After writing a business plan, obtaining financing for your business equipment, registering your business, and getting business insurance, you’re ready to open your doors— or launch your website if you’re an e-commerce business. You have just about everything you need, except employees… but do you need employees?
Why You Should Hire Employees
There are only 24 hours in a day, and although that seems like a long time, anyone who works will tell you that it’s actually not enough time.
When you’re the only one working in your business, you have less than 24 hours to get things done. However, when you have employees, you essentially have more working hours in your day because you have other people to help you with your business tasks.
Hiring help also brings new ideas to your business. The goal of your business is to grow and be successful, and bringing in new people can help with this. You’ll also have more free time to go on vacation, or to just take a break.
As a business owner, there’s hardly ever a reason to not hire employees. However, it’s important to understand that there are some cons to hiring.
First of all, employees are a big commitment, and although a valuable asset, they can also be a liability (you’ll have to get workers’ compensation insurance).
It can also be hard to find good employees, and even when you do find good employees, you have to train and manage them. Still, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, especially if you hire the right people and keep them motivated.
When Should You Hire Employees?
Even though there are very few reasons to not hire employees, you shouldn’t just start posting job openings on job search sites. There’s a right and a wrong time to hire, and you’ll want to hire at the right time.
First of all, you should be in a good financial position to hire help because not many people (other than interns) are willing to work for free. Other indicators of it being the right time to hire help include:
- You have to turn down opportunities
- Your current employees are overwhelmed and experiencing burnout
- Your customer service is declining
- Experienced employees are stuck doing menial tasks
If your business is growing at a steady rate, this is also a good time to consider hiring new employees.
It’s likely that new opportunities are going to come your way, and you’re going to need extra help to accept the new opportunities, especially if new skills are needed.
Also, your current employees (probably in not so many words) will tell you if you need more help. If you have to increase their overtime (and pay increases come with overtime), this is a sign— but it’s also a good idea to talk to your current employees as well.
How To Hire Employees
The simplest and least expensive way to hire employees is to post your job opening(s) to a free job posting site, such as Indeed, Glassdoor, or LinkedIn.
These sites, especially Indeed (which is the largest job search site), will help you reach the biggest number of people looking for work.
However, you should know that reaching the largest number of people isn’t always the best method when it comes to hiring for your business.
Instead, you’ll want to conduct a more targeted search to reach the largest number of qualified candidates.
Reaching the most people isn’t helpful to your business— reaching the best talent is, and you can do this when you get started with recruitment marketing. This marketing technique is specifically targeted towards job-seekers, but not just any job-seekers— those who have the skills that best fit with what you’re looking for.
‘This is one way to guarantee that you’ll be hiring the most qualified candidates, and candidates that you won’t have to micromanage or end up letting go too soon.
Hiring a recruitment marketing agency will cost you money, but it’s something worth investing in to limit some of the cons that come with hiring employees. By using this service, you’re more likely to be satisfied with who you hire, as opposed to taking a chance with a job search site.
The bottom line is that you need to hire employees to help you get work done, you should hire employees as soon as your business starts to grow (i.e., new opportunities come your way and/or your current employees already have several tasks), and to find the best talent, the help of a recruitment agency is the way to go.
