By Henry Brown

When you set up on your own, chances are you thought you might be all you need to take your business forward but with growth comes the need to hire staff and that can be a real challenge for the solopreneur.

Success means growth and growth means you need to find the extra capacity to fill orders, sell your products or services, set up your professional email hosting for business, and keep up with the myriad of other jobs running a business entails. While you could spread yourself thin and cover all these roles, is this really the best way to do business? Diluting your time does not allow you to concentrate on your areas of strength. It’s time to recruit. In this blog we take a look at three key factors for recruiting into a small business.

Play to your weaknesses

You know the key areas of your business that you excel in. That might be offering your core service, it might be customer engagement or it might be that you were born to be in marketing. On the flip side of this are the areas that you not only struggle with but don’t enjoy.

It can be hard to let go of even these less enjoyable parts of your work but finding someone who has different skill sets to you, while sharing your same vision can be a game changer.

Recruitment means building trust, so when it comes to hiring outside of your area of expertise, it’s perfectly legitimate to go on your gut instinct. That doesn’t negate the need for the candidate to have a killer resume, references and perform well in an interview but you’ll know who you can communicate well with and who’ll be on your team when it comes to helping you achieve your goals.

Keep an open mind

While that perfect candidate might look just right on paper with the right education, experience and hard skills, often the candidate who has even more in the way of soft skills can offer even more to a role. If, for example, you’re recruiting for an admin assistant and someone to manage your office but you find a candidate who is calm under pressure, great at dealing with customers and so on, then a public facing role combining all their hard and soft skills might suit them and you better. Stay open and place slightly more value on experience over qualifications when it comes to making the right recruitment decision.

Allow yourself room to grow

You may have never been the boss before, but the personal advantages of adding to your team are just as important as the advantages to your business. Whether you notice or not, you’ll be following a learning curve, becoming a better leader, inspiring your workforce, leading by example and perhaps even producing the next generation of small business owners.

Allow mistakes, learn from them and become a future leader, someone to look up to, emulate and learn from. Having to recruit into your business is the sign of a strong, growing concern. Embrace the fresh challenge and look forward to having a team on your side, helping to take your business to the next level.

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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.