If you want your business to grow beyond what you can handle on your own, sooner or later you’ll need to hire staff.
Depending on your business model, you may only need one assistant, or you may need a huge team.
Finding the right person(s)—plus refusing to settle for people who aren’t a good fit—will bring relief and make your life and business so much more rewarding and enjoyable.
Plus, it will help you avoid poor hiring decisions, which can cost you a lot of money. For example, Zappos CEO, Tony Heish, reports that bad hires cost Zappos $100 million!
P.S I am happy to report that The Healthy Mummy staff are AMAZING (30 in the Manly office) and we have an incredible team and we focus on cultivating a great office and team culture so the staff want to work there and enjoy their roles and as the business continues to grow we want to ensure that we attract the best new starters to join the team (if you are reading this and want to work for us please email jobs@thehealthymummy.com)
Here are some tips on finding the right staff for your needs and personality.
Don’t get hung up on hiring family and friends
Most of us love and trust our family and friends, so naturally we love the idea of working with them. It sure beats the thought of sifting through dozens of applications!
But choosing family and friends just because you like them, and not because they’re qualified and equipped to fill the position you want them in, can be disastrous.
It may bleed into your personal life with them and damage the relationship. It may also frustrate and annoy your other employees, by requiring them to work with someone who really isn’t equipped for the job. It could even be detrimental to your reputation with your customers!
This doesn’t mean working with family and friends is impossible. There are many highly successful entrepreneurs with family or friends on their staff.
However, if you’re considering a family member or friend for a job position, take your feelings for them out of it and consider whether or not this person is actually qualified and capable. And definitely get an outside opinion from at least one trusted, impartial third party.
Find people who complement your personality and skills
It’s perfectly fine to have things in common with people you hire. That relatability can make working together a joy!
But there are also huge advantages to hiring people who are the opposite of you in some ways.
For example, if you’re a forward-thinking, relentless action-taker, find someone who is more analytical and cautious to help you with due diligence when making important decisions.
If you’re too impatient for customer service and tend to snap at difficult customers, find someone who can be kind, patient, and courteous, yet firm, in customer relations.
If you’re disorganised and not great with details, find someone who is very organized and detail-oriented.
There’s a lot of truth to the phrase opposites attract, so long as it’s the kind of opposite that brings out the best in you by handling things that aren’t your forte!
Don’t practise hope hiring
Ever hear of hope marketing? It’s when you go into business with no marketing strategy, and hope people magically appear to buy from you.
Hope hiring is similar, but in the context of finding staff.
One of the most common examples of hope hiring I see is putting out a vague job description with just the pay, job title, and your contact information, and hoping the perfect person happens to see it. This is more likely to attract people who aren’t a good fit than who are!
Pre-qualifying people you’re looking to hire is as important as pre-qualifying your customers.
When you advertise, write your job advertisements to appeal to the right people. What traits and characteristics do you want them to have?
And remember to make your job advertisement more about them, and less about you.
I’ve lost count of how many job advertisements I’ve seen that start off talking about how great the company is, how many years they’ve been in business, and so on.
No one in search of a job wakes up in the morning thinking, “I’d love to work for a company that’s been in business for 15 years!”
Look at it from their perspective, and ask yourself why they should choose you over other jobs they may be considering. And what about working for you will make their lives better?
You should not have to settle for mediocre employees when there are amazing ones everywhere. Speaking to the right ones in your job advertisements, instead of to everyone, helps bring them right to you!
Be the best YOU that you can be
Most of us probably know at least one person who struggles to make romantic relationships work, but doesn’t understand why.
What this person doesn’t understand (or want to see) is that the issue is probably with them.
The same is true of you as an employer.
This doesn’t mean you can’t expect the best from your employees, or that you have to be a pushover. It’s crucial to set clear expectations, and to quickly let go of employees who aren’t meeting them.
But if you can’t attract, or keep, ideal employees, no matter how hard you try, it may be because there’s something about the way you do business that’s a deal-breaker for these people.
No one wants to face that the problem may lie with them. Even so, it’s more than worth doing. Take a long, hard look at the way you run things and the way you treat people. Are you sticking to the clear expectations you set, or are you changing them to suit your whims? Are you constantly showing up late for meetings and phone calls?
Ask your past employees to explain what they did and didn’t like about working with you. Request honesty from them, keep an open mind, and prepare yourself to hear things you may not like or want to face. The truth may hurt, but keeping blinders on isn’t helping you.
The time, mental energy, and stress you’ll save in the long run by taking these steps the next time you need staff is more than worth it, and will ensure that you attract and keep staff who respect you, enjoy working for you, and perform their jobs well.
I can say that in 8 years since I started The Healthy Mummy I have been very very lucky to have worked with AMAZING women who 100% complement my skills and I have many many long time serving staff who have been with me for 4 years and I love working with them and their skill set is amazing – and even though we are all different they are complete assets to the business and they are INCREDIBLE.
I am also very very lucky that over the past couple of years a fleet of new starters joined the business and even 2 males and they are all amazing and having this high pedigree of staff means that the business can grow very fast and it means that the staff can grow with the business which is great for everyone – which I am really happy about – and I am very excited about the future and brining on even more amazing staff hires!
Follow Rhian on instagram at @rhianbusyallen
