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What Are You Looking For? Learning How To Hire Your First Employee

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Perhaps you’ve been working at home for so long, but now your business is making traction, it’s time to hire additional help. Hiring your first employee can be an exciting, but also overwhelming time. But in many ways, the process is simple. Just as long as you know exactly what you’re looking for…

Defining The Job

Before you start to think about the recruitment skills you lack in, you’ve got to define what the role will entail. You may very well find that you are hiring someone because you can’t keep up with the workload anymore, but if you’re hiring someone to be a general dogsbody, will this encourage the right sort of people? Instead, you need to define what the role will entail, but also, specifically how much the job pays. You can look at similar roles on other job websites to get a direct comparison. If you’re not paying enough, it’s unlikely you will get the calibre of employee you want.

Following The Legalities

There is so many hoops to jump through to hire the right person, but if you’re not doing it in a legal sense, you will find yourself in hot water. You need to look at the minimum wage rates, especially if you’re hiring someone of a certain age, but you also need to check eligibility if you’re hiring someone that is only able to work in the UK for a certain period of time. There are guidelines from UK Visas And Immigration that can help with this, but throughout the process of hiring someone, you need to provide a written statement of employment. There are plenty of tools online that can help. But on top of this, you’ve got to ensure that your employee is safe, paid, but also is able to complete what you ask of them.

Finding Someone That’s The Right Fit

It’s all well and good finding someone that can do the tasks, but in order to hire an employee, you’ve got to find someone that you click with. The act of running a business means that you are taking someone on to help the business, but this means that you are at the opportune moment to create a culture of encouragement. When businesses get big, they can lose sight of their original goals, and everything becomes focused on the business, not necessarily the employees and their needs. Finding someone that’s the right fit isn’t just about ticking off a list of duties, but it’s having someone that makes you a better worker. Finding someone that can inspire you and gives you that extra bit of motivation when you are struggling is as invaluable as having the right person to do the job.

As you can see, there are a few components that need finalising. There’s plenty more than this, but as every business has a specific mission, the hiring process isn’t a cut and dry method. Hiring your first employee is a learning curve all in itself, but you will learn so much more about who you are and how you lead as well.