4 Reasons Hiring Is Broken in 2026 (And What Small Business Owners Should Do Instead)
Contributed by SBOC Member:
Pat Miller
Founder of the Small Business Owners Community
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The Traditional Growth Path Is Broken
The small business success story has always gone like this: you start something, you get some clients, things start to accelerate, and you bring on that first part-time employee. Maybe a full-timer. And suddenly you’re not a solopreneur anymore. You’ve got a team. You grow by hiring.
But if you’ve tried to hire recently—or if you have a young person in your house looking for work—you know that hiring doesn’t work the way it used to. It’s gone through some kind of weird Frankenstein transformation, and the old playbook just doesn’t apply anymore.
Four headlines came across the news this week that all point to the same problem. The labor market isn’t just tight—it’s fracturing.
Reason #1: You Can't Find Qualified Applicants
This isn’t the “nobody wants to work anymore” complaint you hear from certain generations. The data is more specific than that: 89% of business owners report they can’t find qualified applicants.
Nine out of ten.
The issue isn’t that people don’t want jobs. It’s that there’s a mismatch between what people know how to do and what businesses need done. The skills don’t line up.
So if you’re a solopreneur thinking about hiring your first employee, understand that the odds are stacked against you finding someone who can actually do the work from day one.
Reason #2: Skills-Based Hiring Means You're the Trainer
Many employers have shifted to skills-based hiring—not degrees, not years of experience, just “what do you know how to do right now?”
Some business owners have taken this even further. They’re hiring for personality: someone who shows up on time, doesn’t leave early, works hard. Then they train them on everything else.
That’s a reasonable approach—unless you don’t have a training department. And if you’re a solopreneur, you don’t have an HR department. You don’t have an onboarding program. When you bring someone on, you’re signing up to be the training department yourself.
Do you have time for that?
Reason #3: AI Is Destroying Critical Thinking
This one is genuinely alarming. Gartner put out a report showing a growing trend toward “AI-free skills assessments”—basically, sitting someone down with no screens to see if they can actually think.
The finding? A lot of people can’t think their way out of a paper bag anymore. Not because they were never capable of it, but because generative AI has eroded their ability to reason independently.
“Hey ChatGPT, how should I reply to this email?”
It’s becoming a real problem. So even if you find someone with the right skills, and even if you’re willing to train them, you might discover they’ve outsourced their critical thinking to a chatbot.
Reason #4: Employee Engagement Has Collapsed
Let’s say you find someone qualified. You train them up. They can think independently. Great. Now here’s the next problem: they might not care.
Employee engagement has dropped from 88% to 64%. That means six out of ten days, your employee is engaged. Four out of ten days? They’re checked out.
And when researchers asked what would improve engagement, the top answer was professional development. Which brings us back to the training problem. Are you ready to be the professional development department too?
What This Means for Solopreneurs
If you’re a solopreneur whose business is growing, the traditional advice is to hire. Scale up. Build a team.
But look at what hiring actually requires right now:
- You probably won’t find someone qualified
- If you do, you’ll need to train them
- Even trained employees may lack critical thinking skills
- And even if they can think, they might not be engaged
At what point do we ask: is hiring even the right move?
The Alternative: Stay Solo Longer
Maybe we’re better off alone. Maybe adding a part-time or full-time employee isn’t the right way to scale—at least not right now.
Here’s the alternative path:
Build automation and SOPs first. Before you hire anyone, systematize everything you can. Create standard operating procedures. Automate repetitive tasks. Tools like GenHead for CRM and Engie for marketing can replace a lot of manual work.
Use contractors as long as possible. Contractors have narrow skillsets and exist to do specific things. You can’t tell them when and how to work, but you can tell them “do this thing” and they’ll do it. If you can get the work done with contractors, you can scale without the overhead of traditional employment.
Accept the training reality when you do hire. If you reach the point where you need actual employees, go in with eyes open. You’re not just the business owner anymore. You’re the head trainer. You’re the employee engagement officer. You’re the professional development department.
That’s not bad—it’s just the reality. And knowing it ahead of time lets you plan for it.
The Bottom Line
The labor market has changed. The old hire-to-grow playbook doesn’t work the same way. If you’re a solopreneur trying to scale, think carefully about whether hiring is actually the right next step.
Sometimes the smartest move is to stay solo longer than you planned.
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Contributed by
Pat Miller
Founder of the Small Business Owners Community
Pat spent two decades in broadcasting management and hosting. After leaving the radio industry, he spent time consulting small businesses and realized the support system for entrepreneurs was broken. Where could you find help for improving small businesses and building real connections with other like-minded people. In June of 2020, the Idea Collective Small Business Community was born.