3 Things To Remember When Hiring For the First Time

Are you looking to hire your first employee? Check out today’s contributed post on things to remember when hiring for your first time. Enjoy!

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When you are ready to hire staff to help run your business, you know that you are making a significant leap. Not only are you ready to expand, but you are also ready for a new challenge by becoming a manager as well.

Many businesses are made by their staff and hiring is a really important and pressured situation. This means that the while hiring the right people could make your business, hiring the wrong people could break it.

Money is a big factor when it comes to hiring so you might be tempted to cut costs by hiring someone cheaper but less experienced. This is a gamble and could leave you with a totally useless staff member so think carefully before you do this. In other words, don’t scrimp on staff, find other ways to save money instead.

You Must Prioritize Staff Welfare

When it is just you, it is easy to work crazy long hours and push yourself harder than any manager ever would. While this might be okay for you, your staff will certainly not fancy staying behind on a Friday and missing out on time with their kids. This means that even before you have hired anyone, you need to think carefully about the culture you want to adopt.

Before you do anything, it might be worth consulting with Peninsulas HR outsourcing services as they can sort out everything from employee handbooks to handling sensitive data for you. If you haven’t hired anyone before, knowing exactly what to expect and being able to deal with it must come first.

You should also look at your finances and figure out a few ways that you can make life easier for your staff without making it more expensive for you. A good example is allowing people flextime or the option to work at home on some days. This is basically free for you but could make a real difference to their quality of life.

Attracting the Brightest Talent

Getting the brightest and best is important for your business, especially if you are looking to build a team that can help you get to the next level in business. However, you can’t just snap your fingers and wait for them to come to you: you need to tempt them in.

People are much more interested in achieving a good work/life balance these days so you need to demonstrate that your company will have the kind of culture they are looking for. Again, have a look at your finances to see what you will be able to offer from a gym membership to extra holidays and try to match your offer to the desires you think talented individuals will have.

Though we often see images of offices full of ping pong tables, slides and bean bags, this isn’t everything to everyone. Brighten up your space, certainly, but don’t spend more than your budget on this kind of stuff just yet. In fact, ask your staff what they would like to see and then base the results on their suggestions.

Remember: You Are Being Interviewed Too!

Being on this side of the interview table is a great opportunity and you might even be tempted to relax. However, you must remember that you are being interviewed too and anyone who thinks you are less than great may not be inclined to accept your offer.

Make sure that you are professional and while you must put them at their ease, don’t be over-friendly. You need to show that you are in control of the situation and that you will be a good manager for them. This will inspire confidence and hopefully bring out the best in each candidate.

In the end, you aren’t looking to be best friends with an interviewee but you also aren’t interrogating them about their work history. Start with some nice chit chat to relax and then refer back to their CV and the job spec in every question to make sure that you ask everything you want to.

Hiring is a tiring process for you and the candidates so make sure that you give unsuccessful candidates some feedback. This might be a simple case of getting more experience or perhaps they just aren’t quite the right fit. Whatever it is, make sure that you tell them how to improve and not everything they did wrong. Even though they may never work for you, they could be a good addition to your network so don’t burn any bridges!