Have you been thinking about your dream team and wondering what first steps you should take to hire them on? Look no further! Today I’m answering the top 3 questions you may be asking when hiring the right team members.
Who do I hire first? I could use someone for social media, tech help, organization and strategic planning, but which do I start with?
Who to hire first is always a great question. I suggest having an Online Business Manager (I’m a little biased) because they will help your business grow right now and take the task of finding the right team members off of your plate. As an OBM I pride myself on organization, planning and breaking out projects into doable tasks.
As your business grows your OBM can help you identify the tasks to outsource that will make the biggest difference right now in your business.
When hiring for these roles it is beneficial to look for soft skills such as personality, ability and desire to learn. Yes, they need to have the skills/talent to do the job they are hired for but with these soft skills I find that these people are motivated to succeed.
It is a huge win for business owners to find someone who has the transferable skills and ability to quickly learn new skills because they are the real diamonds in the rough!
Where should I start to hire the RIGHT person?
After determining who the best first person to hire for your team, you need to know where to hire them from. It’s not fun to be inundated with people who wouldn’t be a good fit for your business. The best step to avoid this, a clear and concise job description. If they need to have experience, list it. If they need to be able to laugh at your jokes, write it down. Having a complete job description will weed out the less than desirable candidates and help you find the right person.
The other factors that are important when starting to hire is:
- knowing your pay range
- deciding if you want to pay hourly or per project
- the exact responsibilities you want them to take over right now
- the best places to hire people from (Facebook groups?, LinkedIn, reaching out individually, or other hiring platforms like Upwork and Fiverr)
After you’ve posted your job opening you should be able to sit back and see who applies. I always recommend waiting one week before reveiwing applications so you have time to get good candidates in the funnel.
When reviewing the candidates always check for proper grammar and if they followed your exact directions. For example, if you asked them to title their email “Job Opening” it should say those exact words in the email title. If it doesn’t you know they aren’t paying attention to details and for me, that’s a hard pass.
Choose 3-5 candidates to interview and after the interviews decide who you want to hire. (If you have an OBM on your team they would weed out the good candidates from the bad and do those initial interviews so you’re only seeing good candidates for the final interviews). Once you’ve chosen them go ahead and notify them that they’re the right person for your team and get started.
Congrats, you have hired someone! Now what?
What systems do you need to have in place to help with training and help ease the learning curve for new employees?
With any new employee or contractor you add to your business there will be a learning curve. They will need to learn what is expected and how to be successful in their new role.
The best way to help your new team member is to have SOPs (standard operating procedures) already in place for them to review.
Good SOPs pay out in the long run. These are documents that walk you through step by step how to do the task assigned and who to ask for help when needed. This document includes things like websites/ training videos/ who to notify when it is ready for review.
Your new team member and your business will be thanking you for having a plan of action when you hire on that team member.
It’s time to get started and build that dream team!
Feeling Overwhelmed?
Let’s chat and see if bringing an OBM on board will be the missing piece to help your business grow!
