Ready to hire your first employee? Here’s what you need to know

If your solo business consistently has more work than hours in a day, you really only have two choices. Make time, by magically being more efficient. Or buy time, by hiring someone to help.

For those of us selling services, the first option is finite. At a certain point, you just can’t do more with less. It’s also a lot less fun than sharing the load with someone else.

But it’s all too easy to rush a hiring decision when you’re already feeling overwhelmed.

Having recruited many people since my early flying solo days, here’s three things I wish I’d known back then.

1. You need to be talent-ready

Taking on staff is a responsibility. So hold off posting that job ad unless you have this foundation in place:

Financial security

Their next rent or mortgage payment depends on you, so aim to maintain 3+ months of expenses in the business bank account. Also, factor in on-costs like super, workers comp insurance and annual leave, and then calculate the ROI on their wages. Could your business make more than that, if they take more off your plate?

Systems and processes

Set up support structures so your first hire can hit the ground running and do their best work, fast. Think checklists, swipe files (what ‘good’ looks like), templates, and platforms for workflow management, document sharing and communication.

Employee value proposition

You get to build a business you’d drop everything to work for, and that’s what will attract others to work with you too. Document your culture: what are your values, behaviours, flexible work policies, benefits? And what do you expect in return?

2. You have options

Hiring in house staff is not the only way to grow. I spoke with dozens of small business founders about how they made that leap when researching my book, Beyond Solo. There are hybrid models that flex around a pool of contractors or freelancers, collective models that bring together an A-Team of fractional consultants, and product models where specific tasks are outsourced.

There are pros and cons to all these approaches, so consider what is most important to you. Are you ready to be accountable for meeting payroll and developing an in house team? In return, you can build an even better business together – and signal to clients that your business is stable and mature.

Or would you prefer to scale your team around different project scopes and timeframes – knowing it’s on you to manage the quality, communication and availability risks involved?

3. You need the right people in the right roles

So who should your first hire be? You could replicate your own skills and experience (making it easier to wean clients away from always needing you). Or hire someone with strengths you lack, so you can expand your offer or take those least-favourite tasks off your to do list.

While both options are valid, in my experience it’s tricky to genuinely clone yourself – while hiring people who are smarter than you is the gift that keeps giving. However, beware of retrofitting a role just to suit someone you think would be amazing. Right role, right person: you need both to make it work for you and your business.

Finding that right person is also a minefield. A charismatic candidate can turn out to be a ‘gunna’ not a ‘do-er’ – and when you need all hands on deck, that one hire can have a toxic ripple effect on the rest of your team, as well as your client experience.

That’s why the rule of thumb is ‘hire slowly, fire fast’.

Take the time to assess candidates thoroughly, follow up on reference checks, and include a probation period in your employment contract to give both parties an easy out. We like to test potential writers with a small paid task, and use a fun fruit-based psychometric test to get a surprisingly accurate view on what they’ll bring to the team.

Your first hire is one of the most important decisions you’ll make about your business. Get it right, and together you’ll achieve more than you ever thought possible.

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