Steps to hire the right team and grow your business

So you’ve considered your business projections and trends, reviewed your finances (thoroughly!) and you know your business is growing.

You can also see that you can’t grow your business any further without taking on help and building a team. Particularly when those tasks you are spending time on are not your skills set, forte or even tasks of choice. We are never going to do those as well as someone trained for them, wasting time and money not doing the things we are good at.

Planning to hire is a big step. After you have considered all the reasons to hire and challenged yourself that you, and the business are ready to hire, (see my blog post on the real reasons you need to recruit) how do you go about actually recruiting?

Planning ahead, even just before you are ready, will make the process easier and allow you to feel in control, rather than a desperate offer to the first person you speak to that could help. Before you then have to sort out the mess, when they don’t have the right skills, they’re not quite the right fit, they don’t compliment your style or team, or you haven’t created the right role. You make strike gold!

But then you need a plan for growing around that (and creating a balanced team).

Here are 4 steps to consider and start your planning process.

Whether to outsource, take on freelance/contractor or an employee?

You may just need a project completing, a seasonal helping hand during busy periods, support to cover absence or holidays, help setting up some processes or systems in your business, an independent sounding board for strategy planning or a one-off piece of work. On this basis you could look at a contractor, freelance support, consultant or temporary member of staff.

Starting out with a contractor or outsourcing, can be one way to test the water on workload and what you need help with versus what you enjoy prior to committing to a permanent employee. You may pay higher rates for these services, and may not be able to control them as much as you’d wish, but this may be easier to manage while you get your longer-term plan in place and cost out the full expenses of hiring, in terms of recruitment, salary, benefits, tax NI, pensions etc. Alternatively, a temporary or fixed term employee can help you set things up and test the water in managing those additional responsibilities before committing long term.

One potential draw-back with relying on contractors and freelancers for regular ad hoc work will be availability around their schedule, ability to commit to an increasing volume of work and commitment to helping you in achieving your vision as a primary focus. But once you are at that stage when you need more and more help, you know you are ready for an employee.

Creating a job description

Whether you are looking for your first, fifth or twentieth employee, you need to consider the tasks and duties in line with other roles in the team and where they fit in. How they will contribute to the overall vision and give them a purpose in what they will be doing for you. Grouping tasks and creating roles depends on the numbers in the team already, as when you are smaller, you need to be more ‘all hands-on deck’ and that is a different skill set and type of person to when you have a bigger team and more defined roles and responsibilities.

Job descriptions are not just about the tasks and duties though. You need to consider the approach to the work that you want them to have in terms of their competencies, (linked to how that fits to what you want the company to achieve) and the behaviours that you want them to display e.g. teamworking, customer service, attention to detail, organisation, communication etc. and explain what those mean to you. We have some great templates we share with clients that are really comprehensive in their approach to ensuring you have considered the full picture. This will also help in creating your job advert, which is a separate task (and blog post!).

Getting a full picture of the potential candidate, not just having a one-off chat.

The draw back with a single interview approach is that you cannot get all the information you need about that person, their experience, abilities, behaviours and skill level from a single chat about what you are looking for from the role. Being aware of potentially limiting influences during interviews, such your own biases and the halo effect can help you develop a more objective and effective approach. When you are desperate for help, stressed or emotionally involved it can be harder to step back and think bigger picture and longer term.

A thorough interview does form a central part of recruitment. A consistent and documented approach with a range of questions is key, as that contributes to ensure it is a fair and a non-discriminatory, but it should only be part of the selection process. Having a (preferably) diverse interview panel, (even inviting trusted advisors to help if you are on your own) will help you assess fit and competency and maybe see things you haven’t (you don’t want to replicate yourself if you are looking for different skills and styles to compliment your own!), and second interviews to meet people on a different day and maybe in a different environment.

Mesh HR have great templates to help structure your interview and questions for you.

Review some work examples before committing.

Using a work-based assessment, practical examples/portfolio or presentation to understand their knowledge and skill in more depth can be so useful to ensure you will be able to work well together, you like their approach and the style fits with the company and what you are trying to achieve.

Also, behavioural or personality assessments (as part of the process, not a decider), references and qualification checks for example, can add extra support, depending on the role or situation.

Once set up, this can be easy and effective to manage, it does not have to be a long or time-consuming process! Tailored to your role and strategy and only adding in what is relevant, is key.

Would you like more support?

For further support which you can take away and implement in your own time, request our recruitment and hiring pack for growing your business here. We provide your step by step checklist, your interview record and job description templates and your process documents in detail so you are ready to implement your recruitment plan in your business straight away, to get going hiring your team and growing your business with confidence.

Now. Are you ready to lead? Read our free ‘20 days to be an amazing leader’ checklist here, to be fully prepared!

Please get in touch and let us know how you get on!

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