Try It Before You Buy It: Why You Should Consider A Consultant Over A FTE
Ah, recruiting, and hiring. Two of the most difficult parts of every business out there. In 2022, the cost of hiring an employee was $5,258* ok, maybe not too bad. However, the cost of replacing someone who doesn’t work out can be up to 50-60% of their annual salary.
Those salaries can be quite high when you’re looking to hire an analytics position. There are plenty of ways to make sure you’re spending your money (and time) wisely while recruiting, but one of the most overlooked ways is to consider if you actually need a full-time employee yet. If you aren’t 100% clear on what that person will be doing and how they can win in the role, you may want to consider a cheaper alternative: hiring a consultant.
You may think - consultants are expensive! Actually, hiring a full-time employee is more expensive. Say you think you need a Director of Analytics to take your small company to the next level. Glassdoor says that the average salary for that role is about $192,675. When you dig into the data a little further, you’ll see that most of the top-of-the-industry folks are probably going to expect around $245,000 at least in total compensation.
So say you hire a director to help you along your way in your 50 person company and find out that a director has many grand ideas about what you need to do, but they can’t get anything done without a team. They leave frustrated, and you end up with a whopping $152,000 cost to replace that role.
As you can see, it can be costly to make a hiring mistake. If the company in our ill-fated company had hired a consultant instead, they might not have made the same mistake further down the road.
Here are a few more reasons why you should consider a consultant for your next project:
You Don’t Know What You Want (Or Need)
“I need an SEO person!” “We need an expert at excel, someone so good at excel that it’s all they talk about.” “I need someone who is really good at tag manager.”
When companies set out to add someone to their company, they are so often wrong about what they need to grow their business. There are a few key reasons why this happens, especially in digital and data roles:
The field is complicated. There are so many different tools, disciplines, and specialties out there. Unless you’re an expert in that particular area, you probably don’t know the nuances of what is needed.
You hire for what your employees complain about, not what helps the company grow. We’ve all had that employee. Maybe we’ve even been that employee. The one that cries out that there is too much work, and they need a ___ (fill in the blank) to help them. Sometimes they are right, but the strategy team should carefully consider what is needed for an efficient, happy team. The employee may need some of their responsibilities shifted or a more appropriate job title. Very rarely, adding another person to do their work for them is the solution.
You think you need a tool expert. Unpopular opinion, but you probably don’t need someone with 10 years of experience in your obscure CRM. I see so many companies ruling out someone who is an expert in analytics insights but doesn’t know Adobe Analytics all that well. There are some cases where you really need an expert, but it’s often for a project or a particular issue, not for the entire role. Do you know who is great at particular issues or projects? Consultants.
You state the problem, but it’s the wrong one. At least 20% of the time, when Insight Lime meets with a potential client, we end up recommending something completely different than what they came to us for. You think you need to start paid advertising to boost your sales, but you have drop-off points in your funnels that need addressing. A consultant is an expert at taking an unbiased view of your problems and finding the highest-impact choice to follow.
A consultant can go where no employee has gone before - break down the barriers between departments and understand your true needs for your strategy and hires.
You Can Test Drive The Role
One of the biggest values of consultants is that they aren’t fully employed by you. You don’t pay their benefits, you aren’t beholden to the same legal obligations, and if you don’t like them, it’s much easier to say goodbye. It’s difficult to know what sort of person you need to help your organization (see the first point) in analytics. Working with an agency or an independent consultant allows you to test out a particular role without committing to the purchase yet.
Watching closely to see if a particular skill set is what you need can help you get closer to the right person. On top of that, many consultancies (including ours) can often help you shape your role, even more, to make sure you’re looking for the right person when you’re ready.
Consultants Have More Experience
Consultants have an advantage in the sheer volume of businesses they get to see up close and personal. They see the problems, trends and have worked to solve those problems more times than someone who has only worked in-house. There are two ways to get someone with that kind of experience - hire someone with agency experience, or hire them as a consultant.
When you’re looking for someone to re-imagine your A/B testing program or find a way to revamp data communications at your company - you may want to go with someone who has done it a few times before.
The other area that consultants have more experience in managing themselves. On top of the regular costs associated with an employee, you need someone to manage them. A consultant can guide your project with slightly less oversight. Their livelihood depends on them being able to manage multiple projects at a time and deliver impeccable work.
There Is A Shortage of Data Professionals
Data science is the hot topic right now - but really, most companies still aren’t figuring out their basic analytics and business insights. Marketing analytics and other CRO professionals are all in demand. Now, after the pandemic that demand has boomed. Companies that held off during the pandemic on hiring are now looking for ways to grow their business, and the shifts caused by the remote-work revolution mean that the power is firmly in the hands of employees.
Hiring a consultant or an agency to help you supplement your current analytics capabilities means you aren’t fighting over the few candidates that are out there right now. You are getting expertise now that you don’t need to train. Which means:
You will see results faster than your competitors who go for a different strategy like training current employees.
You will spend less than competitors who will throw huge salaries at the candidates that are out there.
You will have someone there who can advise on what roles you need and when, and often times the consultant can also train those new people. A win win scenario.
Closing Thoughts
As a consultant, I receive, on average, about 8-10 recruiter messages a month. Most of the time, these recruiters and companies aren’t open to the idea of hiring a consultant for the interim for a role or a project. I’ve seen many companies make bad hires, and as an employee, I have been the wrong hire for a company. So when you’re considering a new role or need a particular pain-point looked at in your company, consider the consultant route. There are many independent consultants and small agencies that are affordable for almost any company size, many of which are founded by people from “the big five” agencies or with other awesome experiences.
*number is taken as an average from three studies mentioned in the article
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