Tags – Signs Its Time To Hire
As an entrepreneur or a co-founder of a small business, it’s probably safe to say: you’re consumed with long working hours, day after day, week after week.
And there becomes a point where it’s time you need an extra pair of hands around the office because you’re beginning to turn away potential clients and projects.
Positively, if you’re faced with this position, it’s a good sign – it means your business is making progress.
However, it can sometimes be challenging to hire an employee who is aligned with your company’s growth goals without overspending your hiring budget.
So whilst you may be ready to take things up a notch, it’s both an exciting and uncertain time.
Because knowing when to hire is not easy, but it is crucial to your business’s success.
And if you don’t hire at the right time, the work you accumulate will soon outpace your capacity and begin to pile up.
On the other hand, if you hire too early, you may not have sufficient cash flow which can put both your business and your new employee in a difficult position.
However, just being “busy” is not a good enough reason to start collecting CVs and scheduling interviews.
Rather, it’s about building a solid team and should be a strategic decision that’s carefully planned way in advance.
So, hiring for the first time really can make the difference between a successful expansion and premature scaling.
Which begs the question, how do you find the right balance? Here are 6 tell tale signs it’s time to hire your first employee.
1. You Can’t Focus on the Bigger Picture
As the founder of your business, you need to act as the owner and not an employee.
However, when all of your resources are maxed out, you don’t really have any other choice other than to work “in” the business.
Often, this means you are answering customer queries, writing marketing copy, fulfilling orders and all of the other responsibilities that ensure your business runs smoothly.
But, this means you won’t have the time to focus on the bigger picture – your time and effort should be aimed towards growing your business on a much bigger scale.
As such, it makes sense to hire a helping hand so you can take a step back to free up your time to work “on” your business instead.
2. You Can Write a Full Job Description
Before you start publishing a job ad, a good exercise to practice is to actually write out a full job description that you would hand to a candidate during the hiring process; this should clearly outline their daily duties and responsibilities.
Simply, this is your opportunity to define what work needs handling, the skills your business requires and the type of person you’re looking for who will fit in with your company culture.
Plus, writing a job description will give you a better understanding of what a 40-hour work week would look like for your new employee; i.e. is there enough work for 8 hour days, Monday – Friday or would you be better off hiring someone on a part time basis?
3. You’re Saying “No” to New Projects
Starting a business is one thing, but maintaining that and growing it is another.
And there will soon become a point where you’ve reached full capacity which means you cannot take on any extra work – there’s only so much one or two people can do.
So if you find yourself saying “no” to new projects, it’s probably time you need some help, as the last thing you want is potential clients turning to your competitors.
In this case, hiring a new employee will help your business increase its revenue as you’re able to take on more work, as well as retain existing clients.
4. You Need Specialised Skills
When you start your own business, you will most likely be wearing a lot of different hats in the beginning; you may even see yourself as a jack-of-all-trades, but this can also lead to you being a master of none.
Sure, you can learn and develop new skills yourself – but do you really have the time to do that?
To start off with, you may have even outsourced specific tasks rather than hire staff to do them, and yes this makes sense, but as your business begins to grow it can be better in the long term to bring these tasks in house.
Furthermore, hiring a new employee will not only bring in the skills you need, but also bring in a fresh new perspective, and someone else you can bounce ideas off or run thoughts by as there’s another brain added to the mix.
As a result, this opens up new opportunities for new strategies to help your business grow.
And so, before you just start looking for anyone, be clear about what kind of employee your business needs – be specific and clearly lay out the responsibilities so you can be more accurate in your hiring process.
5. Customer Service is Slipping
Another obvious tell tale sign it’s time to hire is if your level of customer service begins to dip.
In other words, if clients begin calling you about uncompleted tasks or missed deadlines, this could be a sign that you’re overstretched.
And consequently, not having enough hands on deck can damage your business’s reputation, or worse, result in burn out which will negatively impact your mental wellbeing.
But it’s not just missed deadlines either, if you’re selling products and orders are going unfulfilled or if there are emails and phone calls not being answered – these are all signs telling you to bring someone else on board as soon as possible.
Don’t worry though, as bad as poor customer service is, if you’re receiving complaints it means your customers haven’t left you, yet.
And it means, you still have the chance to address these to keep their business but you’ll need to act quick.
Otherwise you risk losing your current customers and clients and they could go to your competitors instead; and new employees can make all the difference between a happy customer and one that’s looking for a reason to jump ship.
6. A New Employee Will Generate Money
When thinking about hiring a new employee, the first thing that probably comes to your mind is cost.
After all, a new annual salary is a big commitment and takes hundreds, if not thousands of pounds out of your business’s earnings each month.
However, if a new employee will 1) make money for your business or 2) save money for your business, you should feel reasonably confident that it’s time to make a hire.
Therefore, sit and think about how much revenue a skilled person can bring in. For example, a new salesperson can help to follow up on leads and close deals that you may have let fall through the cracks, and thus makes the investment worthwhile.
Concluding Thoughts
Overall, do not be afraid to hire.
Even if you have made a mistake and you’ve brought on the wrong person – that’s ok. Mistakes are important for growth, improvement and expansion.
If you can relate to any of these signs above, it may be time to bring on your first employee and take your business to the next level.
Want to know more? Please get in touch today.
Staying on the topic, here’s our video on how to make your first hire a great one:
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