Not every job or business is suited to outsourcing and using contractors – for various reasons that we won’t go into right now. But what happens if no one is able to do the job in-house for a while?

Recently I did some work for a company while they were searching for a full-time technical writer. Being in the wrong city and unavailable for full-time work, I wasn’t going to apply for the job but I was able to help them while they looked for a new person for the role.

In this case, I set up some procedure templates and introductory documents (including standard emails for the team to use when sending information to the new writer), as well as editing the rough procedures the programmers had written down.

So don’t assume you can’t use outsource a project temporarily while you find the right person to work in-house – hiring an outsider can reduce a lot of the pressure to hire which can result in choosing the first possibility rather than waiting for the right person.

Even if a contractor can’t do the full job, especially if working remotely is an issue, you may find they can help with the following aspects of a role:

•  preparation work for a new project or role – whether that is to set up the accounts, write the procedures, set up a schedule, organise physical requirements or do some initial research
• some mundane aspects of the role, such as data entry, editing existing materials and reviewing older materials are compliant/consistent
• doing tasks for other team members so they can cover for the empty position (for example, preapring newsletter content could be outsourced to a writer so the admin manager is free to prepare invoices until a new bookkeeper is appointed)

What else could be outsourced as an interim measure in your business?