“Should I Hire A Part-Time Employee or Someone Full-Time?”

Wondering whether you should hire a full-time or a part-time employee?

If you’re someone who has never hired before, it can be confusing whether you should go full-out or have someone who supports a small part of your business.

Here are the top differences between working part-time employees versus having someone full-time:

1. Output-based versus long-term based

When working with an employee part-time, they’ll only need to be focused on an output: 3 articles, or 5 graphics, or 1 video edited.

With someone full-time, they’re working with you in a more long-term based fashion: what are the steps that they can take right now that will get us closer to the goal?

Working with someone full-time gives you more space to have them experiment on tasks, figure out tools, and create documentation for your business.

However, if you do simply need someone who is an expert on a certain task, hiring someone part-time fits better.

2. Less than 20 hours a week vs 40 hours a week

When working with someone part-time, you don’t get a lot of the freedom that you would usually get with someone who is working full time with you.

They don’t free you up to the level you need to be able to scale, since they’re not able to work on more of the tasks that need to be done to grow the business.

However, if you’re only starting out, you don’t need a full-time employee just yet until you get to the point where you’re full-time yourself.

3. Limited growth vs unlimited growth

When you’re working with a part-time employee, it’s harder to invest in them more since they are not working on just your business.

Thus, they’ll most likely be an expert in one part of your business, not being able to grow with you as more things scale.

4. Work with different clients vs one client

Of course, when you’re working with someone part-time, they’ll need to often work with multiple clients to either make up for the time or make ends meet.

When you’re with someone full-time, they are more focused on working only on your business, and tend to have what is often called “ideas in the shower”.

5. Specialized vs More Skills

When you work with someone part-time, they’re probably someone who is mostly specialized in a very niche skill.

This is an asset at different times in your business, especially once you have someone else who might be handling these specialized part-time employees.

At full-time though, you have more flexibility to have someone learn and do more tasks, as the business scales.

Either way, who you hire has to fit what you need in the business, depending on where you’re currently at.

What is your experience with working with someone part-time versus full-time? Let me know in the comments below!