My career in information systems began in 1992, when MS-DOS was the operating system on most business PCs. Programs like Word, VisiCalc, and Lotus 1-2-3 launched from menus; few people used Microsoft Windows. E-Mail and the Internet were fairly new to the business world, and not everyone had access to them. Novell Netware was the consumer network operating system of choice, and Microsoft was still years away from releasing Active Directory. Through the ensuing years, I have been a Systems Analyst, Network Administrator, acting Director of Information Systems, Vice President of Information Systems, and a consultant and senior engineer at a Washington, DC based MSP. I went from using MSPs as a Director and Vice President, to working for one as a consultant. Now I'm here to tell you how to avoid the mistakes I made when hiring IT vendors, and what they need from you in order to do the best job they can.