To Hire or Not to Hire: Five Tips

When it comes to hiring a new technician, should you wait until case volume exceeds your production capacity, or hire before you’re overwhelmed by case volume? If you hire too soon, you must endure the cost of an extra staff member and a significant drop in bottom-line earnings. If you hire too late, the impact can be even greater: your stressed production processes could result in an overall drop in quality or service.

While outsourcing can bridge the gap for a while, if demand for a certain product increases, we eventually have to evaluate whether it makes more sense to continue outsourcing—which we generally do if the product isn’t part of our core business—or do the work in house, and hire additional technicians if necessary.

At my lab, we developed a production and operational model that guides our hiring activity. It requires us to evaluate our marketing, production and operational business functions every time we consider bringing on a new...