Hiring without Hesitation

A How-To for Small Business Success

Laura Nelson

• Publisher: River Grove Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781632993267
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

People are a company's greatest asset, and the smaller the business, the more intimately connected employees are to the purpose. Yet small businesses are often ill-equipped at the process of hiring and training the new employees they need to function and grow. Bad hires are a drain on precious resources, and turnover and disruption of work can have a negative impact on morale. But with the right tools and information, hiring well is a skill you can learn. ?Laura Nelson breaks the hiring process down into clear, easy-to-follow steps that make finding and hiring talent a productive and enjoyable experience. Hiring without Hesitation: A How-To for Small Business Success covers everything from assessing needs and crafting job descriptions, to conducting interviews and onboarding new team members. Learn how to spot red flags, avoid common hiring mistakes, and utilize hiring methods that fit your business and needs. By turning promising candidates into valuable team members who contribute their skills and abilities, you, your employees, and the business can all reach full potential.

CHAPTER 1

TAKING THE PLUNGE

Many people launch their small business, as I did, because they have an amazing idea or skill they love. We’re excited to offer our passion or product to the world, and getting there takes a lot of education, hard work, and perseverance. We spend years dreaming of the full potential, planning for growth, building things from the ground up, and pouring ourselves into our work to make our vision a reality.

We find that as our business grows, the needs of our business grow, and to take things to the next level, we must find help and be strategic in order to keep things sustainable. That’s usually a sign that it’s time to hire. This is the crucial moment when you make the decision to work on your business, not in it.

Remember that from a business standpoint, if your organization doesn’t grow each year, do new things, and increase in revenue, you’re actually doing worse because your costs—overhead, payroll, and supplies—increase over time. You may be tempted to think it’s safer to keep things the same, but you’re doing more than just holding your business back. You’re actually reducing its size and minimizing its potential. Many small business owners think that stability and staying the same is a good thing, but if you are not growing and improving, you are getting worse.

It’s important to the health and longevity of your business to transform your mindset and think in terms of growth. Your focus should remain on doing more and doing better, even if it takes a while. Growing, adding new team members, and even turning over employees who need to go are signs that a business is doing well. That’s how your business will flourish, and the idea of a growing business should be something that makes any business owner excited.

Large businesses and corporations usually turn to their human resources (HR) departments or outside recruiting agencies when it is time to find and onboard the right talent. They have legal departments to vet contracts and keep current with employment laws. As a matter of course, CEOs or C-suite executives may never even meet many of the new hires who come and go unannounced.

For small business owners, however, a lot is at stake. For the purposes of this book, a small business is any business that has at least two employees and is actively hiring without an internal HR or legal department. When the owner or a manager performs the role of HR, it is still a small business, but when employee management becomes a full-time job, the business has graduated to the next level. In today’s competitive economy, the effects of employee turnover and substandard work can be devastating to businesses, especially small ones.

When you only have a few employees, they play a critical role in your successes—and failures. They interact with your other employees, customers, clients, or patients and represent your business in a much more personal and immediate way than someone who works in a Fortune 500 company with hundreds or even thousands of employees.

Small businesses generally can’t turn to an in-house HR or legal department to handle the hiring process and smooth out any wrinkles. As the owner, you have to wear all the hats, which means you need to know the basics of hiring if you are going to improve efficiencies, scale up, and grow your business for the future.

I’ve seen small business owners balk time and again at the idea of hiring additional employees. Many know it costs more than $4,000 on average to hire a new employee in the United States, with small business owners spending $1,872 to hire someone new and up to four months searching for the right candidate, depending on the job level.¹ The average cost of hiring the wrong employee was $17,000 in 2017, according to a study by CareerBuilder, and no one wants to be one of the 62 percent of small businesses nationwide that say they made a bad hiring decision.² In my industry alone, I know dozens of dentists who have been embezzled from because they didn’t know how to hire the right people or put effective checks and balances in place.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why small business owners may be reluctant to consider making new hires:

Lack of training. Small business owners rarely receive a formal education in management because they learned along the way building their businesses. They’re just not sure they know how to actually hire—and fire—employees. Few dentists, for example, receive any business training when it comes to talent acquisition or employee retention. They aren’t taught essentials, such as how to build a good team, manage a team well, or transition employees when needed, and the idea of growing their company by increasing personnel can seem daunting.

Insecurity. I’ve observed that business owners are usually talented in multiple areas but assume they will fall short in terms of the soft skills and techniques needed to assess and hire a new employee. Feelings of inadequacy may cause them to delay or even ignore the task of hiring much-needed personnel.

Anxiety. As business owners, we’ve all made mistakes and had bad experiences, which can dictate how we react to future choices. Thinking about managing the hiring process can cause anguish, stress, or anxiety, all of which can be eased when we know how to approach hiring in a smart, intuitive way that best addresses the direct needs of our business.

