Recruiting for IT assistance is hardest when you're first building your IT team and you don't yet have any experienced IT professionals on staff.

The challenges are myriad, but they can be overcome by progressing along your recruitment journey in an organized, savvy way.

Here are the steps to recruiting for top IT talent using your existing recruiting team….

Identify Any Valuable Past Experience

Your recruiting team may be "hiding" valuable IT experience.

In the past, personnel often played dual roles in organizations that were just starting out with networking and transitioning to digital files.

One of your existing recruiters may have helped a previous employer get online back when offices were first merging onto the information highway.

If so, they may not have necessarily included that on their resume for your company.

Conduct a survey to be taken by your recruitment staff to determine what if any prior IT experience they have.

Explain ahead of time that their experience could play a valuable role in finding and vetting a new IT department for the company.

Gather Your New IT Recruitment Team

Once you've identified key players on your recruitment team with some past IT experience, gather them together on a team and choose a leader.

As the following article looks at - when it comes to “building your team: how your recruiter should help” - keep the tasks linear and straightforward. Assigning too many complex projects could overwhelm a team that may feel woefully behind in the IT world.

First, simply task them with the responsibility of researching a sampling of the latest IT software solutions in a bid to get more comfortable with the lingo and possibilities that abound today. This will help them as far as communication when it comes to headhunting IT personnel.

It will also help to build their personal confidence, and provide extra value to their job in the future, as they may need to occasionally hire more IT staff in the years ahead.

Start the Recruitment Process

Now that you've built up your recruitment team's confidence and had them educated enough to have intelligent conversations with candidates, it's time to let your team start the recruitment process.

At this point, you need to back off and let them do their usual job of finding qualified candidates. With their prior knowledge, and newfound updated intelligence, they should be able to proceed as usual.

Be on hand to answer questions or advice as needed.

At first, they may be hesitant about where to find the best IT candidates, but with a brief brainstorming session, some great ideas should come to the table.

Trust Their Decision

Finally, you need to trust their decision as to the shortlist of qualified candidates.

Treating your recruitment staff as the seasoned professionals they are is critical to ensure that they are as discriminating as you would be when hiring the all-important IT team that will secure your company's data.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Kate Supino writes about best business practices.