When You Should Hire?

How do you know you are ready to hire? Are you (and/or your team) regularly putting in overtime? Paying overtime can cost almost as much as hiring a new member for your team, and that is just the financial cost. There is also a cost to the mental and physical health when your team is trying to do too much and it can take its toll on the quality of their work (and yours!). This should alert you that it’s time to hire!

You may be attempting to delegate work to others, but if your team is already on overload, it should also be a red flag that you need to bring on an additional team member or members.

Remember that you do not need to hire a full time employee, but could hire someone part time or an independent contractor. Check sites like Upwork.cm or Guru.com or check in your community as there are many moms who have great skills and would like a part time job while their children are in school.

Once you realize it’s time to hire, what next?

Identify specific tasks that you don’t want to do, don’t do well, shouldn’t do, etc. Is it worth paying someone whatever your hourly rate is to do these tasks? That is exactly what you are doing when you keep trying to do it all.

Evaluate your team’s productivity (including you!) If you are not already doing so, track your time and productivity and decide if some changes need to be made in how tasks are completed to become more efficient. Even if you still decide to hire, this is something you should be doing to create effective onboarding for new hires.

It’s imperative that you have a clear job description outlined for the person you intend to hire.

Decide on a pay range for that person. Check sites like payscale.com or salary.com to get an idea of the rates in your area of the country for specific jobs.

Create a checklist for each of the tasks you want your new team member to do. This is not that time consuming if you just take the job description you created and go through each bullet point on the task list and think of how each of those tasks need to be done and type them out. Then you can review this with the new hire and work with them to refine it once they start work.

Create an “onboarding” process before you hire. Onboarding means a plan for orienting the person to your company and to their job. Include how their quality and quantity of work will be measured.

Set aside money to pay for at least one month salary for that new hire.

The hiring process needs to be defined as well. You need a series of questions to ask that will help you determine if this person is a good fit for the culture and values of your company.

One last bit of advice from a California recruiting firm: “Time spent on hiring, is time well spent.”