in Small Business
Issue No. 5 - April/June 2002
Hiring your First Employee
by Warren Hobbs
You’ve been running your own business for a while now and you’ve built up a sizeable client list. So far you’ve done the work yourself, and your clients have been more than happy. But now you’re beginning to wish you had an extra pair of hands to help. You’re working 18 hours a day or more and still there never seems to be enough time to get everything done.
You need someone to answer the phone, greet customers, sort the mail, do the filing, and pay the bills on time. Or maybe you’ve got so many new orders, you need another skilled worker to help you meet delivery deadlines. Whatever the reason, you’ve decided it’s time to hire your first employee.
Like marriage, hiring your first employee is a step fraught with peril. It can work beautifully, with varying degrees of difficulty, or not at all. When the time comes to hire your first employee, there are some important tasks to do first. The main task is to determine what kind of person you need and what you need them for.
Joan Brannick, co-author of the book Finding and Keeping Great Employees, says the most common mistake made by small-to-medium enterprises when hiring is that “they don’t figure out what they need before looking for employees”.
Human resources consultants around the world agree that before you can successfully hire someone, you have to know what kind of person you need and what you need them for. That may sound like a no-brain statement, but HR consultants are constantly amazed by the number of business owners who fail to ask and answer those simple questions before rushing out to hire someone.
Take for example a job ad that reads, “Person wanted for busy pool shop. Phone such-and-such a number.”
Is it a part-time or full-time position? Do you expect to pay junior or adult wages? Will the person be working under your supervision or autonomously, or will it be a mixture of both? And wh...
