Five questions to answer before hiring your first team member

One of my most favourite things to support other businesses with is growing their teams.

I love recruitment. I have over 15 years of recruitment experience in different organisations, including permanent roles, contract roles, and outsourcing projects. I have hired people into a wide range of different positions and departments, from Marketing and Finance to HR and IT.

And every time, you need to check and prepare some crucial things before you start bringing new people into your team. Doing these things will make sure your hiring process is successful. 

Preparation is critical when growing your team; it’s not something you should be doing on a whim. Bringing in someone new takes a lot of time and money and energy. If you get it wrong, it can be costly.

What are your skills gaps?

Why do you need to bring someone onboard? What skills are missing from your team, or what do you no longer have time for? Is this a temporary need or longer-term?

Take some time out and have a close look at what is currently missing.

If you have a team, get clear on what they are doing, what you are doing, work out the gaps, and why there are gaps and what you think is needed to plug them.

If you're the only person within your business and you're looking to recruit for the first time congratulations!

You need to dissect everything currently on your plate. What don’t you have time for, or what do you not enjoy and what expertise do you need to bring into your business to help your business grow?

Don’t put yourself in a position where you bring in someone new and then find out another team member already has the skills you need. And don’t bring someone in to perform a role and then you can’t let go of the work, so they end up twiddling their thumbs.

So, now you know what’s missing, and that you need to hire, you need to make sure your business back end is in order so that someone can come onboard to help you.

What tools does your new hire need to deliver for you successfully?

The second thing you need to think about is the tools you will give that person to the business. Tools can encapsulate so many different things, but your business’s systems and technology are what I mean.

How will you share tasks and keep track of work completed? Do you have a project management tool? 

Using a PM tool like ClickUp, Asana or Trello, will help you track and assign tasks for your team member and they can be clear on what their workload is and what their deadlines are. You can have clear communication and share ideas. A PM tool keeps everyone on track and will ensure your team can work seamlessly together. 

How will you share files and documents?

You need to have cloud storage in place so that everyone knows where to access and save documents and files. It makes sharing work more manageable and reduces unnecessary emails and back and forth communication. The more self-sufficient people can be, the better!

How will people know the processes they need to follow? How do they know how you like things done or the correct way to deliver particular tasks within your business?

You need standard operating procedures (SOP’s) Now, these are not the sexiest things to put together for your business, but if you are scaling and growing your team, standard operating procedures are essential. 

It doesn’t matter whether your new team member will be working for one hour or full-time within your business each month. You need to have instructions on how you like things to be done or how tasks should be performed. Having these in place can save a lot of time, energy, questions and training. If you don’t have these in place, then it’s worth planning to start pulling them together. You can ask your team members, do them yourself, or you’ll need to ask your new hire to create them as they learn the process.

Are your passwords stored securely? How will you securely share passwords with the new team member?

Do not share these on email or Voxer or WhatsApp! Use a tool like LastPass where you can share and manage the passwords securely. This will also help you offboard any team members and retract access easily, rather than needing to re-set all the passwords.

What budget do you have?

How much can you afford to spend each month or each year on this new team member? Do you need an employee or to outsource? Short-term or long-term?

Thinking about budgeting for someone to join your team can sometimes feel a little bit uncomfortable. You might be feeling a little bit unsure whether you can really afford it. Review your gaps, decide on your budget and then work out whether this needs to be a contractor or employee, part-time or full-time, project or retainer.

Have a look at the return on investment of bringing someone in; Will it save you time to focus on other money-generating activities? Allow you to launch a service or create more sales? To improve your efficiencies and automation so that you can scale? Speed up or enhance the delivery of your products or services? 

If you don’t have enough budget to do exactly what you want or bring in a particular skill set for as long as you want, then think of plan B. Can you pay to train up a team member? Bring someone on for fewer hours? Work with a consultant? Have you asked if anyone on your existing teams has the knowledge or skills you need?

How will you communicate within your team?

How are you going to communicate with your team on a day to day basis? How will you share tasks, ideas and generally check in with them?

When working with a team online, you can make the most of some great online tools to ensure excellent communication with your team. You can use the chat facility in your PM tool. You can use messaging apps like Voxer and WhatsApp or specialist communication tools like Slack.

The tools you choose don’t really matter, what is essential is that you try to stick to one method of communication and that all information is kept in one place. If you are emailing work, following up about it on WhatsApp and then also assigning other things in your PM tool, work will get missed, and you will feel disorganised, overwhelmed and productivity will be low. Your team may feel stressed and end up leaving.

Preparation is key

The worst position to be in;  you find the perfect talent, you bring them onboard and show them the ropes, and then they leave!

The main reason new hires leave is due to lack of communication, lack of support, overwhelm and not having the tools they need to deliver successfully. 

Don’t set up your new hires for failure; prepare for success.

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