How Many Managers Will You Need This Year?

Your startup is growing quickly. To hit next year's target, you may need to hire many people. Where do you start? Bottoms up or top down? Both are viable strategies, but hiring a strong management team at every level provides some key benefits. First, they help you hire more effectively. Second, they will guide new additions to the team to success. Third, they will reduce unnecessary turnover.

As you grow, your company well need to interview and hire large numbers of new people. Managers help this by bringing their own network, spending 30-50 percent of their time interviewing and recruiting, and will on board these new hires successfully

As you grow, you'll want to keep all these great people. it is very expensive to recruit. Keeping the span of control to 7 or 8 ensures each employee has enough mentorship and leadership to thrive. This means for every 32 people, you'll need at least 5 managers assuming one doesn't work out.

Managers and leaders often recruit lieutenants from their previous work experience. When hiring a leader in an existing team, it's reasonable to assume a fair amount of attrition when they 'bring in their people'. Instead of hiring twice, hire the leader first to build out the team once.

Management can come from within the company or outside. Many companies aim for a blend, half an internal and half external, to keep the culture strong, ensure continuity and alloy them with external perspectives and networks.

For companies entering hyper growth, building a management layer is an important step to scaling effectively. As you build your financial plan, be sure to consider the number of managers you'll need to hire and the timing. They are critical parts of the infrastructure of the team.

Photo by Zhen Hu on Unsplash