Hiring Your First Employee – What Held You Back or Pushed You Forward?

Question

For me when I started the business, which I never thought about actually starting a business, hiring my first employee was easy as we did cleaning. I hired friends and family (so backfired - this is another discussion :) and never thought about how to do it and why, I just was being referred and for me this was the next step.

Having said this how did you do it? How did you hire your first employee and what were your criterias? Did you look at your numbers and see - yeah I can afford someone? Or was it more like I don't think I can do this alone? How long ago was this? How much have you grown since then?

Love to hear all your experiences!

energizeus · Answer

I love this topic, even more so after I met with the CHR officer of The Ritz Carlton for their training course last year.

Honestly I been burned enough times that I had to build my own lesson plan lol.

When it comes to hiring, I stopped leading with skill set. Those help short term, and only had bad habits we had to train to undo. But they don’t build culture or future leadership.

Now I hire based on Character, Trust, and Vision.
These three traits that tell me if someone is worth investing in long-term.

We’re building a team around shared pressure and shared responsibility,

If you’re stuck deciding who to hire first, or how to afford it, we built visual tools that help break it down, I am at your service.

Thank you and good luck.

laurawhalen · Answer

Good questions.&nbsp; When I could not handle the cleaning workload on my own that is when I decided to hire my first employee.&nbsp; I started by making a list of everything that I do when I am cleaning a client's home.&nbsp; From that I created a job description and started asking friends and family if they knew of anyone that was looking for a job.&nbsp; I had to make sure that I trained them to my expectations and my client's expectations.&nbsp; So many people said they wanted to work and that they were really good at cleaning.&nbsp; I finally started to do interviews by having them clean a kitchen or bathroom.&nbsp; You would be amazed at how many could not figure out to clean from top to bottom...I found a few employees that were good at cleaning, but they were always late.&nbsp; (Being late is one of my triggers that I do not do well with).&nbsp; If you need help with job descriptions, let me know and I would be happy to help out.Good Luck!

judithvirag · Answer

Thank you Laura. We have our own job descirptions now.&nbsp; :) Thanks for the offer.&nbsp;

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Hiring Your First Employee – What Held You Back or Pushed You Forward?

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