Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
Our business has grown to the point that we need to hire help. My husband and I do practically everything now. We're faced with a small avalanche of new projects with more waiting in the wings. We've been work far too hard and are looking to work smarter. I know, work smarter is a cliche, but we need to figure out a way to spend more time with our small children
My question is: when you hired help, what type of help was the most beneficial - tech, graphics, or clerical, or a generalist who was flexible? Did you hire employees, full or part time, contract some work out to indepedent contractors, or outsource offshore? Once you decided what type of help to hire, how did you go about finding the right people? I'm leaning toward a generalist or a clerical type who is open to learning some web basics.
I'm slowly wading through the possibilities, and have some ideas of what should work for us, but since there's no manual or FAQ that answers this one - I'm at WW (where else?) asking for input, stories, ideas, encouragement...
LisaB
I am on the other end. I do work on a task basis for a few web shops. They are small one or two people shops. They use me for anything web related. Last night they had me doing cart analisys, created a few form pages, edited some images in PhotoShop and also reviewd a site to see if they should take on a monthly maintence contract.
I think if you get a "jack of all trades" it will help as the resource can be tapped for multiple situations instead of having to build multiple relationships.
I think it comes down to what would help you the most. What tasks would you feel comfortable handing over? Keep in mind that you will now also have to deal with a new perspective to situatuions.
Just some low level thoughts,
Brian
The hardest part for me was finding qualified people I could trust to do the work and do it quickly.
Nice to have "too much" work but on the flip side been there, done that, had the 2 year workaholic social life wasteland. Never again.
In your case, perhaps this may be a perfect time to try out a few ideas before settling on one. The range of them I guess depends upon your comfort level. It sounds like you have the money to experiment so that's a plus as well.
Contractors are perhaps the best way to go at least until you know you have 35 hours+ of work a week. Even if you are thinking of hiring full time, you still might want to start off in a contractor relationship as this helps you understand if this is the right person or not. Also, at least in some cases, hiring someone as a contractor with potential for fulltime is an incentive for a person. OK, that sound evil but it is not - at least if it is clearly stated and only for 3-6 months
Option 1: Junior contractors are talented, enthusiastic and cheap but they take a lot of energy for you to answer questions and they generally just don't have the experience to properly take a project from beginning to end. You'll invest a lot of energy. Related examples and detailed briefs are necessary.
Option 2: More Senior Contractors can work from skimpy briefs to create something good, and logically they charge for their greater tech and project management abilities.
Location: The other twist on this is, of course, location. A contractor or employee in Silicon Valley is much more expensive than a contractor in the north of Scotland, Romania or even India. They all have the same skills so do you want to pay for the luxury of having someone in your office? Outsourcing to a different time zone is not a big deal but it does require you to spend the time to write a really good brief, take the time to develop new systems, and have the discipline not to bug your worker every five minutes just so that you feel comfortable.
Personally, in various roles, I've been outsourcing IT/info processing tasks to different time zones for 6 years or so, including Kyrgystan for a year(!) and they have all worked out well enough. Basically, like with in-office hires, it depends upon the qualities of your employee, your work flow systems, and your ability to manage them.
I am now trying out India for my next big project.
Cheers,
Colin
ps In Europe at least IT Contracts have jumped 30% in the last month but they've had to take 25% rate cuts. Don't know what this means for you tho...
Nice problem to have :) Here is what I do.
Firstly say 'no' more often! I sift through the possible new projects and the clients. I decline projects that are to small or not well defined and I decline to work with clients that I don't think I will like for some reason. You will of course set your own criteria but it is very important imo to be able to say no! The great mistake in running your own business is to accept every job that comes your way like it's a personal challenge to get it done.
Secondly I outsource almost everything offshore. This is not something that can be done overnight because you have to find the best contractors that you can work well with and build up relationships over time. I have never met any of the contractors I use although we do exchange photographs! Finding these gems is either through personal recommendation or in some cases pretty much trial and error but it does help to be a good judge of people.
When everything is in place and you have a good pool of contractors to choose from constructing project teams is relatively easy. One I have just finished was a large intranet .NET project where the programmers are in the Ukraine, the graphic designer is in Poland and the usability tests were done in the UK. I did the project management and database design. As usual the project was completed in budget and within the deadline and still left plenty of time for other projects and most important of all - R&R with the family.
Good luck with the business which ever road you travel :)
Of course, employing staff is a big risk. So, initially take the person on on a 12 week maximum temporary contract, with a view to making them permannent if things work out. In fact, we generally take the person on THROUGH a TEMP agency for the first 12 weeks. This means our contract is not with the staff member (who is now working for the agency) but with the agency itself. This gives us freedom to "let them go" with very little notice and no paperwork during this period. This is expensive, but after 12 weeks, our fees to the temp agency cover the recruitment costs due to the agency for taking the person on full time.
Works for us.
Dixon.
