Using Consultants As Staff - What I Learned on Vacation

It’s vacation season and my family and I headed to the east coast to visit family and friends. We had great experiences and got caught up on all the happenings and life events of so many. When the typical question “How is your job going?” was asked, there was a common theme – there is so much work to do and not enough people to do it. As a person with a newly opened consulting company that is working in project management, this was really interesting to me. How is it that there are so many companies and government agencies experiencing a lack of staff?  

After listening to everyone, I began to see the problem. There are a lot of opportunity for industries now, especially those in green sectors. The tried-and-true solution to a new project is often to hire a new employee to manage the work or to share the workload from existing employees. Instead, leaders should consider hiring subject matter expert consultants. Consultants can often be hired for less than a full-time employee and can hit the ground running, leading to a project with a higher success rate and an earlier completion time – no need for training or hiring a less experienced employee that might possibly leave shortly thereafter.  

As we drove along to the next visit, I caught myself pondering how many companies we passed by were experiencing this same problem – I’m guessing a lot. In this era of opportunity I explained how we are positioning our consulting company to handle these exact issues. I encourage everyone to look outside of the tried-and-true and try something new – or in this example, try someone experienced. 

- Jennifer Ott