When Your Back Is Against a Wall – Throw a Little Money at It!

I remember several years ago (pre-children and single days) when I was house sharing a brand new town house and the small, muddy ‘garden’ needed to be paved. My flatmate, a finance executive, a couple of his friends and me, spent an afternoon, measuring up, calculating how many tiles would be needed and exploring whether to hire or buy an angle grinder! After I said, “what’s that?” one of them answered; “you know, with the combined salaries of all four of us doing a job that we don’t really know how or want to do, it’s going to be cheaper to hire someone who does this all the time!”

And indeed within the same week, an evenly laid, beautifully paved deck appeared! The small cost was definitely worth it and at the many social gatherings afterwards, ‘our’ work was admired! Since then, I’ve always thought about how my time is best utilised, both at home and at work. We’ve all hired a cleaner, a gardener and a handyman, for those jobs that you could probably do yourself, but just don’t have time, expertise or desire to do it. And what a joy it is, when the job is well done!

These days, the shoe is on the other foot. I’m in the recruitment and HR solutions’ market and provide outsourcing business processes and payroll services for time poor line managers. The satisfaction for me nowadays, is when I hear that these same line managers are not only pleased with the end result, but that their time has been spent in more specialised tasks which otherwise, could not have been completed by anyone else. So here’s the pitch; similar to the paving analogy, no one that I know enjoys the process of recruiting! But they do want a successful result.

After all, the people applying to your vacancy are prospective customers and you have an image to protect. Have you the time to treat them as such and provide a personal service? It makes so much sense to let someone who has the experience and, believe it or not, enjoys the process, to provide you with the best outcome. People who are well versed in your role and who want to work for you, all before you lose them to your competitors! Wouldn’t it be a shame if you had to start all over again because all the good ones got away?