How To Hire
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Introduction
- Part 1 – Do You Need to Hire At All?
- Part 2 – Writing a Job Post That Works
- Part 3 – Reviewing and Filtering Applications
- Part 4 – Testing and Interviewing Candidates
- Part 5 – Review: Choosing the One
While it might seem unusual for a hiring guide, the initial step when considering bringing someone new aboard is determining whether you actually need to hire anyone at all.
Multiple solutions exist for accomplishing work within your business, and you should evaluate which approach suits your current situation best.
What are your business objectives?
Pause for a moment to reflect on your business aspirations.
What obstacles are preventing you from reaching them?
What single change would create the most significant impact in achieving or surpassing your objectives?
Maintaining clear focus on your goals helps ensure you’re moving in the correct direction.
What tasks need completion?
Do you already have a specific role in mind? Or are you uncertain about what type of position your requirements fit into?
You might have particular tasks in mind – perhaps those you find most unpleasant to handle personally or items perpetually stuck on your never-ending task list.
While considering this, recognize that the role you ‘desire’ or the tasks you want completed may not align with what your business ‘requires’ most urgently.
You might believe you need a Virtual Assistant when what would benefit your business most is a marketing professional.
This is precisely where reflecting on your business vision and objectives can guide you toward the right priorities.
Document the most critical tasks required to reach your goals.
Consider this from the perspective of your new team member’s deliverables.
What would they create or accomplish?
How would you evaluate their performance?
Common examples of essential roles include:
Assistants/Support Positions
- Social media content creation
- Email management
- Support ticket resolution
- Meeting coordination
- Research completion
- Travel arrangement
Sales/Marketing/Content/Advertising
- Ad conversion to sales
- Return on advertising spend (ROAS)
- Email campaigns sent
- Appointments scheduled
- Orders secured
Development/Design
- Design projects completed
- Features built
- Bug resolutions
Which tasks, if removed from your current responsibilities, would create the most significant positive impact on your business?
Consider these questions to guide your decision on the right role to hire:
- How do you currently spend your time? Are you aware of this? If not, examine your calendar or use a time-tracking application like Toggl for several weeks.
- What’s your time worth?
- Are there existing service providers who could take on additional responsibilities?
- What functions are you currently performing?
- What functions should you be handling but aren’t?
“The position you desire may not be the position your business requires right now”
Vision
Picture yourself after making this hire.
What would change? What would your daily activities look like? What would their responsibilities be? What tasks would you eliminate from your workload?
Uncertain about these answers?
That’s perfectly normal. Finding even a moment to consider your future vision can be challenging when juggling everything else, so let me assist.
I’ve guided hundreds of business owners in developing clear visions for their teams and business requirements.
During a brief conversation, we can discuss your situation and provide the clarity needed to move forward. Click here to schedule.
What’s the urgency of filling this position?
How critical is hiring for this work? Will it genuinely make a difference? When you envision what things will look like once this person starts, if the situation isn’t significantly different, do you have the right role or responsibilities in mind?
If not, invest more time in this planning phase until you identify work that will create the most substantial impact.
It’s simple to say you want to hire someone for your business. It’s challenging to commit the time, energy, and resources to actually hiring the right person.
I strongly recommend ensuring that hiring your desired role will deliver the benefits you expect before proceeding.
Taking this approach increases your chances of a successful hire because you’ll have clarity on the benefits they’ll provide. You’ll also understand what they need to offer to deliver those benefits.
First-time hiring? Two primary options to consider
The following two approaches are most frequently considered for first-time hires. However, this principle applies to every hiring decision.
Your choices:
1 – Hire someone to reduce your workload so you can focus on more challenging/high-value activities
When business owners handle most tasks themselves, they often hire entry-level positions like Virtual Assistants, Executive Assistants, Customer Support representatives, Project/Client coordinators, or Marketing Assistants to assume tasks they currently manage.
By delegating these responsibilities, they create time to concentrate on major priorities like Sales, Marketing, and business improvement.
2 – Hire a senior-level professional to lead and advance a specific function
This strategy can accelerate business growth more rapidly, but requires greater upfront investment to compensate a higher-level professional. Additionally, they typically won’t reduce time pressure on the business owner.
