Times may come when you have very important jobs to get done, but you don’t have the skills necessary to pull it off; While you may also experience other times where you just have a bunch of unused employees lying around and collecting a salary when their positions may just have a way around them.

The downside of hiring is that it is more expensive, but it may not really be what you need for your small business.

Outsourcing, on the other hand, may be less expensive but doesn’t offer you the flexibility to readily work on a product whenever you want to, except reaching outside your business to get helping hands.

1. What skills do you need?

This is the first step. Get a list of all the possible skills you’ll need in your business at the moment. Whether its sales, marketing, finances, or even some specific parts of the operations that your business is around.

2. Which do you lack?

You have made a list of possible skills you need. It’s time to audit that list and get out those you already have while keeping the remaining skills that your business needs on the list.

This is where warning lies because if that’s what you initially thought, you are not supposed to outsource every skill your business lacks.

No matter what you choose to do, never outsource skills that make up the very core of your business. One of the reasons being that it becomes difficult having to develop your business’ unique voice – something that every business needs.

Outsourcing also has its security issues as you may just find it as difficult in tracking down how information that is meant to stay in your business goes out.

There are skills that your business is originally centered about. Don’t make the mistake of getting outside hands to work on that aspect – one that is critical to your company’s competitive advantage.

Beyond that, having full-time employees just gives you full control over activities going on in your business. You have the luxury of setting priorities, developing a company culture, and set acceptable workplace behavior. Although, you may not enjoy these benefits with an outsourced technician.

3. Deciding what’s it going to be for your business

When it comes to outsourcing, you should only outsource skills that don’t make up the core of your business and a great way to identify skills like that is to know if a job is a one-off gig. If so, then you’re good to go.

Outsourcing skills core to a business has also birthed great multi-million-dollar businesses. An example is AppSumo, founded by Noah Kagan. The core product was built by an outsourced team from Pakistan. So, outsourcing skills that are core to your business isn’t 100% bad but you’ll do better if you don’t run your business outsourcing skills that form the core of your business.