How to hire a new staff member

In this article we’re going to look at some of the things to consider when you’re looking to hire a new staff member.  You might have got to the point where there’s too much work and enough cashflow to hire someone, but don’t the mistakes we’ll cover below.

I hope this article will give you a little insight if you think you might be ready for the next person to come in.  The points I’m covering might take a grey area and make it black or white for you.

What I’ll not cover is the HR specialities.  You’re best to speak to an HR expert like Carol at Able2Consulting.  There’s a blog here about things to consider when hiring your first employee and you’ll also be able to gain support for other aspects of your recruitment process.

Work packages

I’m not sure about you, but I work better when I’ve a defined work package.  This article for example, there’s a very clear package of work.  Also with this article, I know I want to talk about hiring staff from a process and values perspective.  The rest of the article, the way I do it and what I write is kind of free flowing.  It’s not micro-defined of exactly what to cover.  I want to write it before the half term starts and I go into holiday mode, but other than that, I can write what I like.

This is similar to way staff will work best.  If they have a work package, or basic work flow to work with they should be able to bring their personality, their attributes to the team.  Unless you’re in the habit of hiring robots in which case, this article is probably not for you.  Or maybe it is if you’re a robot reading this…  Hi Google!

A work package can be relatively straight-forward to create.  You might find you’re better off starting to map the processes in your business.

Process mapping

In the article I talk about starting at the core processes, the very top.  Assuming you’ve already done that, mapping out the area you think you need a new hire will help.  You might start mapping your sales admin process then realise you need to hire a new insurance broker.  Better before you advertise than realise once they’ve sat at their new desk!

You might also write out the business admin process and realise there’s a lot more activities in a different team or role that can be taken by  an administrator.  That will free up resources to work on other priorities, maybe finding new business.

Once you’ve mapped out the processes you should have information which almost writes your job description.

So it’s a win win.  You create a process to help the rest of the team, and save the effort of creating the job description.

What are your core values?

Easy to ask, harder to understand.  Every business either has them or has been told they need them.  Not all of them are true or valid.  It’s very common to walk into a building and see the values displayed and witness examples where the opposite behaviour is presented.

I looked back through my old blogs and realised I’ve not written one about how to create your core values.  That’ll come soon so looking through the archives on my YouTube channel here is a video about how to set core values.  Here is another one about some of the common mistakes.

When it comes to hiring staff, the values that they have are far more important than the skills they have.  Skills can be taught, how someone behaves has been shaped since birth and is a lot harder to change.

Summary

If you set out work packages, work flow and core values your next hire will be a dream.  If you need help defining any of those, feel free to book a no obligation 30 mins here.