Jean Chow, The Strategizers, Toronto, ON, CYBF Mentor

Small business owners wear many different hats. One minute they are tapping orders into their iPad, the next minute they are loading pallets onto a delivery truck. But at what point do you pass that hat onto an employee? And which hats do you pass and which hats do you keep?

Look for those who are self-directed. You are hiring to free up your time to address critical issues and you really don’t have much time to train, coach, and manage new hires. They have to be able to hit the ground running. On finding the self-directed salesperson, check The Globe and Mail’s columnist, John Warrillow’s article http://bit.ly/nYApIy.

Look for the right combination of “competence, character, and team skills” says Campbell Soup CEO Douglas Conant in http://buswk.co/ijLdsX.

There is a delicate balance between who you need to hire, who you can afford to hire and when to hire. Track in half-hour to one-hour segments what you do each day for one week for four weeks. Then, analyze which functions you’ve addressed and determine which functions you can outsource. You might be surprised at the amount of time you can dedicate to strategic planning by hiring a good warehousing person instead of loading that delivery truck yourself!

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