Recruiting for Splunk Expertise – What Do I Need?

As a Talent Acquisition professional for the past 20 years, I’ve seen that the requirements of a role and the day to day responsibilities of that role are often mismatched. How often have you seen an Office Assistant role that requires a Bachelor’s degree or an entry-level Customer Service role that requires 3+ years of customer service responsibility? In many cases, the best talent may not apply to the opportunity because the ‘requirements’ are not met by the best candidate. In addition to roles like Sales or Customer Service that exist at almost every organization, the phenomenon is common among highly-skilled technical roles also – like Splunk expertise.

A quick Splunk job search on Indeed.com returns over 7,500 active postings. As I reviewed some of these listings, several require an Architect level candidate, including required certifications. However, the duties listed are more in line with a Splunk PowerUser or Splunk Administrator candidate, which requires a significantly different skillset than a Splunk Architect. In today’s tight labor market and with Splunk skills in high demand, over-hiring can be a costly mistake for your organization both in the cost of the role remaining open and the competitive salary that will need to be offered to secure highly-skilled talent.

Splunk Level Analogy

When determining the level of candidate and actual requirements of your next Splunk listing, think about it in terms of plumbing. Would you call a Certified Plumber if you wanted to change the fixtures in your bathroom or if the toilet was backed up? According to TheSpruce.com, in their August 2019 article, there are five times you should call a plumber: (1) rapid water supply line leak, (2) no water available, (3) rapid drainage line leak, (4) sewer line leak, and (5) a natural gas leak in your water heater. Personally, I’d probably add a couple more to this list because I’m not a fan of ‘dirty jobs,’ but most of the time, I’d agree. I can manage an overflowing toilet, replacing a washer, sealing a leaky pipe, or changing the shower head. Additionally, if I don’t have time or interest in these projects, I can hire a general handyman to take these tasks off my hands.

There are times that you need a high-end Splunk Architect or Consultant (think Certified Plumber) in your environment. However, there are many day to day tasks that you simply need a PowerUser or Admin-level candidate (think DIY or handyman) to fulfill. Splunk is designed to be user-friendly and allow teams to ingest and use their data in meaningful ways without the assistance of a Splunk Architect. Hiring the right level of candidate is a more cost-effective solution and may contribute to increased retention as the candidate can grow within your organization as they grow their Splunk skillset.

 

 

What Splunker do I need?

PowerUsers are able to build advanced searches and utilize the core features in Splunk to create dashboards and reports. They are skilled in SPL commands and how to levy them for efficient Splunk searching. Splunk Admins understand that better searches and slimmed dashboards can greatly improve performance. They onboard new data sources, install and configure Apps/Add-ons while configuring and optimizing the Splunk components, ensuring high availability and high performance. Additionally, they configure alerts to proactively address issues with Splunk servers, highlight key data points, and further expand the Splunk use case(s).

When you truly need an Architect or Consultant, you can hire the experts from Professional Services Partners like Kinney Group. These projects might include implementation of Splunk Premium Apps like: Enterprise Security, ITSI, and UBA, new Splunk installations, migrations, or architectural scaling and optimization, and other more advanced project-based tasks.

Kinney Group’s Expertise on Staff team is available to help determine what level of candidate you need, as well as provide contract staff to fill the gaps in your hiring cycle. We’ve been recruiting and training Splunk talent for the past 5 years. We have built an impressive team of Splunk professionals who work with a bias-to-action providing a customer-centric approach on mission-critical analytics and automation projects. We offer Splunk Training, Managed Splunk Services, Expertise on Demand (Splunk support team), Expertise on Staff (Admin/User), and Professional Services (Architect/Consultant).

Expertise on Staff

Much more than staff augmentation, Kinney Group offers true Splunk expertise. Unless a staffing firm has both expertise and experience specific to Splunk, the best they can do is provide a candidate that has Splunk on their resume.

Since 2013, Kinney Group has delivered 500+ Splunk service engagements to commercial and public sector organizations, big and small. Kinney Group has developed applications on the Splunk platform and helped customers “turn data into doing™” with the Splunk platform. Kinney Group knows how to acquire Splunk talent, validate their expertise, and enhance their Splunk skills with specialized training and support. Traditional staffing doesn’t even come close.

Kinney Group’s Expertise on Staff (EOS) for Splunk service provides organizations with a compelling option for adding Splunk expertise to their teams. Whether an organization is expanding its Splunk team or looking to replace Splunk expertise that has departed, the EOS for Splunk service can provide immediate results.