Small Business People Challenges

Many small businesses struggle most with timing in terms of bringing people on board.

Start up service contractors face the dual problem of establishing the enterprise with the one-time, non-recurring activities necessary to get the operation underway and at the same time acquire the core management talent and subsequent help as the business grows.

Even established companies who enter service contracting find they cannot sustain a work force for large scale programs until the contracts are in hand to finance them.

A core team is an absolute necessity; it may be small and the business proposals may be few at first. But the core team product must be strategic in terms of high probability marketing to build the company base.

Supplementary help can be acquired by permanent ads at the company web site for generic skill sets, contingent hire agreements with prospective employees and similar techniques that position the resources on deck for business growth.

Small businesses commonly utilize contingent hire agreements to locate promising individuals who can bring projects or contacts with them when they join the firm. They are willing to negotiate a prospective wage and salary arrangement in advance of a proposal submission and commit to an offer of employment with benefits and commission should the program be won. They further offer to reimburse the participant for expenses and business related costs during the proposal period, if pre-approved.

The key to these arrangements is to identify target projects that both you and the candidate can go after, where the candidate is uniquely qualified to ....

(1) Help win the job

(2) Contribute heavily to the proposal. Just bringing someone on who has no ability to offer targets usually does not work.

Your main assets are the people that create and add value to your business. Bringing the right people is a difficult task. How do you know that they are fit for the job? How can you reduce your financial costs, and time spent on searching for the right candidate? I find it rational to use an online pre-employment assessment tool. This will drastically cut the costs for your business. There are many software applications of this kind out there, with large testing solutions databases. One I can recommend is eSkill.

Small Business Tip .... What Should You Really Look For In A New Employee (Aside From Technical Expertise)?

Here's a simple tip when looking to hire new people for your small business .... look for a match of the candidate skills with the company needs.

Small businesses have multiple-faceted challenges and they require multiple- faceted people. Even though candidates may be interviewing for a specific position job title, look for avenues where they can contribute in other ways.

If a candidate has experience in several areas the small enterprise can utilize, that makes him or her a valuable contributor and it is likely they will be professionally fulfilled and rewarded from doing so. It all comes down to the candidates having an element of control in the future success for both themselves and the company.

If the applicant's profession is in a narrow, technical discipline and his or her expectations are to have others support them in that role or they are more comfortable in a "Stove-piped" professional setting, I suggest you do not choose them as viable contenders.

Sounds simple .... but for small businesses it makes perfect sense.

If you have other suggestions on what to look for when hiring new people .... feel free to leave a reply. Your contribution will help other small business entrepreneurs.