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If you’re looking to start getting things outsourced in your business, but don’t really know where you should even get started, then this post will hopefully help you with some of the overwhelm you may be feeling.
The good news is, there’s no right or wrong way to get started with outsourcing, and there’s certainly not a right time, but only the time that works for you, so in this post, we’ve given you some tips to help you make a plan for outsourcing in your business.
Make a list of what you need:
The first step in getting to know what needs to be outsourced is by making a list of all the tasks you do in your business on a daily and weekly basis. Then once you’ve written everything down, you’re going to break that up into two lists of things you can take on and enjoy doing yourself and on the other side, the things you don’t enjoy doing and would like to outsource.
Now, at least you have an idea of where you’re going to get started when it comes to deciding which tasks you should be outsourcing first.
For example, maybe you’re looking for a company like PRWD who can help you with tasks like optimizing your website, or perhaps you’re just looking to offload a few admin tasks to a VA every week; it really doesn’t matter how big or small you need to start with outsourcing, as long as you’re starting with the things that are important for you and your business.
Do your research:
Once you have a list in place and are feeling more organized about things, then now it’s time to actually get out there and start doing your research to see which things you can find people for and how you’re actually going to find them.
When it comes to outsourcing, you will various options to choose from, such as advertising any roles on social media and waiting for replies, reaching out to your network for referrals, or even looking at hiring an agency who can look for people on your behalf and then send the right candidates to you.
There’s certainly no right or wrong approach to this, as long as you’re able to find the people who align with your company.
Reach out to people:
The next step in the process is to actually reach out and speak to people who you’re potentially interested in working with, as this then allows you to see a bit more of what they might offer and if that’s potentially a good fit for you, so this is going to be an important next step for you to try.
Reaching out to people doesn’t mean you’re going to hire them, it just means that you’re interested in learning more about what they do and also providing them with information about you to see if that’s something they’d be interested in doing, so it gives you both a chance to see if working together could potentially be a good idea.
Make a shortlist:
Once you’ve reached out to the people who you’re interested in and who seem like their services could be a good fit for your business, it’s now time to make a shortlist of potential candidates who you’d like to interview. This allows you to take things to the next level and really get closer to seeing who is going to be a good fit for working with you.
You should really only be hiring for one role at a time, so it’s not a good idea to overwhelm yourself with hundreds of applicants, but to simply interview for one role and then once you’ve filled that, just use the same process to hire again.
Start hiring:
Hopefully, by this stage, you’ll have found someone who’s the perfect fit for your company and are ready to start outsourcing to them, so at this stage, you need to have a hiring process in place that will continue after the interview portion.
This means, you need to have things like an onboarding system, such as a document with a contract and other information that they will find useful and that will help them be able to do their job effectively and reduce the need for constant questions back and forth. You could also include things like training videos you want them to watch or even any tutorials that you’ve put together for them.
Evaluate:
When hiring someone initially, you should always start with a trial period or 1-4 weeks, depending on what works best for your business, and this is good for both you and the person you’ve hired because it allows you to both see if working together for the long term is something you really want to be doing, and if not, then after the trial period you can move on without any issues.
As you can see, outsourcing is not something that’s going to happen overnight; it’s a process, but it’s definitely worth investing some time into because overall it will make things in your life and business so much easier if you’re able to find the right people to outsource to because you’ve taken the time to plan things out and not just hire people without really taking the time to think about what you might need.
