How to Hire Your First Employee (without tanking your business)
Starting a business is like becoming a parent for the first time. It’s exciting and you are overjoyed, but you also don’t really know what you’re doing.
When it comes to business, one of the purest moments of joy is when you hire your first employee. Your business is growing! That’s great!
But, it’s also kind of scary.
You are responsible for this person you are going to hire and their performance. If they turn out not to be the right fit, it’s you, your business and any investors you have who suffer. No matter how much due diligence you perform, hiring is still a calculated gamble, but when you’re the business owner, it’s your money (or your investors’ money) that you’re risking.
But, like a good parenting book, you can get advice on how to hire the right way to minimize risk and maximize potential for success. Here are some tips to hiring your first employee to make sure you get it right.
1. Take your time.
How much time exactly?
A lot.
Okay, so that wasn’t really exact. How about this: a third to a half of the total time you spend on your business (once you have your vision, your products or services and your target market defined).
To put that another way, if you spend eight hours of your day focussing on your business, 2.5 to four of those hours should be dedicated to hiring your first employee.
Those numbers come from former Y Combinator president Sam Altman who says companies are a product of the team their founders build. He also points out that founders should spend time doing the job they are hiring for so they know exactly what it entails and they can hire accordingly.
A mediocre hire can poison the culture of a young startup and kill the whole thing. A mediocre hire, by the way, is someone who does not believe wholeheartedly in your company. It’s someone who bails when the going gets tough (and the going is going to get tough when you’re starting a company).
He points to the example of Airbnb, which spent five months interviewing people for its first hire and it only hired two people in its first year. They wanted people who would “bleed” Airbnb so they knew they were hiring the right people.
Don’t be in a rush to hire employees. Your team is your foundation. You want a solid one.
2. Hire for who a person is, not the potential you see in them.
As you interview people, you’re likely to run into candidates who are not exactly the right fit, but who you like as people. It is tempting to hire these people because you believe you’ll get along with them and they can always grow into the position with your guidance.
But, don’t.
Your first hire needs to be as close to perfect for the position as possible. To gauge how close they are, use their past accomplishments and ignore your gut. It may be telling you that they’re great and they’ll blossom into something they haven’t proven to be in the past, but you’re not really smitten, you’re probably just hungry.
When you interview, concentrate on past accomplishments, previous work experience, what motivates them to succeed and what they consider success.
3. Be cognizant that you’re building your corporate culture.
Hiring your first employee isn’t just filling a position. It’s laying the foundation for your corporate culture, establishing the values you want in your employees and developing a process to follow for future hires.
List the values that you want your employees to have and as you’re interviewing people, refer to your list to help you choose someone who will convey those values.
Your first hire is quite literally a huge part of your organization. If you are a sole founder, your first hire is 50% of your entire workforce until you hire someone else and then they become 33% of it. Hire one more person and your first hire is still 25% of your company’s team.
That’s why you need someone who is going to believe wholeheartedly in your company. They’re going to be making up a significant portion of it for a while.
4. Invest in them.
Invest in the future of your first employee because that is also an investment in your company’s future. Get them the training and resources they need to help your company succeed. The better their chances at success, the better your business’ chances at success will be, and yours, too. See how it’s all connected?
5. Show trust in them.
Delegation is often cited as one of the most difficult things for a company founder to do. It’s difficult to let someone else take responsibility and run things, but you are going to have to do it eventually. It’s best to get used to doing this and preparing others for it when you have a small operation.
By building a relationship of trust with your first employee and delegating responsibility to them at an appropriate rate, you will be instilling a culture of empowerment in your business that will be scalable as you grow.
6. Let the ax drop, if necessary.
While there is no set time for figuring out if your first employee is right for your company, you should figure it out quickly and let them go if you have to. It could save your company.
Remember that it’s not just for your company, it’s for them, too. They deserve to be in a position where they can flourish and if that position isn’t with your company, so be it. They need to get started on the rest of their lives and you need to get started on finding someone else.
No matter if it’s your first hire or your hundred-and-first hire, conducting interviews, sifting through resumes and trying to separate truth from stretched truth is a long and painful process. But, your company is like a child and it deserves the best you can give it, which means spending the time to find the best first employee you can.
