Hiring first employees and team building in a startup

• When I first hired my employees I could barely afford them to work for me but the work that was piling up made me do so and I am totally happy that I took the risk and it is totally worth it.
• That made my workload get down, all of a sudden I started noticing lot of free time that I can use to do the works that are most important which only I can do, but I have made a lot of mistakes along the way that I want you to avoid them as you have started or in the process of building your business.
• Starting and Managing a Startup from an idea to its execution is like taking a roller coaster ride, when you are alone trying to start all these you may find yourself working on multiple roles at a time and when you can’t afford some personal time that will be a lot of mess to handle.
• One of the hardest things to do in a startup is finding the right core team and hiring people who are just as fired up as you are to make the ideas into a reality.

So here are the best possible things you can do when you are forming your team:

Do some HRP (Human Resource Planning)

• Plan about everything that needs to be done and be so clear about the works to be done.
• Usually, HRP is done by HR executive/ manager/ consultant in large organizations but when you are a startup and when you can’t afford to hire a Human Resource manager or consultant you can follow these steps to save some money and hassle.

• Plan about the outputs that need to be achieved and make sure that those are completely aligned with your vision, with that being done design and separate the jobs into some departments or teams and distribute the work among them based on their expertise.
• Design Jobs according to works.
• Estimate the costs of survival and the time left to complete the works.
• Plan to hire people with skills you lack.
• Know about your government employment laws.
• Plan about offering internships before you hire, this can fetch you some time to assess the right candidates with minimum possible cost.
• Write all the job and employment policies before you let them join.
• Whatever you do remember is it not about how well you plan, it is all about execution.

Hire character along with skill

• When you are hiring always look upon the character of the person, if you are looking for people with glittering resumes and charming looks you may end up with a company culture without growth or even worse and you can’t afford that.

• Skills can be taught to any person with character, so make sure you do good background checks, the best option is to select people with good skill and great character.

Document Procedures

• You have hired your team they started doing the job and they are doing it, fine but when you are not around them you find them doing multiple errors and they come to you for every small doubt and even for some simple decision to make even if they know what are the end results you want.
• To avoid this frequent errors you need to train them and give them written instructions in a very clear and precise way on each and every process on how to do it.
• If you want to know more about documenting procedures to create systems read the books “Work the system by Sain Carpenter ” and “Thinking in systems by Donella H. Meadows”

Plan your own works

• You have your employees now that gets some workload down of you and you feel like you have no works to do?
• Actually, you do, when you first hire your staff it is obvious to get crazy and waste a lot of time on dumb office politics and other non-business related issues.
• To avoid all these distractions have clear goals about why what and how you want things to happen and work accordingly.
• Remember as a business owner it may be ok to work in the business but what will be more beneficial is if you can hire people and let them do the work in the business so that you can focus on your business.
• Yes, there is a lot of difference between working “IN THE BUSINESS” and “WORKING ON THE BUSINESS” Think… and play your works.

Hope you will be very successful in hiring your team and build a great business.

HAPPY HIRING…