They usually work on larger initiatives that directly advance business objectives. While they often increase revenue, business owners frequently aren’t prepared financially or emotionally to hire at this level as an initial team member.
Creating a simple organizational (or accountability) chart with common business roles and placing your name in boxes where you currently fulfill those functions can be helpful.
You’ll likely place your name in many, possibly all boxes, but that’s acceptable. The first step is recognizing this reality.
The second step is addressing it – both for your business success and your personal well-being.
Consider Your Structure
Having key roles and responsibilities within your business mapped in a simple chart helps you visualize the transformation that would occur when someone else assumes the role or key responsibilities. This assists in making informed decisions about the next position to fill.
[Sample organization/accountability chart referenced – following the Accountability chart approach detailed by Gino Wickman in his book Traction]
Alternatives to hiring
I mentioned earlier that before hiring, you should explore alternatives. (This might be the most unconventional hiring guide ever, encouraging you to consider not hiring!)
Alternatives to hiring include:
Expanding responsibilities of existing service providers
A common example is whether your accountant provides bookkeeping services. For a modest monthly increase, they could handle this responsibility, categorizing expenses and receipts without requiring your attention or hiring a dedicated bookkeeper.
Consultants often have teams capable of implementation work.
For instance, while working with a Sales Funnel consultant, he also had a small team that could execute our planned changes, designing landing pages, configuring automation, and handling small tasks that would otherwise fall to me until I inquired about additional help. It was more cost-effective than anticipated and completed work much faster than if it had joined my task list.
Contracting new services for regular work
For example, if you need several blog articles written monthly, consider a content writing service instead of hiring a dedicated content writer.
Using Freelancers
Hiring freelancers is similar to bringing on full-time or part-time team members but with significantly less commitment, so the consequences of a ‘wrong’ hire are reduced.
Remember this reduced commitment works both ways. They often have no obligation to maintain availability for you, and they may accept other work that impacts their delivery to you.
All these options deserve consideration. However, don’t assume you can avoid hiring if you genuinely need a team member for your business.
Long-term, committed team members are almost always fundamental to business success.
After evaluating all these alternatives, if you’ve determined that you definitely need to hire, let’s proceed and guide you through the steps of securing the high-quality hire you need.
If you’re unsure where to start or want assistance with hiring questions and challenges, click here to schedule a free call with me for guidance.
Now that you’ve confirmed you want to hire a new team member, it’s time to think about them thoroughly.
Have a pen and paper ready, or open a document where you can take notes and begin building your new hire profile.
What will their responsibilities be?
- What tasks do you want this person to handle?
- What are their deliverables/what will they produce daily, weekly, or monthly?
- What skills and experience are required?
- How will you measure their success?
- What is this role typically called?
- Is there anything uniquely different about this role within your specific business?
Note: Measuring success is essential. You may not actively track this, but you need to know how you’ll determine if they’re performing well.
These notes don’t need perfection – you’re simply outlining the role you want to fill and the person who might fill it. If more than 80% of your requirements fit a ‘conventional role,’ excellent – that simplifies the process. If not, don’t worry. We’ll develop it progressively.
You can always have additional requirements, tasks, or skills you need, but be aware that if you want 10% of 10 completely different roles, finding this person will be like searching for a unicorn.
Want inspiration on skill combinations within roles? Visit jobrack.eu and browse jobs other business owners are currently hiring for.
What tools or systems should they know?
What tools do you currently use, or plan to use, in your business?
Many collaboration and communication tools are standard across remote businesses and easy to learn even without prior experience.
However, you may have specialized systems requiring your new hire to have familiarity.
This is particularly true for Developers but can apply to many other roles, so consider specific tools you need to include.
Tip: Experience with one collaboration tool like Monday.com, Asana, Trello, etc. will significantly ease onboarding for any hire. Also, if you’re focused on automation and improvement, any experience with process automation tools like Zapier is valuable.
What personality characteristics are you seeking?
This aspect is critical. Determining what you need upfront will save considerable time and frustration.
Consider what type of person you work well with and what characteristics they need to mesh with your team while delivering on the required work.
For instance, do you want someone outgoing, energetic, constantly generating new ideas and wanting to make numerous improvements?
Or do you prefer someone detail-focused, ensuring correct execution at appropriate times, typically quieter and more reserved?
Or do you want a combination?
