Don’t Hire Someone, Do the Job Yourself!

When something needs to get done that is outside of anyone at the office’s domain, the first impulse is to hire someone to do the job.  It makes perfect sense for so many reasons but I am going to give you a few reasons why you should forget about hiring someone until you have done the job yourself.

The Job Could be Really Easy

Once you do the job, you may realize that it is less work than you originally thought and with a tiny bit of extra effort, you or a co-worker can do the job without too much trouble.

The Job Could be Really Hard

The job may be really complicated and throwing someone new into the position can set him up for failure.  By doing the job yourself, you’ll get a good feel if the job can be done by one new hire or more and at what skill and experience level.

You’ll Know how to be a Boss

It’s not easy to be someone’s boss if you don’t know exactly what he is supposed to be doing.  The perfect example is a manger telling a computer developer to add something complicated to their webpage.  The manager will think “it’s just a little box, it shouldn’t take too long” while in actuality, it may mean changing the entire code which can take weeks.  It’s very easy to get impatient when you don’t know or understand what the other person is doing.  By doing or at least attempting to do the job first, you’ll have a good idea of how to be a good boss.

Jason Fried, a co-founder of 37signals is a big advocate of hiring out of pain and not pleasure.  He says to do the job yourself until you can’t handle it anymore.  That way when you hire someone, you will know exactly what he is doing and will be able to evaluate the job he is doing based on your experience.

Now that you’ve gone through the steps and know what the job is all about, go and hire someone to do it.

Are there any other reasons to delay hiring someone while trying out the job?  Do you disagree?  Let us know in the comments.

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