5. How can I figure out what compensation is fair?

With all the ambiguity around job titles and responsibilities, figuring out attractive — or just plain fair — compensation can be tough. But if you can't pull it off, talented employees can (and will) follow the money elsewhere.

The standard method for figuring out how to compensate someone for a particular role is to begin by looking at salary surveys. One problem, says Gartner's Berry, is that IT organizations aren't benchmarking salaries regularly enough or are using unreliable sources of data. Another issue is that surveys are often tied to job titles. And titles may not reflect an IT hire's full responsibilities any more. In today's IT department, those responsibilities can change quickly and often.

"A lot of the roles I want to fill are evolutionary — and increasingly, revolutionary," says Behenna, who estimates his IT hiring will increase by 30 percent from last year. "So there is no absolute reference point." In a worst case, workers may find themselves seriously under-compensated for the work they're doing, even though their salary is in line with their title. That leads to tension, resentment and, ultimately, to valuable employees being "ripe for the picking by executive recruiters", says Foote.

Foote Partners has found that most employers address this conundrum by tying base pay to the dominant skills or role and incorporating additional compensation for the ancillary work and skills that are also part of the job. In setting pay, Behenna browses job boards for job descriptions and pay rates, discusses salaries with peers and invites his direct reports to research compensation. "I have to be a little creative," he says. "It's a manual process, but it works."

Just as important as doing the compensation research is making sure employees know you're doing it. "It's PR for the IT organization that the company is keeping abreast of what the market is paying," says Gartner's Berry.