As a business owner that is just kicking off his business, you need to be able to get things going well for you in the initial stages. Some people get discouraged along the line because of some simple mistakes they make as first-time founders. Hiring amiss is one of such costly mistakes. When you hire the wrong staff, you don’t grow as a company but you will keep spending money to pay salaries. So, what are some of those common mistakes to avoid when hiring as a first-time founder?
When you don’t know who you need
Most first-time founders usually make this mistake when hiring their first crop of staff. When you don’t know what qualities your ideal candidate should possess, then you are already hiring a square peg in a round hole. You should have pioneer members of staff who will know the common goals and objectives of the business. You all are supposed to have a meeting to plan how the company will be run and what kind of labor skills you will be needing. Generally, there are five things you need to define about your first set of hires. They are :
- Personality: You need to be able to work with someone you can get along with else you would have failed with that employee
- Expertise: You need to know what their skill levels are. What are they very good at?
- Interests: What kind of jobs do they love doing and why the interest in your company?
- Aspirations: You need to know what they hope to be known for and how that fits into what you are looking for as a company.
- Short-term and long-term goals: You also need to know what they are currently focused on and what they want to achieve in the next few years. Do you think this will work well with your organization?
Not concentrating on the most important roles
Though team members’ commitment is an added advantage, some positions just need to be filled to get some jobs done. Examples are administrative duties and some legal work. The roles you need to pay very good attention to are those that will have a huge impact on your company’s success. For roles like this, you will need to describe your ideal candidate in detail before you set out to look for that person. The truth is that you may not exactly find the perfect match but knowing what you need will save you the stress, time, and cost implications of interviewing the wrong candidate.
Not knowing how to find the right candidate
It is one thing to know what you need in the ideal candidate, but another ball game entirely knowing where to find them. There are many recruiting and freelancing sites but not all of them will present the right channel for your needs. There is an option of going with social media or taking to job recruiting firms. You can make use of EOR or Employer Of Record companies. They hire people with the right qualifications and skill levels that your company needs for you. That is their main job and they have that experience in finding the right talent for you. They will save you the stress of investing your resources and work hours in looking for the right candidate.
Not knowing when to hire part-time
As a business owner, you need to be able to categorize the duties in your organization into how frequently they need to be carried out. It will not make any sense to hire someone who services your air conditioners or photocopiers on a full-time basis. Hiring someone full-time instead of part-time means you will spend more money on salaries. This won’t be healthy for a business that is just starting and needs to grow. If you care for more information on this, you can check online for personal finance statistics for 2021.
Hiring someone who doesn’t do well in teams
It is possible to get the right candidate and still not bond well with that employee. You need to be sure you will be able to get along with your recruit on your projects because that is what will ensure that your organization is productive. So how do you find this out before you hire? Apart from knowing more about your future employee’s skills, you have to dig more for behavioral traits. How does this person perform in a team? This is the reason why some organizations make it compulsory to group prospective employees into groups and assign them tasks during the interviewing process. This move is usually to determine how well each of the bonds performs when there is a team goal to achieve.
Hiring because you know the person
While you are hiring your co-workers, you may be forced to choose between qualified individuals and friends, family, or relatives. It is difficult for anyone to ask these family members to either not apply for the position or, telling them that they do not qualify. Even while asking someone to quit, it is easy in the case of most employees but when it is someone you know, it is not a simple task for the boss. If you fail to make the right decision it means you have ended up compromising with the quality work a qualified individual would have provided and it means a loss to your organization as well. Here the best thing to do is drawing a line between your personal and professional relations.
Hiring a person because he or she needs your help
Keep in mind that the hiring process is tough. Therefore, in case you are hiring a person just to help him or her out, the whole purpose of hiring for your organization is not served. Even if it appears as if all is well, you will end up taking a loss and this will not be a good sign for you. Rather you need to hire a person that can add value to the business and is willing to go that extra mile for helping you and your company out of any possible bad situation. It doesn’t have to be that you are facing a bad situation at the moment, however, the employee you have hired must be in a position to pull you out of a bad position in case you get into one.
Hiring a jack of all trades
For a start-up entrepreneur, it is good to be a jack of all trades but the same is not the case while hiring an employee. As a business owner, you have to be a jack of all trades. It doesn’t matter what kind of staff you hire for your business but, you need to ensure that you are not shortlisting the staff with the thought that they are capable of doing everything. This approach will fail as you are going to have a limited number of employees working for you in a start-up and it also means there will be many tasks relegated to a person that is not an expert in the work. Moreover, you can make use of tools online such as a startup valuation calculator if you need more help about it.
Going too fast in the recruitment process
Remember, the hiring process needs to go on carefully with all the candidates being screened properly. Several people from the HR teams miss out on gems just because they were in a hurry to move onto the next candidate. In case you have made this mistake before, you will be aware of the number of good prospective candidates you must have missed out on for the right position in the company.
Conclusion
If you can make the right choice regarding staffing, you are on your way to success already. You can use these tips to guide you in employing your first set of staff. It is necessary to spend wisely at the budding stage of your business and paying salaries has to bring back productivity in return. That way, you can make profits.
