Grow your team to maximize the value that you add

Are you doing everything yourself to “do it right”? Are you swamped with work and can’t find time for long outstanding todos? Perhaps it’s time to grow your team?

I realize that recruiting a new team member is costly and a big step. But if your team and company is profitable, you have high enough client demand, then there are many benefits of growing your team.

Improve quality and profitability

If you can hire someone at a lower salary than what you yourself cost and you could delegate some of your tasks to such a person you have a great chance at combatting systemic underdelegation and become more profitable. Haven’t successful companies always hired new talent and grown fast?

Consider how the quality of your responsibilities could even be improved by hiring. For instance, if you’re a technical expert, a cheaper content writer or salesperson might even do part of your job better than yourself? You might find someone who’s more motivated to handle tasks that you find boring.

Selective recruitment and a smart evaluation process

We hire very selectively, and if we stick to selecting one candidate in 100, we will find great talent that can contribute tremendously. Grow successfully is all about finding the right talent.

Collaborate with the recruitment team to design a smart recruitment process for your specific need. How can you write a job ad that attracts the right talent? How can you design an evaluation process with test assignments (machine tests) that works as a funnel?

The funnel should screen effectively and fail a substantial number of candidates after each step. We don’t want to waste either candidates’ or our own time.

Review the feedback documents generated through transparent coaching; what mistakes have staff made, what’s important for a hire to know very well and how can we practically test candidates through test assignments and machine tests?

This is how the recruitment funnel could look for a content writer position where we have 100 applicants:

Objections to hiring new staff

You might feel concerned about the need to spend much time on training and coaching. If you hire very selectively, your new colleague will learn quickly and shortly add much more value than they cost. Long-term your hire will be an “investment” that pays off many times over.

As a middle manager you might feel a bit reluctant to hire and (subconsciously) feel threatened by new high-performing colleagues and that they would “they take their job”. Ignore that feeling.