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100 Job Strategies · 17 of 100

The Team of One

Find the person doing an entire function alone. They are drowning, and they have budget anxiety rather than candidate anxiety.

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In short

In thousands of companies a single person is the entire marketing, finance, HR or design function. They are permanently overloaded and have usually been told there is no headcount. Pitching relief rather than a role — often as a contractor or part-timer first — converts because you are solving their problem instead of asking them to solve yours.

The situation

You look at a 200-person company's team page. Under Marketing there is one name.

That person runs the website, the email programme, the events, the social accounts, the agency relationship and the sales collateral. They have been asking for help for a year. Each time, they have been told to make the case for headcount in the next planning cycle.

They do not have a candidate problem. They have never had a candidate problem. They have a budget problem — and those are solved with completely different arguments.

Why this works

A team of one is a structural situation with predictable consequences. The person is doing three jobs, the quality is slipping in ways they can see and their manager cannot, and they carry the anxiety of being a single point of failure for an entire function.

What they lack is not applicants. It is permission to spend money. Standard applications are useless to them — they cannot hire you, so your resume just deepens the frustration.

What changes the situation is arriving with an argument they can take upstairs. A defined scope, a defined cost, a defined outcome, ideally small enough to sit inside a budget they already control. Most managers have some discretionary or project spend that does not require a headcount request, and contractor or freelance spend is usually approved through a far shorter path than a permanent hire.

That is the wedge. Three months of part-time help, priced modestly, solving the specific thing they are most behind on. Once you are working with them, the headcount conversation becomes much easier for them to win, because they can point at concrete output and say what happens if it stops.

These roles are also unusually good jobs. Being the second person in a function means real ownership, visible impact and fast growth — you are not a small cog in a large machine.

How to run it

  1. 1

    Find functions staffed by exactly one person

    Team pages, professional-network searches filtered by company and function, and job postings that ask one role to do five things. Companies of 50–300 people are the richest hunting ground.

  2. 2

    Work out what they are most behind on

    A neglected blog, a stale website, unsent campaigns, a hiring backlog. The visible gap is the thing they most want to hand over.

  3. 3

    Pitch relief, not employment

    Do not ask whether they are hiring. Tell them what you would take off their plate, in what timeframe, for what price.

  4. 4

    Size it to fit discretionary budget

    A modest monthly cost for a defined project is approvable by many managers directly. A salary requires a process they have already lost twice.

  5. 5

    Deliver something undeniable in the first month

    You are building the evidence they will use to argue for headcount. Make it visible and attributable.

  6. 6

    Let them make the internal case with your output

    After a few months, the conversation changes from "I need help" to "this is what help produced, and I want to keep it". That argument wins far more often.

What to say

Copy, then make it yours
Hi Ruth, I've been looking at Northwind and noticed you're running marketing there on your own — that's a lot of surface area for one person. I'm not writing to ask whether you're hiring, because I'd guess the answer involves a planning cycle. Instead: your email programme looks like the thing most likely to be waiting for time you don't have. I'd take it over for three months — strategy, build, send, reporting — for a fixed monthly fee, starting whenever. If that's useful, I can send a one-page scope and a number. If the timing is wrong, no problem at all. — Paulo

When it does not work

  • No budget of any kind. Some companies genuinely have nothing, not even contractor spend. You will find this out quickly; do not spend weeks on it.
  • Solo operators who guard their territory. A minority see any help as a threat to their indispensability. If the response is defensive, move on rather than persuading.
  • Scoping too big. A large proposal triggers procurement and approvals, which is exactly the process you were trying to route around. Keep it small enough to be a decision rather than a project.
  • Becoming permanently freelance by accident. Some of these arrangements never convert. Decide in advance how long you will run it before treating it as a destination rather than a route.
  • Absorbing the same overload. Joining a drowning function can mean drowning alongside them. Ask what changes once you arrive, and whether the workload is survivable.
The takeaway

They are not short of candidates. They are short of permission — so bring them an argument, not an application.

Questions

How do I find companies where one person runs a whole function?

Team and about pages are the most direct source, since a function with a single listed name is visible immediately. Professional-network searches filtered by company and job function work well at scale. Job postings are another strong signal: an advertisement asking one person to own strategy, execution, analytics and vendor management is describing a team of one. Companies between roughly 50 and 300 employees are the richest territory, because they are large enough to need the function and small enough not to have staffed it properly.

Why pitch contract work rather than apply for a permanent job?

Because the obstacle is approval, not willingness. A permanent hire usually requires a headcount request that goes through planning cycles and finance, which is precisely the process the overloaded person has already lost more than once. Contractor and project spend frequently sits within a manager's own discretionary budget and can be approved in days. You are not choosing contract work because it is better; you are choosing the approval path that is actually open.

What if they say there is no budget at all?

Accept it quickly and keep the relationship rather than arguing. Some companies genuinely have nothing available, and no amount of repositioning creates money that does not exist. What is worth doing is asking when their next planning cycle falls and whether it would be useful to talk again closer to it. Budgets change, and being the person they already know when money appears is a strong position that costs you nothing to hold.

Is being the second person in a function actually a good job?

Frequently it is among the better roles available at that career stage. You get genuine ownership rather than a narrow slice, your work is visible to senior people because the function is small, and you learn broadly rather than deeply in one specialism. The caution is workload: joining an overloaded function can mean inheriting the overload. Ask directly what changes once you arrive and whether anything is being dropped, rather than assuming your presence alone fixes the capacity problem.

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