How To Hire For A Growing Small Business

Being a small business owner comes with its fair share of ups and downs. From celebrating your successes as you grow, to sleepless nights as you juggle an increasing workload — eventually something’s got to give. Adding employees is an important step toward building your business, and doing so with intention and clarity is paramount.

An important milestone for business owners is admitting and realizing it’s ok that you can’t do everything yourself. Next, it’s time to sit down and build a hiring pipeline, using it as your guideline for growing your staff. As you do with many other aspects of your business, make sure this plan considers scalability at each step. A growing business knows no bounds, if you are armed with the right tools.

Here are four practical tips to help you grow sensibly through the hiring process.

Write a killer job description

 This is the crucial moment where you sit down and think about exactly who you want to work with. It will also be an opportune time to think about how this will play out later as you have a larger team– who would do what? And who would report to who?

Pro tip: As you go through your work day, take note of any tasks that you can delegate to another employee in order to free up your workflow.

Consistency is key

Yes, it’s a little dull to make sure everything is the same throughout your hiring process but sometimes being boring pays off. It comes naturally to treat employees on an individual level and deal with their issues on a case-by-case basis. However, this will only lead to conflict down the line.

Pro tip: Draft and distribute a clear employee policy to all employees, and consider ensure you show them the policy during the hiring process as well.

Training is everything

How you train your employees will have a significant impact on your business. Of course, you will have to show them how to execute the tasks you want them to do, and patience will be key here, as not everyone learns after doing something once.

Pro tip: When training your employees, it’s helpful for them to learn about tasks outside of their scope, so that they can help in training and managing future employees.

Plan for growth

As previously mentioned, working closely on job descriptions and how different positions will play into each other is a key step in ensuring business hiring scalability. You can draw a rough road map/hierarchy of where you think you see the jobs going, but make sure to edit as you get a greater sense of the workflow and add more employees into the mix.

Pro tip: pay close attention to positions you might deem temporary versus permanent. For example, you might want to hire a larger sales team at first to get the word out.

Growing a business is exciting. It is an incredible feat that you’ve grown your business to a point where you can justify building a hiring strategy. This is indeed an exciting time, but it’s crucial not to rush through the process. A misstep here can grow to be a major pain point for you. Slow and steady wins the race!