Question for anyone with NetSuite hiring experience. NetSuite candidates can be scarce, especially in small and mid-market locations. If you were looking to hire someone for a NetSuite role, but that had no experience with NS, what other background is most important? SalesForce, Dynamics or SAP experience, etc..

It depends a little bit upon what you want this person to be doing as well. For example if they are going to be taking requirements from users (business analysis cant hurt) Industry specific ERP/CRM experience manufacturing, Saas, professional services. retail industry is more important to look for than product specific (dynamics, sap, jd edwards etc). Chances are if they understand business processes well then they will be a good CONSULTANT, BA, possibly even architect. When it comes to admins then product specific knowledge helps more than industry specific knowledge. For Dev’s i cant comment as i dont dabble in development so what creece and JC said (someone with a HYPER COMMONSENSE) will go a long way in any platform/direction.

I may just be reiterating what the others have already said, but I find hiring for mindset/personality fit is so much more important than hiring for skills fit. The technical skills of a role can generally be taught relatively quickly as compared to adjusting habits or communication skills. Certainly, there must be some minimum floor of technical skill for the role, and that floor rises a little bit depending on the seniority of the position, but the floor for the "soft" skills should be much higher. I've written about my thoughts on hiring junior developers here: https://stoic.software/effective-suitescript/the-effective-junior-suitescript-developer/ Based on your "locations" comment, I'm making a leaping assumption that they'll be required to work on-site, which I suspect will dramatically reduce your available talent pool - perhaps prohibitively. Accommodating remote roles will open up a much larger pool.

Eric, this role is less a developer position and more of a functional support and analysis role to work closely with our manufacturing and fulfillment team. In my role as director of IT I get bogged down with these support task and do not have the time available to work closely with the OPs team to keep up with the demands. So it does unfortunately require some degree of on site work.

We hire based on the 3 C's (for more detail see Bill Hybels book "Axioms"). After an interview, we independently score people out of 10 on the following and compare scores: Character, Competence, Chemistry. Character: if we don't agree someone character is 9 or 10 - they are not an option (if you can't trust someone, why hire them). Someone can become more competent or gain chemistry, but someone's character will never change. Competence: can be lower (between 6-10 depending on the role) - competence can be taught (if they are able to learn - see what Eric said above). Chemistry: is less important (5-10), once again, this can change when they are working with the team. Someone who is high in all 3 of these is an immediate hire - anyone lacking in Competence or Chemistry, it depends how desperate you are.

Absolutely agreed! It is difficult to work with highly competent yet with broken character.