Understanding what you appreciate about people and what frustrates you can help you attract and hire people you’ll enjoy working with. Just don’t be overly restrictive.
After all, life is about variety, and working with people different from ourselves provides excellent learning and growth opportunities.
Location
Do you need them in a specific geographical area or timezone? Do you need them to access particular resources that are somehow limited? Or do you simply need them to have a computer and internet connection?
Language
Do you have specific language requirements? Do you serve customers or suppliers in non-English speaking markets that you’d like your new team member to communicate with?
Required hours
How many hours do you want them to work? Do you have specific requirements? For example, you may need them to work during certain hours or have sufficient overlap with your timezone or that of your team or customers.
Tip: Be cautious about working hours. Almost no one enjoys working night shifts or unsociable hours long-term. Very few people want to spend Friday and Saturday nights working. Unless it’s essential, align your desired working hours with the normal working day of your hiring location and you’ll attract a broader range of quality applicants.
When hiring remotely, know that you can accomplish a great deal with just 2-4 hours of overlap with your team. You may also benefit from waking up to find they’ve already completed substantial work, giving you an excellent start to your day.
Does this person exist?
Review the notes you’ve made while answering these questions.
Are your expectations too high? Does this person exist?
If you’re being unrealistic, you’ll typically sense this. Just remember there are exceptional people with incredible skills available if you look in the right places.
As an example, if you’re looking to hire an assistant, here’s a list of common tasks they could handle:
- Establishing efficient email workflows and responding to emails
- Optimizing and organizing your workflows
- Screening applicants for new positions
- Reminding you to purchase end-of-year employee gifts
- Generating gift ideas, handling purchases & shipping
- Administrative tasks like invoicing
- Managing all aspects of your online calendar
- Scheduling and posting content on social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
- Scheduling calls with clients and prospects
- Helping you stay organized with various daily tasks
- Creating SOPs
- Communicating with other VAs regarding different tasks and projects
- Processing emails
- Scheduling calls
- Tracking results
- Creating documentation
- Working with spreadsheets
- Managing your LinkedIn account
- Creating reports
- Writing short content articles, FAQ responses, forum posts, and Q&A’s on platforms like Reddit and Quora
- Using creative skills to create and improve various assets including Facebook ads, LinkedIn posts, YouTube videos, resources and templates for guides, client presentations and more
If you’re uncertain, seek advice. I’m always available to discuss and help, so click here to schedule a call.
Now you have a solid outline of your new person. It’s time to consider where to find them.
Where to find your new hire?
Hundreds of options exist for finding your new hire.
Where you should search depends on your specific needs and requirements.
For example, if you need specific language skills or very specialized abilities, focus on locations that provide access to people with those qualifications.
Or you might have a particular region in mind, either because you have existing team members there or because you’ve heard positive things about hiring from that area.
Hiring sites exist for virtually every niche imaginable. It comes down to choosing what’s most important for you and selecting a site or service you can trust to help you secure the quality team member you need.
How much will they cost?
This isn’t just about their salary. While that’s typically the largest expense, don’t overlook other costs.
These may include:
- Software or tools they need access to
- Training courses required for the role or their development
- Your time – you’ll need to manage them and spend time with them (and this has a cost!)
- The hiring process itself, whether you handle it personally or get assistance, hiring someone costs both time and money.
Often, business owners planning to hire will establish a budget, then seek someone willing to work for that amount.
The problem with this approach is setting a budget without confirming whether the skill level you want is available for that budget.
If you’ve already advertised your role with an inappropriate salary, you’ll notice this through either poor-quality applicants or no applicants at all.
You’re then faced with deciding whether to continue and increase your budget or, more commonly, business owners compromise on person quality hoping it will work out. It almost certainly won’t!
Failed hiring costs significant time and money, so it’s important to avoid mistakes that waste your time, effort, and money.
Becoming informed about proper hiring methods is the best way to avoid such mistakes, so by reading this guide you’re already ahead.
Before starting your hiring process, you need to research how much these roles are compensated in the areas you’re considering.
Whether it’s full-time or part-time, senior or junior, you need an understanding of what salary similar roles are offering and how that aligns with your budget.
If you’re unsure about compensation, this is definitely an area to seek advice.
