Understanding when and how a company should added more employees is important. Adding the wrong people at the wrong time could be a critical mistake. By Gary Shotton #000206

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When To Hire

By Gary Shotton

My name is Gary Shotton and I’m here to share some thoughts about Inspiring Better Business to help you be a better business person. I was asked this question in a conference call to my friends in East Africa and they asked when do I know when to hire? So, I’m going to talk about when to hire and how to hire especially when you’re getting started.

So, first of all, you don’t want to hire extra people until you absolutely need extra people. For a while you’re going to be probably working by yourself. And as you work by yourself, you’re going to have to do more than one thing. You’re going to have multitask. You’re going to have to be able to learn and do several things because you can’t hire every little thing done. And the way you want to look at it is you want to hire only at when you really need help and especially start if you can with part-time workers. In other words if someone has a full-time job then you could ask them to work for you when they have extra time. Or if they don’t have any job at all, then a part-time job is probably better than no job. You’re not hurting these people. You’re not stealing from them when you don’t give them full-time employment. You’ve got to make sure you remain strong as a business owner. And so there’s how you start.

Now, you got to realize that most people around the world especially in the developing nations have a mindset that I’ve got to find a job. I’ve got to find a job. And what they’re kind of saying is when I can find a job then I’m going to shift that responsibility for money over to my company or to my boss. They’re Responsible now for me to have a job and to have pay at the end of the period when it comes to payday. Well, that’s a scary thing. You know it’s like when you’re working all by yourself, and let’s say this is an example that you’re loading and hauling bricks. Now that would be a horrible job.

And so, as an example here let’s say that you’re able to whatever you’re doing, cutting hair, making cakes, doing a travel Guide business, but when you’re all by yourself you’re actually carrying the load. Now as soon as you hire someone you’re asking them to come on if you’re not careful they’re going to say well, I want me the owner to carry their load. No, you can’t carry the load of two, three, four or five people. You’ve got to carry your load. And you’ve got to find people that are willing to carry their load along with you. That’s where it’s key. You’ve got to look at when you hire somebody are they actually creating income? Are they creating revenue? Are they carrying the load of bringing in cash? Bringing in money and if they are bringing in money, then you can pay them expenses because you had them bring in more money and you wouldn’t have brought the money in unless you had them there.

So, it makes sense that you now need them and maybe even just part-time. As you get bigger and bigger this idea gets even more important. And so you want a group of people especially at first that are always ready Pulling in revenue. They’re pulling in revenue now, the next question would ask is who? Who are we going to hire? Well, I’ve kind of mentioned that already. We would start with part time. Maybe even start with volunteer. What do I mean by volunteer? You could say to someone listen you don’t have a job? I’m going to help you with some experience here I realize you need to pay your bills, but if you don’t have a job maybe you could come help me and with the hope of some pay and if this works out.

That would be kind of a volunteer. Now, you can’t do that forever Of course. But you can do that for a while to get people on board with you. Just that few key people hire part-time. We’ve already talked about that. Don’t put on somebody full-time. You see one of the advantages of hiring part-time, let’s say that you just need them three hours a day, twice a week. Well, did they come to work on time? Did they do what you said? Were they contributors? Were they helping you? Were they thinking outside the regular minimum responsibilities? Were they engaged with the customer? Do they meet the customer well?

I mean there’s a ton of things that you want to find out about that worker before you have them on full-time with you. The more you can find out, the better off you’re going to be. You may find out that the person that says they can do something, really can’t do it or they have all kinds of experience they really don’t. Or they stayed up last night playing games on their computer and now they can’t come to work on time. You need to weed these out so that you have somebody that you can count on as you ready to hire full-time.

I have to mention this be very careful about hiring your friends and your relatives. If you hire a friend or a relative you almost have to be even more strict than if they weren’t a friend and a relative. In other words they can’t come late. They must work. They must work a little extra hard. If they’re not willing to do that don’t even go down that path. And if you sense that this is not going to work cut the ties pretty quick. Get that behind you. Hire somebody that really has a relationship of an employee not just a relative or a friend.

Well, let’s give a couple examples. My friend, Wendy in Morogoro Tanzania has a tasty crispy chicken and I asked her on the phone and says “Wendy, how are you doing?” She says I’m doing really really good. How is it going? I asked and she said well I’m going to take a vacation because I’m a student and I only sell my Chicken to crispy a tasty chicken to students when they’re in school and especially around exam time. And I said, well that’s wonderful. See because she’s only working by herself. She’s just gaining experience. She can shut down the business go home for vacation and not worry about it. If she had somebody working for her what is she going to do? You’re going to have to make sure they know that they’re going to take time off. It’s part time.

So, then I said well when you get ready and you need to hire somebody, it’s only when you really need them. It’s when you need them. And you see that oh, I’m losing revenue, I have a line of people waiting for my chicken and I ran out of chicken because I didn’t have enough chicken. And it has happened several times in a row or on a regular basis. Now you can think about okay, who can I hire that would just come to work on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from eleven o’clock in the morning to like 2:00 in the afternoon? Hey, that’s just three hours. Well, that’s better than nothing. Once again you get to see how they work, how they interact whether they correspond to you. Are they going to be a good fit for you? And now you’re off and running? So, now as the demand comes you can hire more workers. You can’t hire people for the overhead at first. You need to hire revenue producers to begin with.

Let’s talk about briefly George my travel agent Friend. The one that’s going to be a Travel Guide. We talked about that in another video that it’s better for him maybe never to have even one employee extra besides himself. Because he can subcontract out the driving of the taxi. And he could be the guide. He’s in the van, but he isn’t driving behind the wheel. It’s a contract driver. Or you need a boat, well have the boat. Contract that boat owner to just drive the boat. You’ll do the talking and you’ll make sure that the customer is happy. Oh we’re going to go see some animals, or we’re going to go hiking, or we’re going to go bicycle riding find somebody that’s in that business. Work together with them. I’ll work together for that website make sure the websites up and going. I want to know whether or not where I’m going to do, what I’m going to do and that Person that has that website can advertise and meet the friends.

Well, last but not least when you have a customer you want to get all the money out of their pocket as you possibly can. And that would include added value things. Well, you might call Wendy over from Tasty crispy chicken and make sure that she’s ready to serve a good meal at the end of the day that these people pay extra. They could take orders ahead of time and say as part of the booking crew you could say we’re going to be done at six o’clock tonight, but you know, we’re all going to be hungry would you all want me to book a reservation for tasty crispy chicken and Wendy’s going to cook that up for us? And here’s what it’s going to cost go ahead and pay me for that. So, we make sure that’s all ready for you. So, that’s all ready.

Now, Wendy might consider that her business and she gives you back a portion of the Money that you got maybe five or ten percent because you brought the customer. Work together. Work together. Bring in somebody that has gift items. I wanted those carved wood animals. African animals. Find somebody that’s in that business. That have gift items. And now cut them in and let your customer buy them. Let them buy from this person and you get a little Percentage back from that person. Don’t give away or take up big percentages. Just those little pieces relative to what you provided. Hey, I hope this helps. I know you may or may not be at a position at this point to need this information, but I believe it’ll help you. So, be a part of this Inspiring Better Business. Thank you.