Hiring before the need

It takes us about 90 days to bring a new hire up to speed. Illness or injury can take someone off the schedule much faster than that. A resignation may give us two weeks.

I was talking about hiring recently and found myself questioning when we start. We wait for a position to open, then look for someone to fill it. By the time they arrive, we need them to do work they haven’t learned yet.

Our field team has eight people. They set up auctions, photograph and describe the assets, then move to the next job. Right now our entire starting eight are on the field. If one goes down, we’re in scramble mode. Moving someone from another crew helps cover the job, but it moves the shortage too.

I think we need a bench: people doing useful work while learning enough to step in. That means recruiting before there’s an opening and hiring while we still have time to teach and assess someone.

There’s a cost to carrying that capacity. There’s also a cost to committing every available person to production. Our teams are busy about 50 weeks a year, and we could take on more jobs if we had the people. If everyone’s always in the field, when do we develop the people who would let us grow?

Adding a crew helps. But if we immediately book everyone on it, we’re back to having no bench. I haven’t settled on the right amount of room to leave. I do think we need to stop treating every hour away from production as capacity we ought to fill.

We can lose capacity much faster than we can build it. I want us doing more of that building before we need the person.