How to Find The Right Consultant For Your Business

Did your business unexpectedly hit a snag and not a single person in the organization can seem to find a solution for it? You might find the answer from a consultant. Learning how to find a consultant can be as easy as 1-2-3 and the results they bring, in whichever area of business—finance, tax, IT, or marketing—can come in a snap. But make sure you obtain a good understanding of what exactly you are looking for and not figure in a misstep that may cause your problem to spiral further down.

Defining the job

A consultant is a highly-skilled outside expert hired to provide crucial knowledge and solve problems within a company. Solutions can come in the form of key information, advice, skills, strategies, new techniques, learnings, surveys, polls, and market studies, among others.
The role is temporary and hiring is done on a contractual or per-project basis. The consultant can be an individual, a group, or an entire firm. Their key task is to make improvements within the business, whether it is new or one that is considering expansion.

Hired but not employed

Compared to hiring a full-time employee, taking in a consultant can prove to be more cost-efficient to a company. They do not require the same benefits as that of regular staff, keeping overhead costs at a minimum. Their onboarding process is usually less rigorous, and consultants go through learning curves more quickly.

Though consultants still follow their own schedule, independent from that of the company’s, they can briefly finish a task that might otherwise be too costly if done by an employee hired for the whole year. The full-time employee might just end up with too much free time on his hands.

Since the services of consultants are on an as-needed basis, their availability may pose initial inconveniences, so it’s best to align timeframes and deadlines from the get-go. Other difficulties that hiring a consultant might present: consultants sometimes take on competing clients; they are specialists that might fail to see the bigger picture; and they may pose personal limitations affecting the project. All these factors, however, are minor and can easily be ironed out even before onboarding.

The perfect fit

Consider the consultant to be an objective eye on a specialized field, offering a wide-range of services, from strategic planning to project execution to in-depth evaluation. Make sure to tap the right fit based on your needs:

• General business and management consultant. Offers guidance in reviewing the health of a company and suggests a proper outlook for the future. They can also provide ways on expanding strengths and capabilities.
• Finance and taxation consultant. Provides groundwork for purchases, including buyouts, and studies the overall financial status of the company. They can provide suggestions on savings and increasing profits. They can also look into inefficiencies, frauds, and anomalies.
• IT consultant. Provides all sorts of tech support, ensuring that the company is equipped with the latest technologies. They can make upgrades on current systems and train individuals on protecting these assets.
• Marketing consultant. Crafts marketing plans, segment studies, and campaigns. They help in positioning a company and establishing a brand. They also design advertising, social media, and public relations strategies.
• HR consultant. Focuses on all employee’s needs. They help in recruiting employees, especially top management and key leadership roles. They can also suggest downsizing of teams to keep organizations efficient.
• Operations consultant. Improves systems and processes. They can provide suggestions in lowering costs, improving sales, and increasing margins.

All the perks

On the surface, hiring a consultant is beneficial as they offer solutions to a company’s critical problems. But aside from this, consultants are valuable to any organization because of more than a few reasons:

• An outsider’s perspective. Couples who go through rough patches hire the services of a counselor to help them solve their problems. The same goes for companies who can not find the root of a problem. A consultant, unbiased and rid of any internal politics, provides a perspective from the outside looking in that can ensure that a company is thinking in the correct way. This fresh perspective promises new ideas and innovative solutions.

• Highly skilled, highly valued. A consultant offers skills in areas where recruiting full-time employees might not always be feasible. There are certain tasks that only require attention for a specific timeframe, and the skills required to accomplish such might not be available in-house. This is when a consultant comes in, easily solving the problem because they might have already encountered the same in a previous setting.

• An extra hand. Truth be told there are times when a company needs an extra hand to accomplish tasks. Assigning these to current employees might just overwork them, so a consultant can definitely come in to fill those gaps. Time-specific and one-off projects can be assigned to consultants so as not to burden the organization sans the unnecessary financial implications.

• Doing the dirty work. There are tasks that need to be accomplished that prove to be too difficult within a company—controversial projects, disputes, restructurings, terminations, attending to misconducts, redundancies, and dismissals. If there’s a job no one in the company can do, hire a consultant.

• Keeping key individuals. Retiring employees are inevitable in every company. But if they remain to be valuable to the business, it’s best to keep them as consultants. While they still can, they can transfer knowledge, lead training and workshops, and inspire younger colleagues with their experience. Keeping them as consultants is also a form of appreciating all the hard work they have done through the years.

Companies can not solve all problems by themselves. Consultants, acting as an outside voice and change experts, prove beneficial in providing much-needed answers. Deemed unnecessary by others, the expense of hiring a consultant will be favorable and profitable eventually. When it comes to the #JobsThatMatter to your organization, it is worth considering recruiting consultants.

Make sure to use Talent Search to find the right candidates for every part-time or full-time job. Visit our Jobs and Resources Hub for more expert advice on how to use the recruitment process to help candidates build fulfilling careers while meeting your own hiring needs.

At JobsDB, we believe in bringing you #JobsThatMatter. As a Career Partner, we are committed to helping all jobseekers find passion and purpose in every career choice. And as the number 1 Talent Partner in Asia, we connect employers with the right candidates who truly make a positive and lasting impact on the organization.

Discover Jobs That Matter. Visit JobsDB today.

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SEEK Asia, a combination of two leading brands JobStreet and JobsDB, is the leading job portal and Asia’s preferred destination for candidates and hirers. SEEK Asia’s presence span across 7 countries namely Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam. SEEK Asia is part of the Australian Securities Exchange-listed SEEK Limited Company, the world’s largest job portal by market capitalization. SEEK Asia attracts over 400 million visits a year.

About SEEK Limited

SEEK is a diverse group of companies, comprising a strong portfolio of online employment, educational, commercial and volunteer businesses. SEEK has a global presence (including Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, South-East Asia, Brazil and Mexico), with exposure to over 2.9 billion people and approximately 27 per cent of global GDP. SEEK makes a positive contribution to people’s lives on a global scale. SEEK is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, where it is a top 100 company and has been listed in the Top 20 Most Innovative Companies by Forbes.