Lack of time. Most of us are busy enough just running the business and trying to stay healthy and survive. Unlike larger businesses, few small businesses have interns or extra support staff who can pick up the slack in day-to-day operations. Many people believe they can hardly keep up with their responsibilities already, let alone invest in training someone new.

While most small business owners “consider talent to be the greatest asset to the success of their business (82 percent),” according to 2016 findings from Monster.com, “the majority believe it can be time-consuming (89 percent) and expensive (70 percent) to find the right person for the job.”³ On top of everything else, the idea of advertising a job, screening candidates, and training a new employee can seem overwhelming. Many owners think that hiring—and hiring right—requires their full attention, but they don’t have the time or attention to give to the process.

I’m here to tell you that “hire” doesn’t have to be a four-letter word, and you can learn to love hiring and experience it as a positive, gratifying process that launches your business into a stronger trajectory toward its full potential. With the right team, you can build and foster a team of people who love their work, contribute their skills and abilities, are proud of their efforts on your behalf, and represent your organization well.

Hiring is a way to make your business better and is a sign that your business is healthy and growing. And if you understand the key elements, you’ll run a tighter ship, be more successful, and bring out the best in yourself and everyone in your organization.

Whether you are a current or aspiring small business owner, Hiring without Hesitation will provide you with the motivation, tools, tips, and best practices for hiring top-notch employees. I’ll show you the steps and strategies to hire candidates with methods that fit your business and needs. Though you’ll find there isn’t a one-size-fits-all process, you’ll gain more clarity on how to tailor the experience in a way that allows you to hire the best candidate every time. I’ll also guide you into your first week with your new employee so you can start them off on the right foot, making your life easier and setting everyone up for success.

This doesn’t mean everything will always be easy, but it does mean that you’ll feel more prepared in your approach. Then, when you find the best match, you’ll feel confident that you’re on your way to growing your small business into a larger one and appreciate that it was worth all the hard work. Finally, when you have success, you will start to feel more positive about the entire process.

CHAPTER 2

WHAT’S THE JOB?

You may need to hire someone for any number of reasons. Maybe the business is growing, and you need salespeople on the road, talking to prospective clients or running booths at trade shows. Maybe you’re getting feedback that nobody is answering the phone or returning calls, so you need a receptionist or customer service representative. You may need to establish or expand your social media presence. Or it could be that you’re losing an employee and have a vacancy. When you notice a critical gap in service or performance that isn’t being filled, it’s time to hire.

The best thing to do is to act when you see it coming. If you can predict this gap is headed your way, don’t wait. When a position goes unfilled for longer than your business can truly handle it, you risk putting added stress on your other employees, which results in lower efficiency, productivity, and job satisfaction. In a worst-case scenario, someone may end up quitting if they are asked to handle too much extra responsibility for too long, which means you have not one but two open positions to fill.

Many times, small business owners think it’s easier to just take on everything themselves. It’s common to think, “I’m better than anybody else at doing this task, and I need to get this done. I’m going to work a couple extra hours at night and not get home in time to be with my family.” But that can only last so long.

Another reason not to wait too long to make a hire is that the pressure to bring on someone (anyone!) increases the longer you put it off. There’s an expression, “Hire slow, fire fast.” A rush to hire often means you overlook key job criteria (skills, references, etc.) or compromise on what you really need. You may settle for someone “close enough” to what you want and cross your fingers that they’ll work out, only to pay the price. As Harvard Business Review points out, this “bias for speed”¹ can result in hiring employees who are not the best fit for your company. That would be a mistake, and you’d be doing yourself and your business a disservice.

You’ll have a more successful hire when you set clear goals and invest time preparing for the right candidate. This will allow you to hire someone with the skills and personality you need, who fits in with your team, and who becomes part of your long-term growth strategy. To do this, it’s crucial to take an informal inventory and identify not only the job that needs to be filled but the soft and hard skills that are needed to do it.

Ask yourself: Why do I need to hire? What are the types of tasks that I could delegate to someone else? Where would a new hire fit in on my team? What kind of personality would work best? What skills and education are necessary?

To be honest, you won’t truly know if someone is a good fit for your small business until after they’ve started. It’s kind of like dating. You can check off all the boxes—a certain age, lifestyle, geographic area, occupation—but the less obvious things like chemistry and sense of humor are lacking. Once you start spending time together, you’ll soon know whether you are compatible or not. Hiring a new employee is similar, but you can put the odds on your side by establishing a framework for a focused search and organized, transparent hiring process.

IDENTIFY THE NEED

What tasks do you need your new employee to per...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Taking The Plunge
• Chapter 2: What’s The Job?
• Chapter 3: Getting Started
• Chapter 4: Casting The Net
• Chapter 5: The Paper Chase
• Chapter 6: The Phone Interview
• Chapter 7: The Formal Interview
• Chapter 8: The Working Interview
• Chapter 9: Digging Deeper
• Chapter 10: Making The Offer
• Chapter 11: Onboarding Your New Employee
• Final Thoughts
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About The Author