3 Amazing Strategies for Hiring During Growth
As a startup founder, it is an exciting time when growth happens and the company starts expanding rapidly; especially after a long period of a lull when things simply seem to be quite steady with no major blips. Rapid growth means you are doing something right and a great validation for your products and services. But unplanned growth can be daunting and can bring with it a few challenges too - miscommunication, overworked employees, and chaos!
How do you manage the growth?
Will the existing team handle the growing business or do you need more people?
And how can you do it if you need someone quickly to add to your teams to ramp up your effort?
In this article, we unpack 3 amazing strategies that you can use while hiring during a rapid growth period.
Figure out who you need
When business is growing the natural tendency is to quickly look for more sales people or people to fill in your growing orders. But that might not be what your business currently needs. Pause, take a step back and see what skill gaps are existing in your current team and make a list of who you need.
Ask yourself: Which departments or functions need support in order to meet your growing business demand or the sudden sharp increase in demand?
During this phase, you might still not need someone full-time, but still need those skills in your team. You know it could make a huge difference. Part-time employees could be a perfect fit for this scenario, and often they are highly experienced and bring a lot more to the table and are more affordable.
And hiring part-timers allows you to experiment with different roles and functions to figure out how they fit into your teams and if those roles add the value you seek.
Quality, not Quantity
One of the common traps while hiring is to hire people in large numbers assuming that the business growth will stay or remain static. While sometimes the growth sustains, and sometimes it doesn't. And when the business reaches equilibrium again, often companies might find that they have too many employees with little work to do. It helps to hire a few people who can support your existing teams and truly add value to the business.
Part-time employees and contractual staff is another great option during this phase as it gives you a chance to clearly evaluate the kind of support you need before you choose to absorb them into your teams.
Hire for Future, Train for Present
It might be really tempting to hire the person with the most credentials or past experience that they can brag about. But that might not always be the indicator to predict future success. Look for promising potential instead. The right attitude and competencies like the ability to work hard, innovate, take ownership, etc might be a good bet to place your money on. And for your current needs, you can always train them.
Remember that some of these candidates might not even be in your current industry or domain.
While hiring can be hard and cumbersome, being on the growth curve puts a lot more pressure on it. To do it objectively, effectively and efficiently can require some expertise.
If you want to focus on growth and need help in hiring, do reach out to us.
FlexiBees has a large pool of 40K+ experienced and qualified women, who work part-time and remotely. This gives you the additional advantage of hiring someone from anywhere in the world! We have a deep vetting process that matches the right candidate to your exact business needs, taking all the nuances into account. We will do all the preselection for you and provide you with only the best three screened candidates for interviewing.
