Hiring Lead Time and Productive Capacity

A short growing agency decision problem. Use the supplied facts, commit to one action, then check your reasoning. Fictional practice; no leaderboard score is recorded.

Growing agency · hiring timing

Your team is at 100% utilization and turning away work. A strong candidate takes about eight weeks to hire and three months to become fully productive. Your pipeline for the next two quarters is strong and contracted.

Given fact	Scenario data
Team utilization	100%; turning away work
Hiring lead time	About 8 weeks
Time to full productivity	3 months after hiring
Pipeline	Strong and contracted for 2 quarters

When should you hire?

Choose an action, then lock it in to reveal the reasoning. This is untimed practice.

Now, because productive capacity arrives about five months outOnce the team is visibly overloaded and quality slipsAfter the contracted work is delivered, to be safeNever — use contractors so the cost stays variable

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When to Hire Your First Operations Manager

Hiring Lead Time and Productive Capacity

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