7 Hard-Earned Lessons Of Bad IT Manager Hires
CIO, Thursday, September 25th, 2025
Mistakes are good teachers. But you don't have to make them to learn from them. These tech leaders share the hiring mistakes that taught them the most.
Hiring IT managers is difficult. You are looking for a unicorn-like set of skills: the technical acuity to understand projects and guide engineers, the people skills to do so without ruffling feathers, and a leadership mindset that can build a team and take it in the right direction. Hiring for any tech role can be fraught with peril - with IT managers it's even more so.
One recent study found that 87% of technology leaders are struggling to find talent that has the skills they need. And when they do find that rare breed, it's often not as perfect as it first seemed. Deloitte's 2025 Global Human Capital Trends survey found that, for two-thirds of managers and executives, recent hires did not have what was needed.