As a former recruiter, I know a thing or two about how to hire good people. As a business owner, I know a thing or two about delegating to those you are outsourcing too.
I’ve been pretty lucky in the outsourcing department. I haven’t had any major fiascos or lost too much money. The people I hire have also stuck around for a pretty long time and do excellent work.
I know I have a leg up on this just because I made a living interviewing people for jobs, which is why I want to share some outsourcing mistakes to avoid.
(Note: This isn’t to say I haven’t made any outsourcing mistakes. I most certainly have. I just haven’t experienced any of the horror stories I hear from business owners all the time.)
Hiring your friends (unless you met them in a professional setting).
One of the biggest outsourcing mistakes I see business owners make all the time is hiring their friends. Note, I don’t mean someone you met at a conference, and then you became friends, and then you hired them because they are really good at what they do. I mean people you went to high school with or someone you met at a bar because you want to be nice and give them a chance.
When it comes to outsourcing, the last thing you want to do is mix business with interpersonal relationships. It can get really ugly, really fast.
Cutting corners by being cheap.
Another one of the outsourcing mistakes I see often is business owners trying to cut corners by being stingy with wages. This looks like going overseas to find cheap labor (although this sometimes works depending on what you do) and trying to low-ball contractors.
If your main objective is to cut corners, you’re going to get shoddy work and have to spend some time cleaning up messes. If you actually care about the quality of your work, do yourself and your clients a favor and stop being cheap.
Not using what you pay for.
On the flip side of being stingy, you have another one of the most common outsourcing mistakes I see all the time – not actually using what you pay for!
What’s the point of hiring a VA if you’re still acting like a control freak and not actually delegating? Not only is this a terrible way to run a company, it’s also a complete waste of money.
Going crazy with the outsourcing.
Just like there’s such a thing as not outsourcing enough, there’s also the mistake of outsourcing too much. It’s not the outsourcing itself that’s the problem, it’s the money you’re spending to do it.
Depending on what your business does, you may not need to go crazy spending a ton of money paying contractors. While “You need to spend money to make money” is mostly true, it’s only true within reason. Just like with any other investment, you need to think things through before dropping a significant amount of money.
