My name is Kyle Boyd of Crown Networking Consultants here in Albany, Georgia. Today I'd like to bring to the light or discussion, what to look for in an IT person. This is always a big challenge and a big struggle for end users to find somebody who they can trust with their computer and trust to know that it's going to be taken care of and that the data's going to be handled, or their issues are going to be resolved in a timely manner. I look for, when I have people come in and interview for a job, the first thing I ask them and the only questions I ask them. I said, "In an instance you have a situation. You can't find out. You can't get a hold of me. You can't get a hold of anybody else. What do you do?" And, I'm looking for one particular answer. If they say "Google," then they're hired because they know how to troubleshoot. That's what I'm looking for.

Either you have a troubleshooting knack or you don't. You can have somebody sitting there for three hours twiddling their fingers acting like they know what they're doing, but are they troubleshooting? It brings up another point. Effective, efficient. Is that person in here taking care of this issue in a timely manner and getting you back up?

If not, are they looking for a solution that will provide you a timely uptime? And that's what it's about. Minimize downtime and maximize your uptime. The goal is you want somebody who's proactive. You definitely want somebody who's proactive out there maintaining and managing your network. Most people tend to be reactive, which will cause a lot of problems.

If you're proactive in managing and maintaining your network, I promise you will reap the benefits. I've seen it time and time again when people who put money into their network and invest in IT, when we're sitting back during a storm or something and I'm sitting back smiling because my network's running. We've taken all the precautionary measures, and other people are scrambling. I just sit back.

I will say that the people that I do have, we maintain 99 percent uptime. I mean we very rarely have issues with our downtime. If it's down, it's due to the client just not willing to go that extra mile and be proactive with us. Unfortunately, some people have to learn that way. But I guarantee after that, they're ready to be proactive about it.

So you want to look for, again, somebody who's proactive, somebody who is efficient, somebody who's a go‑getter to getting in there and get it done. There are people out there who don't have those skills that tend to be in line with the typical computer geek. But if you can find somebody who has those traits and those qualities, you're on the right way to save some time and some money and maximize you up time.

My name's Kyle Boyd and I'm with Crown Networking, like I said, here in Albany. Remember, when your network's down, call Crown.