When you’re starting a business and working as a solo entrepreneur, you’re everything. Chief cook and bottle washer, as they say, are all your titles. But, there comes a point when you’re ready to bring on team members, and you realize that it’s time to delegate some of these tasks to others.
I’ve seen it several times in the past when a client gets excited about delegating and getting tasks off their plate. Suddenly they’re making a list of ALL the things they’ve been doing that they don’t want to do any more:
• bookkeeping
• video editing
• answering phones
• scheduling appointments
• making travel arrangements
• designing graphics for social media posts
• copywriting
• website updates
• Etc…
And because the client was doing ALL of these things, now she starts looking for the magic assistant who can take over all these roles and responsibilities. Here’s the rub… the person who’s good at video editing may not be the best person to do your bookkeeping… and that’s when the wake-up call happens.
“I’m not looking for ONE person to replace ME in all these tasks. I want a TEAM of players with excellent skills in all the appropriate areas!”
Maybe you’re looking for a graphically-minded person who can help with both video editing and creating graphics for your social media presence, but that’s probably a different person than the one answering your main phone line and scheduling appointments for you.
So, here’s the step that many people miss… group your tasks into skill areas and hire accordingly. It might be that you’re finding 2-5 new players for your team who will all be working a few hours each week or month for you. Yes, that will mean more communication and management for you, but it will also SAVE YOU TIME & MONEY. Why? because rather than having someone unskilled at website updates banging their head against your WordPress site for hours or days at $15/hr., you will hire the skilled person who can fix the problem in less than an hour for $50/hr.
There are not many jacks-of-all-trades. Everyone has their strengths, and if we hire team members to play to their strengths, then we’re better off in the long run too.
The Hiring Process
Step 1: Go for it!
Make that list of all the tasks you would like to get off your plate, then pause for a few minutes and figure out who you’re actually looking for? How many people do you need to fill your shoes? Which of those tasks are similar and belong together, and which are really very different.
Step 2: Job Descriptions
Write job descriptions for each of those roles, or at least start with the one that feels most important. What goes in a job description?
1. Information about your company
2. A list of the responsibilities/tasks for the position
3. Traits or skills of an excellent candidate
4. Time expectations and compensation rate or range
5. How to apply
And guess what… the info in #1 and #5 is the same for every role, and 2-4 become much easier to edit for subsequent job descriptions once you’ve created the first one.
Step 3: Develop your hiring process
In other words, don’t just “grab coffee” or jump on Skype with everyone who applies. Believe me, you’ll waste a LOT of time. There’s a reason why most corporations have layers to their interviewing process. Typically, I’ve used three steps: application, phone interview, and in-person or Skype interview. I would certainly use this level of process for any role for which you will be creating an ongoing, intensive relationship (bookkeeping, phone answering, admin work).
There are some roles that work well as one-off project-based work (graphics work, some web work, and copywriting for instance). For those I might simplify the interviewing process and give them a small project to prove themselves on. Then, if they execute that small project well, then they earn the opportunity to work with you more.
Step 4: Decide where to post
Yes, you can post opportunities at your local college or tell your network of colleagues and Facebook friends about the fact that you’re hiring. But, I would also look further afield and leverage the power of the internet. I’ve had great success finding amazing team members on Craigslist, Guru.com, Elance, and Upwork. And sometimes you find that amazing person in Bangladesh who knocks your socks off with their graphics skills (and costs you a lot less.)
Step 5: Learn about Behavior-based Interviewing
The one book that I constantly have recommended to people looking to hire team members is How to Choose the Right Person for the Right Job Every Time by Lori Davila and Louise Kursmark. Why is this book so valuable? Because it includes 50 different competencies that might be relevant for many different roles and offers several interview questions for you each of which aims to elicit a story from your candidate about how they have demonstrated that competency in the past. In other words, you are able to figure out who has actually done the work that you’re looking for in the past rather than just hypothetically imagining that they could do those tasks. So valuable.
Step 6: Remember, hire slowly, fire quickly
Take your time to find the best candidate for each of your roles. Don’t just hire the easy person who falls in your lap (like your friend’s nephew.) Consider all such “easy” candidates alongside the other appropriate candidates, and let them rise to the top based on their skills and merits (not just convenience). Also, remember… what will happen to that relationship if you have to fire the person? Because the second half of that axiom is to fire quickly if someone isn’t working out. Don’t drag yourself through frustrations. If it’s not working and appropriate feedback isn’t creating the necessary changes, then let them go and start fresh. Yes, hiring again will take time, but it’s so much better than limping along and feeling frustrated by cleaning up someone else’s mistakes.
Next Actions
While there may not be one magic person who can take all your repetitive tasks off your plate, there are definitely people who would be thrilled to help you. Ask for what you need and set your team members up for success by getting crystal clear on the roles and skills sets that you want to hire into your business. The best part? Once you have developed your hiring process, you will be able to reuse it anytime you’re ready to hire a new team member for your business. The one guarantee I can make is that team members will come and go from your work world, but you will also meet amazing new people who will change your life and your business forever.
Do you have questions or concerns about hiring team members for your small business? Feel free to ask them in the comments below, and I’ll do my best to help!
