Hire age (and experience)

Your team may be racially diverse, but how age-balanced is it? IT maintains a myth that younger is better. And as bosses, we want to be looked up to, so for some of us, it's almost inconceivable to fill entry-level positions with people as old as our grandfathers. Even worse, we figure, would be to hire someone who held a position like ours at some point earlier in his career.

But it's actually a smart move. You're hiring someone who is able to do more but chooses not to. I know of two retired IT workers who enjoy their "easy" jobs -- easy in the sense that they have no supervisory responsibilities. Their managers like them because they're reliable, get along well with everybody and, most important, do good work.

More than one manager has told me that old people are risky because they are going to work for just a few more years. But most young employees change jobs every 12 to 15 months. Hire someone who's 50, 57 or 63, and he'll likely be around a lot longer than that. And get over being threatened by somebody who could do your job -- they don't want it. If they did, they'd be leveraging all that life experience into your boss's job, not yours.

In a recession year, it's easy to find lots of candidates but still just as hard to find the right candidate for the job. You'll get better results if you hire the hungry, the team-focused and the mature.

Virginia Robbins is a former CIO who is currently the chief administrative officer responsible for bank operations at the California Bank of Commerce. You can contact her at vrobbins@sbcglobal.net.