Tom Kenaley
Structured interview questions are predetermined, job-specific questions asked in the same order to every candidate, scored against a consistent rubric. For technical hiring, they are the single most reliable predictor of on-the-job performance, with validity coefficients roughly double those of unstructured conversations, and yet most engineering managers still wing it. Fourteen interviews. That is how … Read more
Hiring a mechanical engineer means finding someone who can take a product from napkin sketch to manufactured reality: the CAD models, the tolerance stackups, the material selections, and the arguments with the manufacturing floor. The median base sits around $104,110 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but that number hides enormous variance depending on … Read more
In-House Recruiting vs Staffing Agency: Cost and Speed Comparison In-house recruiting costs less per hire once you’re making 10 or more placements a year, but it’s slower and carries fixed overhead whether you’re hiring or not. A staffing agency charges 15% to 25% of first-year salary per placement, delivers shortlists in 10 to 14 days … Read more
How to Hire a Solutions Architect To hire a solutions architect, first decide between a pre-sales SA (sales-facing, variable pay) and a delivery SA (build-facing, flat base), then screen for the translation skills covered in this IT staffing guide. Hiring a solutions architect is a translator search, not a senior-engineer search. You are looking for … Read more
Skills-Based Hiring: Why Credentials Are Out and Competency Is In Skills-based hiring is a recruitment strategy that evaluates candidates on demonstrated abilities, not diplomas. Companies using it report wider talent pools, stronger retention, and better job performance. The catch is that most companies announcing it aren’t actually doing it, and the gap between the press … Read more
Contingent workforce management is the discipline of sourcing, classifying, paying, and off-boarding non-employee workers (1099s, agency temps, SOW consultants) at a scale that needs its own process. Most companies need a formal program only past roughly $3M in annual contingent spend. Contingent workforce management is how an organization sources, contracts, tracks, pays, and eventually off-ramps … Read more
A skills gap analysis is the process of comparing the skills your team has today to the skills your business actually needs to hit its goals, then deciding what to do about the difference. The deciding part is where almost every company gets stuck. The analysis itself is straightforward. The conversation that has to happen … Read more
To hire remote developers in 2026, pick the legal structure first (direct W-2, US contractor, or employer of record), then vet with an async writing exercise, a paid take-home, and one live system-design interview. Get the structure wrong and the cheapest hire becomes the most expensive one you’ll make this year. Most US companies asking … Read more
A CIO (Chief Information Officer) is the senior executive who owns a company’s entire technology function: strategy, infrastructure, cybersecurity, data, vendor relationships, and the IT budget. The job is to tie every technology decision to a business outcome. A Chief Information Officer runs every piece of technology a company depends on. Strategy, infrastructure, security, vendor … Read more
Oracle’s March 2026 layoffs displaced thousands of OCI-certified cloud engineers with deep experience in infrastructure design, Kubernetes, Terraform, and multi-cloud architecture. Many hold OCI Architect Professional and Multicloud certifications. They’re available now at competitive rates. For companies running AWS, Azure, or GCP workloads, this is a rare window to hire production-tested cloud talent that normally … Read more
