How To Hire A Consultant

Why Hire a Consultant? You have three basic choices when it comes to the need for expertise in your business organization - hire an employee with specific knowledge, develop the knowledge in house using your current employees, or hire a consultant.

You should consider using an outside consultant when:

Your business is not large enough to support a full-time expert. Consultants are in effect part-time employees with the expertise that your organization lacks. Your business may need someone to provide the services of a CFO in order to grow, but you may not yet be at the stage were your overhead can afford the $100k plus salary that a typical executive would cost. A consultant would be a better answer in acquiring the finance expertise you need to order get you to that point when a full-time person can come aboard.

You need a fresh perspective. Outside Eyes generally provide more real innovations since they are not burdened with the organization mind-thought that has built up over time. An outside consultant's perspective is often what a business needs to go to the next level.

What should you look for in a consultant? Experience with similar problems is the big key in my mind. Experience with similar problems does not necessarily mean experience within your industry.There are undoubtedly differences between managing a chain of convenience stores and an advertising agency, but a little bit of study will show that they have many more similarities.Most of management's time is spent on people problems, business systems, and strategy development no matter what their product or service. People problems are generally the same across the board and even most business systems have very generic roots.

The difference in the organizations is more of applications rather than principals.These major differences are the last 10 percent of management vocabulary, corporate history, your culture, and the nature of your competitors. Experience with similar problems in different industries means a broader perspective and larger chance for innovations that may produce the big advantage you were always looking for.

Other things to look for in a consultant include:

Can they tell you the truth regardless of the impact it may have on their fee or your feelings? Many times the test for this is do they really care about the results? If their only interest is to deliver their product and collect their fee the most likely result will be a generic written report that is impossible implement and perhaps a few pats on the back for the wonderful job you are doing.

Can they change your organization? The test here is to ask for the process that your organization will have to follow for the application to become part of your corporate culture. Implementation of any changes is usually a lot harder than dreaming up the change in the first place.

Is the application of the consultants plan customized to your organization? All consultants need a general plan to provide their service, otherwise they have no products. However,that general plan needs to be customized to meet your organizations specific needs. One size does not fit all.

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