In an Indeed survey of over 1,000 hiring managers and recruiters, more than half said they'd hired tech talent even when the candidate didn't fully meet the job description. It's a sign of just how creative businesses have had to get to fill IT gaps — and here are five approaches worth considering.
1. Train for Transferable Skills or Hire Recent Grads
Sometimes the fastest path to filling an IT need is training someone already inside the organization — an IT-savvy employee picking up a new programming language, for example. Bringing on interns is also a low-risk way to test cultural fit and see how someone learns, adapts, and works alongside your existing team.
Another option is hiring recent computer science graduates or technical trade school grads and investing in growing them into mid-level contributors. It's a real investment — often a year or more before they're delivering full value — but it builds loyalty and institutional knowledge along the way.
2. Build a Support and Mentor Program
Struggling to find tech talent externally? A structured mentor program paired with junior IT staff can help. The first six months function as an investment period while new hires build skills quickly. By the six-month to one-year mark, they typically start creating real value, though they'll still lean on senior guidance to keep growing and avoid common missteps.
3. Invest in Internal Training and Certification
If you already have solid IT generalists who just need specialized training, certification programs can be a smart investment — provided the person has the aptitude, ambition, and long-term fit for your team. The risk, of course, is that a newly certified employee can take that training and move on to a higher-paying role elsewhere.
4. Share IT Talent with Other Businesses
Smaller companies with fairly basic IT needs sometimes share part-time tech staff with non-competing businesses — a vendor, or another company in the same building — splitting the cost of their time. It can work well for simple needs, but it comes with trade-offs: shared staff may not be available when something breaks, and they're often generalists rather than specialists equipped for more complex problems.
5. Use Strategic IT Staffing Through Augmentation
Every option above takes time and money, and the payoff isn't always immediate. Modern IT needs span both day-to-day maintenance and monitoring, and longer-term strategy for future business needs — a combination that's often hard for a small in-house team or part-time staff to cover on their own.
Gaps in IT coverage can lead to network downtime, sluggish systems, and security exposure from missed patches and updates. Being able to bring in on-demand, advanced-skill professionals alongside your core team can make a real difference to how competitive your business stays.
Partnering with a managed services provider (MSP) gives you access to day-to-day support and long-term technology planning without having to build that bench yourself. The stronger MSPs bring an interconnected set of services, backed by a clear understanding of how to build and execute an IT strategy that actually fits your business goals and culture.
A good MSP relationship can close gaps in both people and tools — covering monitoring, maintenance, security, and vendor management — typically under a set contract that flexes as your needs grow or shrink. You also gain a strategic partner who can help shape your IT, cybersecurity, and virtualization roadmap, keeping your business agile and ready for what's next.
