So, you’re going into business? Well, now you need some staff. So how are you going to find and hire these awesome employees. This is something that’s pretty close to home for us at the moment, we’re looking for a few new staff. It doesn’t matter they’re technical staff, admin staff, or trade staff, it’s all kind of the same, the trickiest trying to find them to start with.
There are job boards, there’s sites like seek, community job boards, there’s social media – put it out there on your Facebook or your LinkedIn that you’re hiring, you can actually put ads on LinkedIn to hire people through LinkedIn. If you’re looking for more professional type people, talk to your friends and family. One thing that we did recently is we were looking for a couple of new hires for our offshore team, and what we did was we spoke to our existing team and offered them a bonus if they found the right person for us.
There are two trains of thought there. One train is that’s great, yeah, , they’re going to give you the right people, people they know and trust that they’re going to have the skills or the attitude knowing you and your business The other train of thought is that is going to grab whoever they can so they can get the bonus. That sometimes, employing friends and family isn’t a good thing. We’ve always found it positive in our business as we have a great team but we also know others that it didn’t’ work for. (We got 2 awesome admin ladies from our latest effort)
Ultimately it is up to you. The important thing is to get it out there, make sure that people know that you’re hiring, put an ad in the window, put a sign at the front of your business, whatever it is that you need to do, how many times do you walk into a fish and chip shop when they go cook wanted? Well, guess what? Now you know, they’re looking for a cook.
That’s the bottom line, do make sure that if you are advertising that your job ad describes what the job is in detail, who you are, what the remuneration is and what’s expected of that person. If they need qualifications, list that in there.
Now sometimes that even a great add description doesn’t work, I’ve got to say we’ve advertised for accountants, and we get accounts clerks or people who’ve been account executives meaning marketing or sales. In the majority, people that look on job ads, if it’s got a qualification, and they don’t have it, they don’t apply, they don’t waste their time, they’ve got better things to do.
So, get it out there. Get all your applications in, then do a spreadsheet, a matrix of the people who they are, what their skills are. Ideally do some type of aptitude test or a video that you can actually get them to talk on video so you can see a little bit about their personality, then you short list from there and then, do the interviewing.
Most importanty at the end of the day, when you do have staff, make sure you’ve got an employment contract. The employment contract should ideally be originally created by a solicitor or an HR firm, but it will have their name, their details, what the role is, what the responsibilities are, what the remuneration ‘s are, and generally has in there, if there’s any problems, who they’re to go to and what the actions are from there. Make sure that it’s written out early on, so they know where they stand and know you know where you stand.
Probably the best bit of advice I can give you is to hire slow and fire fast. Generally, small businesses have a three-month probation period. If someone’s not cutting it in those three months. Make that decision. Let them go and find the right person for you.