Hiring a new team member can be both exciting and nerve wracking. Luckily, there are things you can do to make this process stress-free and ensure you find the right team member for you. 

The three most common mistakes I see business owners make when hiring are: 

#1 They hire a new team member without the right systems in place so everyone ends up frustrated.

#2 They don’t hire at all because they are afraid of hiring the wrong person (or have hired the wrong person in the past so they don’t want to hire again).

#3 They want to find a unicorn who does it all instead of hiring people to work in their zone of genius.

How to hire the best person for your job

Of course I’m biased, but to save valuable time, your first step should be to hire an online business manager. A skilled OBM will plan out your hires and team members for you, picking the right people based on skill, experience and personality.

If you’re not ready to hire an OBM yet, the first thing to decide is who should you hire? It’s important to take time to consider what tasks you find yourself doing most often that can be delegated to someone else. 

Create a job description that reflects the tasks you need to be completed, but don’t be afraid to show your company values and your personality in the description. If you thrive on communication, need someone who values details (because that’s not your strong suit), or have a quirky sense of humor and communicate only in puns – add that to the job description! You will attract and find someone who is a better fit for the job because only those people who resonate with your description will apply.

Hire with an emphasis on ability and personality (not experience)

Now this is how I hire and may not work for every position, but in general I hire based on personality, ability, and interest to learn new skills rather than a bank of current skills. 

Meeting people, even online, you’ll know whether you click or you have no chemistry. Now, having someone who laughs at your jokes or thinks your weird obsession with watermelon is cute rather than annoying isn’t a deal breaker, but over the long haul, this can make a real difference. Sometimes the best team members aren’t the ones who we would hang out with socially, but I encourage you to consider who fits into your company culture rather than who has the most experience.

While hiring for brick and mortar business and online businesses, I’ve found that many people who were just starting out and had lots of transferable skills or the ability and motivation to quickly learn new skills are the real hiring gems! In general, they aren’t set in their ways and are open to new styles of working and their rate may reflect their experience in the online world, but not their skills or experience in business in general. 

Have tasks and systems in place before you hire

Something I see time and time again is a business owner, who is drowning in tasks and doesn’t have enough time to complete them, that brings someone on with no systems in place and then everyone ends up frustrated. By the time you communicate what you want done and how you want it done, you would have actually saved more time doing it yourself! Doh.

Your contractors want to do a good job but if they don’t know what to do, how to do it and when it’s supposed to be done, they’ll either bug you constantly or fall into radio silence waiting for direction.

Something I ask all of my clients to do is create a list of ongoing tasks they currently do that can/should be delegated. 

With this list, the next time you complete that task, if you simply write down the steps you take or even grab a screen recording and talk through what you’re doing, this provides a how-to for someone else to complete this action in the future.

Setting up these tasks, determining how and when you communicate with your team members, how you’ll be assigning tasks, how they can reach you and what to do when they have questions are all things that need to be set up before you hire.

Need help setting up these systems or making the next hire in your business? I can help! Let’s hop on a quick call to see if we might be a good fit! Want to start brainstorm about hiring? Try my FREE DreamTeam Starter Kit!