Monday, June 30, 2008
IT Hires Gone Bad
With Chris kicking butt back at the office while I’m out, I started thinking about times in the past where people I had hired didn’t exactly impress me with their skills and decision making. Here are a few examples of times I might have hired the wrong IT person.
- I once forgot to ask one minor question during an interview, “Can you type?” It turned out that I had hired someone who not only couldn’t type, but she was dyslexic too. Let’s just say that “diapering” and “disappearing” have two completely different meanings when trying to diagnose and fix a computer problem.
- We once flew someone on site to a customer’s location and when he returned he brought with him photos of himself doing drugs at the customer’s office. Oh, there were people from the office in the photos too. I almost forgot, he was also naked!
- I was driving to Louisiana one day to be there when my father was having surgery when I got a call asking me if it was possible for me to turn around to come fix a problem. This was a minor issue that anyone else could have handled themselves and I was already about 6 hours from the office!
- It is possible for people to have book knowledge of how to program, but have no clue how to really program.
- A guy once installed HP all-in-one printer drivers on a Citrix application server that many clients connected to (a very bad thing to do) . When one client in Washington state would print (using the all-in-one drivers), it would reboot the server. We got flooded with calls and only figured it out once the client in Washington called saying every time they print they lose their connection to the application.
- I once hired someone who failed to mention to me that she had been previously been fired from one of our partners that she would have to be working closely with. Doh! She didn’t last too long with us either.
