Thinking About Hiring? Read This First
Deciding when to hire can be one of the trickiest decisions to make as a business owner or founder. Hiring too early can put unnecessary pressure on cashflow, but waiting too long can lead to burnout, missed opportunities, and frustrated customers.
When staff are telling you they desperately need someone, it’s tempting to jump straight into recruitment. But pausing and uncovering the real need will stop you stumbling into an HR nightmare down the track.
My recommendation with any new role evaluation is to start simple — by preparing a job description.
You’re probably thinking: hang on, I thought you said we would be considering whether or not to hire. Why would we write a job description first?
Great question.
One of the most common hiring mistakes in small businesses is recruiting someone to “help out” without being clear about what success in the role actually looks like. There’s nothing quite like surfacing the real need by writing down what this person would actually spend their time doing.
It doesn’t have to be fancy or perfectly formatted. Just make some quick notes yourself. If you haven’t written a job description before then let me know - I can help. (AI can help too, but it’s just as likely to convince you that you need to hire by adding a tonne of superfluous fluff.)
Start by considering the purpose of the role and the overall areas of responsibility. Then ask yourself:
Do these responsibilities overlap with other roles in the business?
Could this responsibility fall within another function that already has capability?
Is there someone else in the business whose skills align nicely with that area?
If the answer to these questions is no, take it a step further. Under each responsibility area, break down the specific tasks you expect the person to do and estimate how many hours per week each task would require.
This exercise quickly reveals whether you’re actually dealing with:
A full-time role
A part-time need
Or simply a handful of tasks that could be absorbed elsewhere in the business.
The bonus of working through this exercise early is that if you do decide to recruit, your job description is already drafted and ready to send to a recruiter — so it’s definitely not time wasted.
Once you have an idea of what the role might look like, consider whether the need is temporary or sustained.
Do you need someone because demand has suddenly spiked after a piece of guerilla marketing went viral? Or is this likely to be an ongoing requirement for the next 12–24 months?
A surprising number of businesses hire permanent staff to solve temporary problems. Being honest about whether the demand is short-term or structural can save you a lot of pain later.
If it’s temporary, options like contractors, fixed-term employees, or temporary staff can help you manage the workload while keeping flexibility if demand drops again.
If you believe the need is ongoing, you’re getting very close to requiring a new hire.
Before committing to that decision, it’s worth asking one final question:
Does this work genuinely require a person, or is it simply work that hasn’t been automated yet?
Many growing businesses accumulate tasks that feel urgent but are actually administrative overhead. Today, tools, automation platforms, and agentic AI can handle a surprising amount of this work.
Examples include:
Data entry and reporting
Scheduling and calendar coordination
Basic customer support queries
Document drafting and formatting
CRM updates
Lead qualification or outbound sequencing
If the tasks you’ve identified fall largely into this category, it may be worth experimenting with automation before hiring.
That doesn’t mean replacing people with AI. In many cases the opposite is true. The goal is to remove repetitive busy work so the people in your business can focus on higher-value, human-centred activities like problem solving, customer relationships, and strategic thinking.
A useful rule of thumb is:
Automation for repetitive tasks
People for judgment, creativity, and relationships
If most of the role you’ve mapped out falls into the second category, you’re likely looking at a genuine hiring need.
When a team is stretched, the instinct is often to hire as quickly as possible. But taking the time to step back and work through these questions can save significant time, money, and frustration down the track.
If you still arrive at the conclusion that you genuinely need someone, then great! You can be confident you’re approaching recruitment with a much clearer understanding of the role, the impact it should have on the business, and the type of person who will succeed in it.
And that sets your hiring process, recruiter, and candidate up for long term success.
