Hire High Quality Support on a Tight Operating Budget
Knowing that hiring the right team member can make or break your goals is enough pressure. Adding additional pressure to make the right hire on a tight budget can be overwhelming and could influence a poor hiring process.
Poor hires can affect efficiency, productivity, and your bottom line. The good news is that it is possible to find high quality candidates even on a tight operating budget.
Here’s how:
Be highly specific on what you need help with and a realistic time budget
Sometimes the “I don’t know what I need help with, I just need help” feeling works when you have time to experiment with your hires. You cannot afford to do that when you have a tight operating budget.
Take the time to be as clear as possible on what tasks you need support with. This will help you and your new hire hit the ground running. It will also help ease your recruiting process as you’ll have a clear understanding of who is and is not a good fit to support you.
Also spend the time to understand how long the assigned tasks or processes would take. It’s important to consider time allotment for someone who is training versus someone who is familiar with the process. Understanding this will help you understand if you can consider part-time support versus full-time support.
2. Have established processes to minimize task time and maximize productivity
Businesses with lean processes recover 20-30% of their revenue potential with reduced operating costs and increased productivity. Evaluating areas of inefficiency can help you cut back on a new hire’s potential workload and increase the likelihood that a part-time hire could get the job done.
3. Consider contractors with strong skill sets
Contractors typically have a higher hourly rate than W-2 employees. Though, they also typically bring a higher skill set and knowledge base with them, making them more efficient at their area of expertise. Hiring a lower skilled workforce can be more costly in the long run because of turnover, training time, and overall inefficiency. If you need office management or basic operations support, consider hiring a virtual assistant on a part-time retainer to cut costs.
4. Use technology to streamline tasks and reduce busywork
Along the same premise of evaluating your processes, evaluating how you’re leveraging your software and apps could provide opportunities to improve. CRM’s, task management boards, scheduling apps, and the like typically have various workflows and automations that you can implement to reduce the manual tasks that you do. Tasks like follow up emails, reports, and reminders can be automated. I usually recommend using a task management board like Monday.com along with apps that integrate with Zapier in order to maximize what automations are available to you.