Questions we answerHiring and headcount
We have a skills gap. Should I train, hire or bring someone in?
It depends on how long you need the skill, how soon, and whether anyone in the team is close to it. Each answer points at a different route.
Free · a few minutes · starts from “We have a capability gap”
The short answer
A missing skill is a good reason to act and a poor reason to default to recruiting. Developing someone fits when there is a person close to it who wants it and you can wait a couple of quarters. A specialist fits when the need is real but you cannot yet say whether it is permanent. Hiring fits when the skill is central, the need is durable, and nobody internal is close. The expensive mistake is recruiting a generalist because the gap was never described precisely enough to recruit against.
A missing skill has four honest answers: develop it in someone you have, bring in a specialist for a stretch, buy it as a service, or recruit for it. They differ mostly in time, cost and how permanent the need is.
The diagnostic asks the handful of questions that tell them apart.
Is it really this?
Worth checking before you spend anything. These are the signals that tend to tell the two apart.
Signs it is
- You can name the skill and say what it would be used for over the next few months.
- Work is being avoided, delayed or bought in because nobody can do it.
- The need has come round more than once and is not going away.
Signs it's something else
- The skill exists in the team but nobody has the time to use it.
- The gap is really a decision about direction that nobody has made.
- It was needed once, for one piece of work, and may not come round again.
What's usually behind it
- A new push — a market, a product, a customer — that needs something the team has never done.
- A skill the business has been buying in ad hoc for a while.
- Growth that has turned an occasional need into a constant one.
What people usually get wrong
- Recruiting for a skill the business cannot yet supervise or assess.
- Sending someone on a course with no work waiting to apply it to.
- Buying it in again and again until it is a permanent cost with none of the benefits of a hire.
The options, and when each one fits
In no particular order. Which of these fits depends on your situation, not on the question you typed.
Develop someone you already have
Someone is close to it, wants it, and the need is far enough away to allow time.
Bring in a specialist
The need is defined and temporary, or it is needed before anyone could learn it.
Buy it as a service
The work is ongoing but does not need to live inside the team.
Recruit
The need is durable, growing and central, and nobody internally is close.
When doing nothing is the right call
If the skill is needed for something that has not been decided yet, filling the gap now buys an expensive answer to a question you have not asked. Make the direction decision first; the skill question usually answers itself afterwards.
What the diagnostic asks
- Whether the need is growing, steady or temporary.
- Whether someone in the team could grow into it, and how soon it is needed.
- How central the work is and whether it could be done outside the team.
“I don't know” is always an answer. Nothing is assumed on your behalf.
The routes it weighs
Every diagnostic weighs all ten routes. These are the ones that tend to matter for this question — a description of the rules, not a promise about your answer.
Develop
Build the capability in someone already in the team, with time and support.
Specialist support
Bring in a freelancer, consultant or specialist for a defined piece of work.
Recruit
Recruit a new person for a durable, sizeable need that is central to the team.
Outsource
Hand a defined, ongoing scope of work to an external provider.
What changes the answer
- A temporary need points at a specialist; a growing, core one points at development or a hire.
- A deadline this month rules out development on its own.
Get your own read
A handful of short questions, then the strongest route for your situation, what's also credible, what we still don't know and what would change our view. No account, no setup.
Related questions
- Should I use a freelancer or hire?A freelancer or specialist fits a defined piece of work or a temporary need. A hire fits a durable, growing one. The diagnostic asks which you have.
- Should I hire a graduate?A graduate fits where the work is learnable, somebody has time to teach, and the capability is needed for years rather than months. You are buying potential and paying for it in supervision rather than salary.
- Do I need a CTO?Not always, and not always yet. The question is what technical leadership the business needs over the next year or two — and whether that is a permanent seat, a fractional or interim leader, or capability grown from inside.
- Should I hire another person?Sometimes. Whether a hire is the proportionate answer depends on how durable the need is, whether anyone owns the work today, and what a new person would actually add.
- Should I hire full-time or contract?Contract buys speed and information; permanent buys accumulation. The right answer depends on how durable the need is and whether you need the knowledge to stay.
- What should my next hire be?Start from the constraint rather than the wish list. The right next hire is the one that releases the most work or removes the largest risk — which is often not the role that feels most overdue.