There is a question of which one you prioritize when it comes to the tools your business uses and the staff that you hire. To some, the answer will seem obvious, but there is an argument to be made for each one.
Without the right business tools, you might find yourself lagging behind in your industry, with your competitors more capable of delivering the results that audiences are looking for. However, without proper attention paid to staff, you might not be able to make use of these tools or find a working structure that pays off.
The Tools That You Need
First of all, you need to understand exactly what it is that you need. The question is ultimately the same whether your business is one in a more practical field – like construction or manufacturing – or if it’s in something more grounded in the digital world. When it comes to the former, it’s both a question of logistics and safety – you can’t expect anyone to know how to operate advanced stationary concrete batch plants, for example. However, when you’re talking about purely digital tools, it might just be a question of know-how and familiarity. You want people to get the most out of things that are accessible to anyone, meaning that there’s an experiential curve to consider when finding the right employees to use them.
Training Pre-Existing Staff
Your first port of call might be to hire the staff that you already have. This is a good idea for multiple reasons – firstly, it means that you can cultivate talent from within, something that makes it easier to hire and can allow you to build a trusting and established team over time. Secondly, it allows you to use training as a hiring strategy that might draw more applicants towards you. It helps you to design your own team to an extent, and that can help you to better understand what your business needs and how your staff fit into that. However, you also have their professional development to think about, as they’ll likely have their own ideas about which direction they want to take their careers.
Hiring for Technology
An alternative route that you could take could be to hire specifically for the technology that you need. While this might make more sense to you from a distant, theoretical standpoint – allowing you to make use of these tools as and when you need them, it might be more complicated than that.Â
You’re looking to hire highly qualified individuals from the get-go, and that means that your company is going to need a certain amount of clout in the industry for them to choose you over your competitors. Furthermore, if you already have a team of employees, what’s going to happen with them? You might not be able to afford to keep them all on at once, and that could result in lay-offs which might be damaging for your reputation. That might mean that you investigate hiring employees in a more contract, freelance capacity.
