The 3 Biggest Hiring Mistakes To Avoid When Bringing On A Team Member
Note: This article was written by our former Operations Assistant, Paris.
You really can't get it all done in a day.
When you've accepted that it's time to hire that process can be really scary.
I'm Paris Hanvey, Megan's Operations Assistant and I hope that I can make the hiring process a little bit easier for you by sharing what not to do because we've seen it happen too many times before.
If you're ready to bring someone on board and you don't want to make these three common mistakes, keep on reading!
Hiring Too Fast
When bringing on a new team member, the first common mistake that we see is hiring too fast. When you decide that you are ready to hire, you want it as fast as possible. It can be easy to hire the first person that you talk to or skip the hiring process altogether and just go with the person that your friend is using.
Unfortunately, that will usually result in a hire that isn't the right fit for the team in the long term and ultimately leave you back at square one. I want to encourage you to take a breath and slow down. The first thing that you need to do when you're ready to hire is actually determined what your hiring process is going to look like for an Empowered CEO, we suggest an initial interview, a test project, and potentially a second interview.
If it's for a full-time team member, it doesn't have to take forever. But it is important that you go through each step of the hiring process. If you follow the process that we teach in Empowered CEO. That means five to eight weeks for an employee or four to six weeks for a contractor. I know that if you're ready to hire four to six weeks can seem like a lifetime, but it is important for us to make a hire for your team that's going to stay around because it costs time and money to train someone once you bring them on your team and we want them to stay for a long time.
Hiring Too Slow
Common mistake number two is actually the opposite. Hiring too slow. I know a lot of entrepreneurs that wait on hiring a team member because they think that it's something they can't afford, or they think they need to have X, Y, and Z in place before they bring a new team member on, they may think that they need their entire SOP library built out, they need to know exactly what Project Management System they're using.
While it is important to have some of those foundational things in place, once you bring on that team member, they can help you finish building out your SOP library, creating SOP's, migrating to a new system, setting up the system.
Remember, you can start your new team member at just 10 hours a month. And if that person's hourly rate is $30, that's just $300 that you're budgeting per month to have someone on your team that's helping you out so it is affordable. I want to encourage you to go back and revisit your budget. Can you afford to bring someone on for 10 hours a month? What will freeing up that time for you mean? What will you have the extra bandwidth to take on?
Clarity
The next most common mistake we see is CEO not having clarity on this role. It is so important to have clarity on your expectations. This goes beyond the bullet points on your job description or the expected skills.
I want you to think about what is the bigger role that this person is going to play in your business? And what are your expectations for how they're going to show up? If you're hiring a contractor are your expectations that they work a little bit in your business every day? If not on the days that they're not working? Do you still want them to check-in? Do you expect them to show up to team meetings? This includes getting clarity on the outcomes that this person is going to be responsible for.
Are you wanting someone to come in and just execute on tasks? Sometimes you just need that? Or do you want someone that is driving outcomes? Do you want them to have any ownership on their outcomes work with you on the strategy?
Take proactive action if you don't have this clarity going into the hiring process and you're not going to ask the right interview questions and ultimately you're going to end up with someone on your team that isn't the best fit.
