relevant to our vendor community and to our customers.
"What you often have is a fantastic proposition and product, but where we can add more value is by bringing in someone to build a professional service around the deployment of that technology."
According to Low, the way that a lot of channel professionals build their early careers tends to be led by vendor education.
Instead, Titan is looking for hires that can speak to multiple different vendors' technologies with competence and ease.
"This, firstly, takes the pressure off the vendor for internal recruitment, while they build up business in the UK. Secondly, a lot of our resellers tend to be Tier 1 focused and that's the way the industry is led.
"But the way that everyone trains people in our channel is funded by the vendors.
"And so you'll get many people who are very well trained on Tier 1 tech, but not from an agnostic perspective.
"So I don't necessarily think it's a skills gap - good people are everywhere.
"I just think the syllabus is lacking and it's led by manufacturers rather than being agnostic."
Barring his wider comments on industry trends, Low is optimistic about talent availability, and open to pulling from a broad set of career backgrounds for open roles at Titan.
"We do use recruitment - the deeper the specialism of the role, the more reliant we are on it.
"And we do recruit from vendors as well. But for us it's important that a candidate has worked at more than one and has a more well-rounded view," he says.
"We find ourselves speaking to candidates with an end-user background too, in fact we hired somebody from the end-user side a few months ago.
"Taking a step back, we're speaking to end customers all the time and there's people who do it for a living.
"To bring them into our world is a bit of an education, but yes, end-user sales is something we've looked at as a recruitment pool."
Logicalis
Maidenhead-headquartered MSP Logicalis has several open roles in September, UK&I CEO Alex Louth confirmed to CRN this week.
"We're hiring now. We've got a number of open roles pretty much throughout our whole organisation," he says.
However, the CEO emphasised the rigour of the company's hiring process, stating: "We are picky. We want to be picky. We do get moaned at by recruiters that our recruitment process is too drawn out.
"But you know what I think it's worth it to get the right individuals at the end."
The Cisco and Microsoft partner invests heavily in retention, with Louth stating: "But we balance that with a strong onboarding process, not just ‘here's your laptop now work, get on with it'.
"We have a very strong, engaged process with HR and the local teams."
