I hired Stella a year ago and it was the best move I made. She’s a very good bookkeeper, has initiative and works hard. The bottom line in my business looks better than ever and I was able to go on a vacation!

But Stella had to move across the country. She’s in Vancouver now. She is still doing work with me, but not at the same level and she’s not holding down the office so I can leave.

I miss her. I miss her and how she was helping my company grow.

The business is growing and I’m having a hard time keeping up. My experience is that the more capacity I have in the office, the more work comes through the door. Now I would like to hire 2 more Stella’s.

Hiring more people raises several challenges:
finding great people who are able to do bookkeeping well for small business
managing cash flow when I usually get paid for the work they do several weeks after I have paid them

There are several good hiring programs locally to help me manage the second challenge. Plus I’m pretty good at managing cash flow.

It’s that first challenge that I’m going to find the toughest. Going through a hiring program will likely limit the pool from which to chose employees.

Bookkeeping is not the same as accounting, so at this point, there aren’t any local training programs presenting qualified candidates. The challenge we have is that one person is expected to do a full set of books for a company. The existing training assumes that the person will enter an accounting department and look after one portion of a business that has processes in place. Small business isn’t like that. I’m prepared to train the right candidates.

My intention is to hire 2 people and to make sure I can reject candidates fairly quickly. They say to hire slowly (I’ve been looking for 6 months; even before Stella left) and fire quickly (advice I wish I had taken in the past).

Within a year I’d like to have 4 employees at the office and several part-timers working from home.

I’ll keep you posted.