Hiring person #4

[karloz]

Hey all!

So, 8 months ago a good friend and I quit our full time IT jobs that we'd been in for over 10 years to form our own IT firm. We took on an apprentice from the start and hit the ground running with an existing customer base (all local SMB's). Since then, we've worked our socks off and got a lot of new business through the existing customers as well as some new business from word of mouth, acquisitions and search.

We're comfortably moving along covering all salaries and business expenses, but want to grow ourselves as well as our customer base. This brings us on to looking for the next tech...

Ideally, we don't want an apprentice, but someone with a few years behind them. Our problem is that we are still a young and small business that can't yet offer the reassurances that potential candidates want.

How do you get over this hump of being a small business? I don't see how we could persuade someone to join us when there's the element of risk for them.

Anyone encountered this in their business?


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[Vyper28]

Don't fall into the trap of hiring someone just to help you out.

You need to sit down with your partner and do some "business math" and I'm not talking books. You are talking numbers.

You need to Iron out EXACTLY what you and he/she are spending their time doing, I would encourage you to start a daily journal for a couple week or a month, and as best you can, record what EVERYTHING took you. It will feel wasteful, but it's vital at this stage.

So after your few weeks you look at the numbers and see:
I worked 50 hours a week +/- a few hours
I spent 10 hours a week doing invoices, billing.
I spent 20 hours doing technical work.
I spent 10 hours marketing.
I spent 5 hours answering the phones.
Blah blah blah blah You get the idea, except in much more detail.

Same for your partner.
Then you guys sit there and look at your numbers. In order to give those assurances, what do you need? Is it more clients? Is it more marketing time? Do you have enough work but no time to schedule it?

You decide what you need to move in the direction you want. I'll use the obvious example of more clients.
So who between the 2 of you are better at marketing? What takes up the most of his/her time? Hire someone to do that job.
Maybe you have enough work but no time? Hire someone to do books, accounts, schedule more jobs, make more money.

The fact that you cannot offer assurances should never come into the equation, nobody can. I could be out of business tomorrow. You just need to be smart with your hire, decide what you want to achieve in the next couple years, and hire someone that will give you the TIME or SKILL to achieve that.

 

[MikeLierman]

Wow, Vyper28, provided you some really good content, and I would highly recommend taking it to heart. Like he said, don't hire just because you want a team of techs, or because you would like to have help. Hire because business is booming and you NEED the help. If you aren't turning away customers because you're too busy, then it might not be time to hire. Some other things you can consider:

• Considerations: If you are close to getting to the point where you either work more hours or hire, consider how efficiently you use your time. Do you set yourself hours and only work during those hours? Are you wasting time on customers/projects/tasks? If you waste a lot of time and aren't making money on certain tasks, drill down and find the underlying issue. If you don't know, start tracking your time and find out.
• Ask the Hard Questions: Are you not assertive enough with clients and thus allow them to waste your time? Are you focusing on repairs that barely make you money? This is the reason I got out of repairing android phone screens, too much hassle for little in return. I'll happily fix an iPhone any day, but I no longer tell people I fix Androids, except for flagships such as GS7s.
• Automate Your Processes: Take an afternoon, learn a bit of scripting and automate your tuneups, or automate a portion of your virus removals. I automated our entire tune-up process, complete with silent cleanmgr, chkdsk, ccleaner, registry clean, defrag, temp file clean, with a couple of reboots in-between. And I'm always adding more to it, thinking, "oh this would be nice and would speed up customer's computers." I'm thinking of adding SFC /scannow to the script somewhere near the end, before the defrag.
• Increase Productivity: A lot of people don't think about these, but I always do. How is your desk setup? How do you track things? Do you have two monitors on your main workstation? Two monitors are invaluable to me. I can have a remote session I need to watch on one, and be doing research or documentation for a different project on another.
• Employee Needs: Once you get to the point where you need an employee/apprentice/intern, how will they work effiecently? Do you have a ticketing system? Employees will need to be trained to stay consistent. I have what's called The Blue Book. where I have written out step by step procedures for what I expect during repairs. Complete with table of contents and page numbers. This is for consistency. To make sure employees are consistent and providing my customers the same excellent service. I don't want a botched virus removal one day and an excellent one the next. They go through the same steps, and if they stop for the day, they document in our ticket system what step they left the machine on, so the morning guy can pick up where it was left off.

 

[Mr. Ingram's Computer Repair & Shoppe]

I say if you want "HELP" then maybe look for someone in college, or needing a job that is willing to learn, do like 2 weeks unpaid shadowing. and show them what they will be doing. This keeps you from loosing money on a looser, and you can still get someone with decent knowledge (as decent as you can train someone)

Otherwise, if you want someone with experience, you don't have much of a option but to pay them.

 

[Markverhyden]

I've said this many times over the years, a very relevant observation - people don't plan to fail, they fail to plan. Adding to what the others have said. Once you have a detailed understanding of how things are now, you and your partner can put together a plan. Like getting a part time service writer to free everyone else up for a few hours a day.

 

[EveVirtual]

Great advise in this thread.

I learned that when I started. The key was to analyse ways of making my business more efficient and reduce overhead. Hiring can increase efficiency but it increases overhead and should really only be done as a last resort. The key I always look at is: is the cost justifiable?

Always ways to improve without having to add more labor into the pool. Take a step back and see what can be done. As others have mentioned, and I think it deserves a HUGE consideration is: automation. It's remarkable how much more efficient it can make a business. Even remote support, having a few scripts to run and let the computer do the rest is amazing, and it makes you look professional and quick. Customers like it as much as you do.

 

[karloz]

I've not purposely run away from this thread honest! Had a crazy few weeks trying to finish various projects.

Brilliant advice from you guys as per usual. I've listened and took note. We haven't hired anyone else yet, but instead took a long hard look at our internal processes and tried to squeeze more productive time out of our day.

I've actually started going through each of our services to see if we can change anything to make them easier to manage.

We've had even more projects come on board, so I think we will add another member to the team shortly anyway, but I will certainly squeeze what I can out of the current team before manning up.


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[TenYardFight]

I'm going to offer a contrasting viewpoint here. Once you get "over the hump" cash flow wise, don't be so slow to hire. I'll hire when I feel like I've got 12 to 15 billable hours per week to give someone. If you hire smart people, they don't waste those unbillable hours. Furthermore, it frees me up to do more business development and soon they aren't idle much...

I've found that being overstaffed is key factor to my maintaining the quality of life I want.

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[karloz]

That's the other thing. My business development is done of an evening/weekend at the moment. I have a wife and kids and currently averaging 70+ hours per week out of the house at customers/the office. Whilst my family are understanding and it isn't a problem yet, I cant maintain this work life balance for too long.


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