Ways to check your salary/budget
- Review other similar jobs
- Look for salary guides/surveys for the areas/skills you’re recruiting
- Ask other business owners
- Request advice from the site you’re considering for posting your job
- Get help from someone providing hiring services
Note that salary can vary dramatically depending on exact skills, experience level, and person’s location, so speaking with someone experienced in the roles and locations you’re considering will add real value.
If you want personalized salary advice for your role, feel free to contact me and I’ll provide guidance for your specific requirements.
Once you’ve determined what salary your desired role requires, hopefully this will align with your budget. If not, you may need to either compromise or find a way to hire the skill level you need at lower cost.
You may also need to increase your budget!
Hint: There are regions worldwide where you can access incredibly high skill levels at less than half the cost of hiring in the USA, Canada, or similar high-cost countries. Eastern Europe is where businesses hire the best remote talent anywhere in the world. Oh, and did I mention? Here at JobRack we specialize in the very best Eastern European remote talent.
When hiring, ensure you consider how much assistance you want and need throughout the hiring process.
- Is there someone you can speak with and ask questions?
- Do they offer guidance on compensation for specific roles?
- Can you get guidance on hiring methods and tips for optimal results?
- Do they offer services to save your time and effort, or do they expect you to handle everything?
- Do they guarantee results?
Hiring is challenging, so you’ll want every possible advantage. Consider these questions before starting the process.
Now, just before we get into the specifics of exactly how to hire, you need to ask yourself how much of this you have the skills and time to do yourself.
As you’ll learn, hiring successfully requires time and substantial effort.
Do you have that time?
Do you have the skills and experience to do this yourself?
Hiring typically requires a minimum of 40-60 hours of time and effort to complete, often more.
This is divided between upfront effort of crafting an excellent job post, creating application forms and filtering criteria, advertising and sourcing the quality applicants you need. That’s all before you’ve even started reviewing candidates – and that’s when the real work begins!
This is the moment to ask yourself whether you want to focus on running your business and get expert assistance from people who specialize in hiring to guarantee good results for this role.
That’s something to keep in mind as you read through the next steps of this guide.
Typically there are three options – I often compare it to climbing a mountain.
1 – Do It Yourself
You manage the entire process yourself – writing the job post, attracting the right candidates, reviewing and filtering, testing and interviewing. Complete control… And… All the work!
2 – Done With You
Have someone guide you through the entire process including handling the heavy lifting during early stages of the hiring process.
Work with them to agree on what you want and let them craft an excellent job post, promote your role and source candidates ensuring you get great applicants. Have them handle all filtering and reviewing so you only see quality candidates.
Then receive guidance from hiring experts as they help you through effective testing and interviewing of candidates to ensure you choose the right one.
3 – Done For You
The helicopter to the mountain top option – you just want results. You want someone else to handle all the heavy lifting and present you with just two to three fully vetted, exceptional candidates ready for your final interview and selection.
Want to discuss more and understand these options? Feel free to schedule a free call to discuss what’s right for you.
The plan – your hiring funnel
Now it’s time to get serious and take you through the specific steps of securing your new hire.
When hiring, you need a clear picture of the process you’ll follow to achieve a successful hire.
Think of it as a sales funnel.
You want to attract a good number of people at the top of your funnel, then filter and reduce them through each stage to end up with the one new hire you’re seeking.
You’ve already determined roughly what you want your new person to do, the skills and experience they might need, and the type of role you’re looking to fill.
Before we jump into crafting the perfect job post – one that captures attention and attracts the right candidates – take a brief moment to plan your hiring process. We’ll go through each of these steps in greater detail as you work through this guide.
- How are you going to attract the right people to apply?
- How do you want them to apply? (a message, an email, or an application form – more on this shortly)
- What information do you want them to include?
- How will you review and filter applications?
- How will you manage communications with applicants?
- When will you want to speak with them?
- How will you test them?
- What will the interview consist of?
- How will you offer and contract your new hire?
- How long will this process take from start to finish?
By having your thoughts organized for each step upfront, you can ensure you’re covering all key stages that lead to a successful new hire.
You can then craft the job post to include details of these steps, and you can also consider the time and effort you need to invest in the hiring process and schedule time in your calendar for the coming weeks.
The next step is the second part of our hiring guide – and that’s Writing a Job Post That Works.
