The decision to hire or not to hire a new employee is one that should not be taken lightly, and as such, many business owner’s struggle with. In this article, we will look at four questions that you can ask yourself that will help with making an informed decision and ensure that you are ready if the answer is to hire. Let’s get started.
1. What are your reasons for hiring?
It is important to justify your reasons for hiring in order to ensure that a new employee(s) can help move your business forward. Most often you are trying to solve a business problem with a new hire, you need to make sure that a new hire is the solution. A good way to approach this is to list all the reasons that are driving your feeling that you need to hire. Then, look at each reason and consider why that reason exists and if hiring more employees will take care of it. Here is an example.
- Reason: My employees are overwhelmed by the amount of work they have?
- Consideration: Is this a short-term or long-term problem? If it is short term, you can look at getting a contract employee to help get you through this time. If it is long-term, do you need a full-time, part-time or some other work arrangement? Check out my article on flexible work arrangements for ideas.
- Consideration: Is this a shortage of people or a problem with efficiency? This won’t be an easy question to answer, but it is a critical one. You need to look at the efficiency of your current team and decide if they could or should be doing more. If you do determine that your team could be more efficient, consider getting help in this area before considering hiring.
If you feel that your reasons for hiring are valid, you should move on to the next question.
2. Can your business afford to hire?
Once you have determined that you have valid reasons to hire a new employee the next question to ask is can the business afford it right now. This may seem a strange question at first. I am sure you are thinking “Can I afford not too?”. The problem here is that many businesses do not fully consider all the costs involved. Wages and benefits are usually the biggest expense for any business. You need to consider that a new employee may not start paying for themselves for weeks, months or even a year depending on your business model. Can you afford to cover their cost until that time? On top of this, you need to consider all the start up cost for the new employee including their workspace, equipment required, training, etc. When added together, it can be quite expensive.
If you feel that you can afford to hire, you should move on to the next question.
3. Is this the right time to hire?
It takes about 12 to 16 weeks to properly recruit, hire, onboard and train a new employee. If you are hiring to meet your immediate need, get to it. Don’t delay. If you are looking to hire for growth, make sure to plan accordingly. If you hire too early, the employee may be well trained but bored and your cash flow may not be able to handle the extra expense. If you hire to late, they may not get properly trained and perform poorly which can result in customer service issues and work not being completed on time or properly. Consider the ups and downs in your business cycle. Timing is everything, hire with a plan.
If you feel that this is the right time to hire, you should move on to the next question.
4. Are you ready to start hiring?
Before you begin to hire, you need to ensure that you are ready. You need to know the process that you will follow and have the necessary resources available to complete the steps in that process. The very first step, and one of the keys to a successful hire, is to put the proper time into creating an effective job description. The job description will be your guide to ensuring that you are hiring the right person for the job. Using this tool will help you throughout the recruiting, hiring, onboarding and job performance processes. In addition to an effective job description, you will need to know who will be involved in the process and decision, where to recruit your candidates, how you will filter your candidates, how you will interview your candidates, your interview questions, your references questions, how you will select your new employee, what their compensation package will be, your onboarding process and your performance evaluation process. It’s lots to have ready, but it is critical if you are going to hire the right person.
Once you have things ready, it is time to get started.
There you have it. I hope that these four questions will help you to decide on whether to hire or not to hire. It can really be a tough decision at times. In particular with questions 2 and 4, when you know that you need to hire, but it is clear that your business is not ready.
What are some of the ways that you use to make the decision to hire or not to hire? Leave a comment below and let me know. I would love to hear from you. Thanks.
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