Whether you consider yourself a team player or not, you really don't
have much of a choice.  It's relatively rare that the IT skill set that
you bring to the table will be diverse enough to perform your work
project completely by yourself.

So many times, you'll be either
deliberately or accidentally be catapulted into the role of team leader
and you'll need to recruit and team up with other IT contractors to get
your own IT contractor work done.

Needless to say, doing a good
job with all this is crucial to keeping your clients happy as well as
to delivering projects on-time and within the available budget.

If
you are trying to provide the best, most complete solution to your
small business clients, you will probably have work with different
types of IT contractors to fill out your offering and truly solve
client problems.  But you need to make sure you understand what working
with other IT providers means and how you can do it most efficiently.

Before
providing good IT contractor work to your clients through other
technology providers, you have to make sure you have the time to do it
right.  You can't just hire any old person or anyone with whom you
don't already have a relationship.  You need to make sure the person
you are working with is going to represent you and your company in a
way that will get you repeat business ... and certainly not be a source
of professional embarrassment.

Use the following 3 tips to choose
IT contractors to work with that will really help enhance the services
you provide to your small business clients.

1. Know Who Can Help You Provide IT Services Profitably. 
As a virtual CIO, your goal is to provide IT services profitably.  This
means you have to consider the many different soft costs and
out-of-pocket costs that go into hiring others to do additional IT
contractor work for your clients.  When you are screening potential
candidates, you must make sure they have the right skills and expertise
to really add value to your services. And of course, you want to make
sure they're presentable to clients and not just an arrogant geek or
propeller-head.

2. Know How to Hire Potential Contractors.  Hiring
others to do IT contractor work for your clients alongside you is like
recruiting and hiring employees.  You need to follow a very specific
process and stick to it consistently each time.  You'll need to seek
out contractors, identify good candidates, screen these candidates,
create a short list of qualified contractors, verify references for
those on the short list and enter into a formalized relationship with
the chosen IT contractors.

3. Prepare to Spend Time Recruiting Those Providing IT Contractor Work. 
Don't overlook the time investment required to recruit good
contractors.  If you are a virtual IT provider, hiring others to fill
out your services really is not prudent until you have a good base of
steady clients that need on-going services and have signed some type of
service agreement with you.  Once you decide to hire additional
contractors, you can expect to spend about four to eight hours on each
candidate, at the minimum, as part of the qualifying and hiring process.