Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I was recently asked what I wished I had known when I was scaling my recruitment business: ‘How long have you got?’ was my response.
When you are in the thick of it, it can be hard to see clearly. Stepping back from the day-to-day can help, but even then it can be difficult to make some of the tougher decisions.
It can be easy to jump the gun and hire at speed, or allow greed and impatience to override logic when looking at the capacity of your business.
In reality, mass growth never breeds a healthy or successful working environment. Just because you have enough capital to hire 10 people every month, does not necessarily mean you should.
Growing in a controlled fashion allows you to decipher whether current skills gaps are being filled, and it also allows for current employees to adjust to said growth and the new faces coming into the business.
There can also be immense pressure to grow because your peers are doing so, and comparison can leave you feeling as though you are not doing enough.
However, growth [and size] of your employee base does not equal success. Profit margin and quantum does.
Hiring is the easy part. Creating a business that justifies adding headcount is the tough bit.
Being able to accurately forecast your business beyond the end of the month is critical to getting headcount growth right, and that comes down to capturing and interpreting the right recruitment MI.
Adding headcount based on historical financial performance and gut feel about the future can go sideways very quickly. It takes effort to set up and implement management processes and controls, but will take the guess work out of decision-making in the mid-long term.
← Hyvve Mind
