How to avoid panic hiring into your team
When you are running a successful growing business, you can get to the point where you have way too much work on your plate. You can feel overwhelmed and stressed. You start working evenings and weekends to stay on top of it all, and your team is also at maximum capacity. Things are starting to slip, and you're finding that you're not delivering in the way that you need to for your customers and clients. It's going to start to impact your brand negatively.
In desperation, you put a call out on social media for someone to join your team. You have a rough idea of who you need, but you don’t have the time to write a job description or think strategically about your growth and future. Someone responds who says they have some of the skills you need, you have a quick chat and take them on.
Excellent job, everything will be great now!
But it’s not. Because you’ve hired in desperation, you haven’t mapped out exactly what tasks you need them to do, or what gaps you need to plug. And you also haven’t checked thoroughly whether the person you are taking on has all the skills and experience you need, or whether they are the right cultural fit.
You could find yourself in a difficult place where the work you need completing isn’t being delivered to the level you need, and tasks are still being missed. At the same time, you are spending time train and managing an additional team member and also paying them, despite not seeing the return on investment you need. This can cost you a lot of time and money. Because you haven’t creed a job description there could be discrepancies between the expectations of what you hired someone on to do, and their understanding of what needs to be delivered, which can cause a mismatch and problems for everyone. You could also find yourself in the position where the new team member doesn’t have the right team fit or share your business values. They’re upsetting other team members or causing problems for you, which creates stress and can be emotionally draining.
By taking somebody on in desperation, you can leave yourself in a worse position than before you took them on. It can cost you a massive amount of money, time, energy and stress. And then you need to let them go and start your search again. You are then in a dangerous cycle of desperation and reactionary team growth.
Hire the right talent for the right tasks
If you have a growing business and know that to continue to drive this success, you will need to expand your team; you should be strategically planning well how this team growth will look.
You should be reviewing your team every three months and have your team structure mapped out for the proceeding 1-3years. Review how each of your team is performing and check you have the right positions within your business to scale successfully. By doing this, you can ensure you grow your team with control, in the right way and allow yourself to find the right talent to fit with your team and deliver what your business needs.
Strategically plan your team growth
EVERY THREE MONTHS
Review your workload - What tasks you have on your plate? Do you need someone else to pick anything up? Is what you are doing aligned with your business and personal vision?
Review your team members - What is their workload and capacity? Do they still have the right skills to deliver well within their role? Do they have a good team fit? Are you happy with their performance? Are they satisfied with their position and working with you and your team?
EVERY SIX MONTHS
Review your team structure - What is your current structure and your future strategic team structure still aligned to your mission and vision? Is your existing team enabling you to deliver what you need within your business? Do you need to think about hiring in the next 3-6 months? If so, what role and why.
Are the job descriptions for each position within your business up to date? Do you need to start crafting job descriptions for future roles?
Are the right people in the right roles within your team. Have they developed any new skills in the last six months that you can utilise within your business? What are their aspirations?
Review your team costs. Are you paying the right amount for each team member and the value they bring? What is your total spend on the team, is that working with your overall revenue? Do you need to expand your team to enable you to scale further over the next six months, and what is your budget to allow this?
How to hire with intention
Give yourself time and hire proactively. You should be planning your recruitment of new team members at a minimum of 2-3 months in advance. This will allow you to ensure you have thoroughly reviewed your skills gaps and provide clarity on what role you need to hire.
Create a job description; make sure it is detailed with the skills and knowledge you need someone to have and their deliverables. Also include information about your business, it’s vision and your business values. Include hours of work and where you need someone to be based. Having clear job descriptions ensures that you, your team and the new hire are very clear, and aligned, on the role’s expectations.
Allow yourself time to advertise the role in different places to get a good selection fo people applying. This gives you a choice and makes sure you are getting a wide variety of talent.
You can use application forms to help applicants provide information about themselves and what they can bring to your business.
Speak to the top 3 people who apply. This conversation is a two-way process and not only do you want to make sure they will fit within your business and add value, but they need to make sure that your business is the right one for them.
Make your decision and give them the call; this is the best bit! Then celebrate growing your team.
If you are deep in overwhelm, short on time and worried about hiring the wrong person
So if you are in that moment where you are massively overwhelmed and overstretched, please still stop and take the time to hire your next person with intention. It's worth taking a few hours out of your day and week to plan out the job description, advertise the role and speak to some different people to make sure you find that right fit.
Think about this in terms of the long term investment for you and your business. Because if you do, when you find that right talent, it can make a world of difference to your situation rather than taking on the wrong person, which can cost you it so much time and money.
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